GOP and Dems Battle for Narrative Control over Intel Agencies’ Covid Investigations
The intelligence community will be subpoenaed by Republicans when Congress reconvenes in January 2023.
As the Republicans prepare to take over the House of Representatives in January, they are battling Democrats for narrative control over intelligence agency investigations into the origin of the novel coronavirus that morphed into a pandemic before becoming the endemic disease it is today.
Of course, the Democrats want to blame former President Donald Trump.
According to the Democrats’ report, the first warning the intelligence community offered to the Trump administration came from a little-known Defense Intelligence Agency unit in Fort Detrick, Maryland, which on December 31, 2019, published an open-source warning of an undiagnosed pneumonia in China, labeling it a “possible pandemic warning update.”
By the end of January, the Office of the National Director of Intelligence had issued a memo directing the intelligence community to direct more resources at gathering information on the burgeoning crisis, calling it “the top intelligence concern in East Asia,” and warnings began to ripple out through the senior levels of government.
… Still, Democratic investigators allege, despite the drumbeat of warnings from the IC, “White House messaging” failed to effectively inform the public of the risk from the virus. Trump’s rhetoric diverged “striking[ly]” from the intelligence communities late January conclusions, they said, demonstrating “an executive branch that was informed, but failed to warn the American people.”
The report notes that on January 30 – two days after the January 28 briefing in which Pottinger was allegedly “losing it” – Trump told an audience in Michigan that, “We think we have it very well under control.”
The Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee had a slightly different take. Their report accused the intelligence community of failing to adequately address the question of whether there is a potential link between covid and China’s biological weapons efforts.
“Based on our investigation involving a variety of public and non-public information, we conclude that there are indications that SARS-CoV-2 may have been tied to China’s biological weapons research program and spilled over to the human population during a lab-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV),” the report states.
“The Committee has not seen any indications that the Chinese military intentionally released SARS-CoV-2,” it also notes.
The GOP report also ripped the intelligence community, alleging that it has withheld information from Congress and “downplayed” the possibility of COVID-19 being linked to Chinese bioweapons program.
“Our own IC has withheld relevant information from its oversight committee, the American public, and the world. The IC should provide the Committee with all of the requested documents as well as declassify the information referenced in the Committee’s classified report, which it can do without revealing sources and methods,” the report claims.
“The Committee has reason to believe that the IC downplayed the possibility that SARS-CoV2 was connected to China’s bioweapons program based in part on input from outside experts,” it adds.
The narrative battle will be heated, given that Republicans will issue subpoenas to the intelligence community related to the early response to the pandemic.
GOP Rep. Mike Turner told CBS News senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge that Republicans plan to examine the intelligence behind the virus’ origins, which they are not currently able to access. Republicans this week released a report on the intelligence community’s look at the pandemic’s origins this week. Democratic investigators on the committee also released their own report alleging that intelligence agencies may have lost a key opportunity to determine the virus’ origins by not securing resources earlier.
“We will be issuing subpoenas on these materials and on this information,” Turner told Herridge during the interview, which aired on CBS News Friday. He said Republicans on the committee are interested in the information that formed the basis of the intelligence community’s report on COVID-19, which was divided on the virus’ origins.
Given all we have discovered about Democratic Party and intelligence community manipulation on Twitter, I know which version I am inclined to believe.
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Comments
Once they finish with Fauci, Collins & Co., the narrative will be fixed.
These guys started gain of function again when hardly anyone was looking, then lied about their roles. Not to mention the idiotic policies afterwards that caused immense human suffering that persists and will continue well into the future.
The Twitter Files will be great when covid becomes the topic.
Spoiler: the Dems will contr
The Dems will control the narrative.
With no real interference from the Republicans.
Subotai Bahadur
Correct. There will be a floor fight for Speaker, which may go on for months and only be resolved by attrition.
“The Committee has not seen any indications that the Chinese military intentionally released SARS-CoV-2,” it also notes.
That’s a “DUH!” moment indeed. It takes a blithering idiot above all idiots to release a plague as a weapon when you don’t have a counter-agent available for your own side. However, it only takes a garden-variety idiot to dink around with a virus to make it gain function (supposedly to see just how it ticks) and be stupid enough to accidentally release it.
We have lots of the second variety of idiots and very few or none of the first. Thankfully.
Your construction assumes that the Chinese communist regime gives a damn about the well-being of its own people. The regime’s malevolence is such that nothing is beyond the realm of possibility.
Not necessarily so. This plague had a very low mortality rate, which is now even lower. A 0.5% death rate is acceptable for some purposes. If China saw Trump as an existential threat, stopping a Trump 2nd term was the motive, and an attrition rate of <1% is an acceptable cost.
In fact, the IFR of SARS2 is so low that I wouldn't even call it a plague.
“The Committee has not seen any indications that the Chinese military intentionally released SARS-CoV-2,” it also notes.
Of course the committee didn’t see any indications of such a thing. Do you really think China cooperated with the committe by giving them complete access to all their records as well as the Chinese military so that we can be fully satisfied we now know the truth?
They can’t even get records from the last election so they can see if there are any indications that the Democrats cheated.
The intelligence agencies are such partisan clownshows right now that they should be investigating them for that first, not arguing why the usual gang of idiots who didn’t notice the USSR collapsing missed a bat virus in China.
Both political parties will sell out America. Just like the so called intelligence communities have since they plotted to kill Kennedy…something I did not believe until last Monday. But it now seems pretty clear.
What’s to stop them from erasing anything damaging between now and January?
Nothing. But they won’t have to. Nothing is going to happen in January except a protracted floor fight for Speaker that goes on for months.
From Wuhan to Kiev in progress.
Ukraine can do bioengineering on its own. If the Ukes start losing, they could do to MERS what the Chinese did to make SARS2 – put a furin cleavage site din the spike.
More mendacious propaganda from the deep state, the Dims and their mindless, ass-licking lackeys in the ‘press’.
I’m old enough to remember when Trump issued flight restrictions in January of 2000, and promptly got branded a RAYCISS for it.