There is a famous adage that when Republicans screw up, that is the story; when Democrats screw up, the Republican reaction is the story.Legal Insurrection readers will recall our coverage of EcoHealth’s bat virus research in Wuhan and the history of its President Peter Daszak, as it pertains to the origins of the novel coronavirus that spread worldwide. As a reminder:
Daszak was in charge of organizing the infamous Lancet article used to assert the coronavirus was from a natural source and deem lab-leak proposals as conspiracy theories. He arranged for over 20 scientists to sign the document.
….Weren’t they even slightly suspicious when the person organizing the letter in The Lancet was none other than the deeply conflicted Dr. Peter Daszak, head of green nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance?Daszak had been collaborating for 15 years with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which we know was conducting dangerous Frankenstein research, known as “gain of function,” on bat coronaviruses, which makes them more lethal and more infective to humans.He co-authored papers with Shi Zhengli, the head of the Wuhan research team, and he funneled part of the $100 million in US government funding he received to her lab.Yet despite his compelling vested interest to absolve the lab of involvement in the pandemic, Daszak drafted the Lancet letter and convinced 26 others to sign it, emails released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed last year.
Now, he is offering testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, indicating the intelligence community was aware of the coronavirus experiments carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology years before the pandemic.
This certainly looks bad for Big Government bureaucrats and the elite media entities that continuously derided the “lab origin” theory of the COVID-19 virus as a “conspiracy theory.”
So, naturally, the American press is focused on the Republican reaction to Daszak’s testimony. The New York Times reported that Republicans pounced on Daszak’s statements.
House Republicans demanded on Wednesday that the president of a virus-hunting nonprofit group be criminally investigated and barred from federal research funds, a sharp escalation in their campaign against scientists in the United States who Republicans have suggested either had links to the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic or obscured its true beginnings.During a heated three-hour hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Republican lawmakers at times raised their voices at the nonprofit’s leader, Peter Daszak, and said that they believed that he would fare poorly as a defendant in criminal court.The nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, which receives federal funding to study global threats from wild animal viruses, has faced suspicion over a proposal that it made in 2018 to team up with Chinese scientists on novel coronavirus experiments that Republicans believe could have led to the pandemic, despite that project’s never receiving funding.
While the disease caused by the virus was undoubtedly unpleasant, the policies foisted on a large swath of the global population were destructive. Many people (in addition to the congressional panel members) are justifiably angry at the arrogant band of scientists who seemed to have thoughtlessly enhanced the transmissibility of a bat virus that was known to cause pneumonia in humans.
Daszak’s statements included the troubling fact that the freezers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology contain over 15,000 virus samples belonging to the U.S. government.
The government sent money to the Chinese facility despite concerns that the WIV was being by the Chinese government to manufacture bioweapons, according to Dr Daszak’s testimony.Further, the researcher said the WIV is astonishingly still in possession of 15,000 samples of other coronaviruses that may belong to the US government through past taxpayer-funded research.Dr Daszak told the subcommittee: ‘To the last of my knowledge, [samples] were in the freezers in Wuhan – over 15,000 of them.’
The EcoHealth President was asked if U.S. intelligence agencies knew of the Chinese facility’s risky coronavirus research. Daszak hinted that this had been the case.
When asked if he knew whether the US intelligence services knew the Wuhan lab was being used to manufacture bioweapons, Dr Daszak responded: ‘Two agencies I think have low-to-moderate confidence that there was some activity.He added: ‘The other agencies were unable to comment.’
Some of Daszak’s video clips are very troubling. Rep. James Comer (R-KY) had Daszak explain his relationship with American intelligence agencies in one exchange. The researcher claimed he was contacted by the FBI, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency, but he didn’t have a “standing relationship” with them.
Daszak clings to the phrase “standing relationship” when Comer asks if he is an informant.
In another exchange, Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) detailed major discrepancies between the initial draft of the year five progress report and the version ultimately submitted to the National Institute of Health.
Apparently, the initial presentation of information from EcoHealth indicated there was no significant spillover of bat viruses into humans. Later drafts indicated this did occur.
Congressional hearings are undoubtedly important.
But so is a means of enforcing consequences on everyone involved in creating this virus, covering up the lab leak origins, and willfully imposing destructive pandemic policies even after realizing they weren’t based on science and were completely ineffective.
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