Sen. Rand Paul: Wuhan Lab Funders Should Not Participate In Lab-Leak Investigation

Sen. Rand Paul: Wuhan Lab Funders Should Not Participate In Lab-Leak Investigation

In late May, the current occupant of the White House ordered a report reviewing all the findings of COVID’s origin and the ensuing pandemic within the next 90 days.

Approximately three weeks into the three-month deadline, we need to check where these investigations stand.  Several reports surfaced about the connections between “experts” and their compromised contributions to previous “natural origin” assertions.

In a Fox News interview, Senator Rand Paul demanded that those involved in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s coronavirus ‘gain of function’ research not participate in any further investigations.

Here’s the problem. The WHO investigated this the first time, we suggested three people to send to China. They rejected all three and they accepted a guy named Peter Daszak who was the one that funded the lab. So you can’t have the people—like Anthony Fauci or Peter Daszak—who are part of the funding mechanism to send these funds to Wuhan lab.

You can’t have them investigating themselves. They have a definite conflict of interest because if this pandemic started in a lab that the U.S. was funding, the people advocating for the funding obviously will have culpability—at least moral culpability…

The WHO did a terrible job the first time. There needs to be an investigation but I’ve been advocating for a congressional investigation.

Additionally, federal government investigators have announced that they will launch a review into how the National Institutes of Health manages and monitors its grant program, which likely includes monies sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Those grants studies will encompass EcoHealth Alliance, whose president is Peter Daszak, one of the original lab-leak deniers.

Republicans have zeroed in on NIH’s relationship with EcoHealth Alliance, the global nonprofit that helped fund some research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, to attack Dr. Anthony Fauci and score political points.
The comprehensive review also coincides with renewed questions over the origin of the Covid-19 virus and the potential role that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology may have played.

“We share stakeholders’ concerns regarding compliance and oversight of NIH grant funds. We have been monitoring this issue for some time and consider it a high-priority matter that can pose a threat to the integrity of the NIH grant program,” Tesia Williams, the director of communications for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, told CNN.

“Based on our preliminary research and analysis, HHS-OIG has decided to conduct an extensive audit reviewing how NIH monitored selected grants and how the grantees and subgrantees used and managed federal funds between years 2014 through 2021,” Williams said.

Finally, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik and Congressman Robert Wittman introduced legislation placing sanctions on top Chinese health officials, accused of hampering investigations. The legislation is entitled “The World Deserves to Know.”

Stefanik stated that if passed, the bill would “hold the Chinese Community [sic] Party accountable for their intellectual property theft, multiple human rights abuses.”

Additionally, according to legislation text, this bill would aim to “impose sanction with respect to members of the Chinese Communist Party and heads of Chines [sic] health agencies” regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stefanik also added that the legislation would require President Joe Biden to work with intelligence officials to “identify members of the Chinese Communist Party involved in the persecution of whistleblowers and citizen journalists and sanction them for human rights abuses.”

“As the leader of the free world, the United States must hold Chinese Communist Party officials accountable for their unconscionable actions,” said Congresswoman Stefanik.

The 90 days end in late August. It will be interesting to see who finally reviews the report and what, if anything, is done with it. I envision something like this:

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