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For Democrats, the most American thing you can do is destroy America, and anything done to preserve tradition is un-American.Vindicated? Patel's FBI uncovers apparent Chinese communist plot to rig 2020 mail-in vote for Biden
In a New York Times magazine interview published on June 1, 2020, then-Attorney General Bill Barr acknowledged that the Department of Justice was concerned that "there are a number of foreign countries that could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in."
Weeks later, President Donald Trump tweeted: "RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!"
Election officials, Democrats, and the liberal media were quick to suggest that such claims weren't just "unfounded" — they were "preposterous."
Like the American liberal establishment, these strategic dismissals have not aged well.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced Monday that the bureau located intelligence reports from August 2020 that detail "alarming allegations" regarding an apparent Chinese communist plot to interfere in the presidential election for the benefit of then-candidate Joe Biden.
Nearly as damning as the allegations was their alleged cover-up by elements of the intelligence community ahead of the election.
Patel told Just the News that the newly declassified documents "include allegations of plans from the [Chinese Communist Party] to manufacture fake driver's licenses and ship them into the United States for the purpose of facilitating fraudulent mail-in ballots — allegations which, while substantiated, were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on July 27, 2020, that between Jan. 1 and June 30 of that election year, CBP officers at the International Mail Facility at Chicago O'Hare International Airport had seized 1,513 shipments containing fraudulent documents, including 19,888 counterfeit U.S. drivers' licenses.
"The majority of these shipments were arriving from China and Hong Kong, with other seized shipments arriving from Great Britain and South Korea," noted CBP.
The licenses were mostly intended for college-age students across various states. In many cases, the barcode attached to the licenses actually worked. It's unclear whether some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students at universities across the country or some of the nearly 400,000 Chinese illegal aliens were the intended recipients.
"These fraudulent identity documents can lead to identity theft, worksite enforcement, critical infrastructure protection, fraud linked to immigration-related crimes such as human smuggling and human trafficking, and these documents can be used by those individuals associated with terrorism to minimize scrutiny from travel screening measures," added CBP.
Officials who have seen the newly declassified documents told Just the News that a confidential source provided the FBI with information in summer 2020 indicating that the Chinese communist regime was mass-producing fake American drivers' licenses in order to create voter identities for Chinese nationals so that they could vote with fake mail-in ballots.
The goal was apparently to help Biden beat Trump.
An intelligence official indicated that despite the gravity of the allegations, the intel report was recalled after just a few weeks and the allegations never fully explored.
'It was a deliberate effort by the Intelligence Community to hide these facts from the public.'
The reason given was that the confidential source needed to be re-interviewed. However, it appears politics may have informed the decision.
The intelligence community's then-analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf indicated in a report on a number of election security intelligence issues that "China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the [Trump] Administration's policies, saying in effect, 'I don't want our intelligence used to support those policies.'"
RELATED: China is winning the Cold War 2.0 ... and we’re letting it happen
In a Jan. 7, 2021, memo, then-DNI and current CIA Director John Ratcliffe directed the attention of senators on the Select Committee on Intelligence to how the ombudsman found that "CIA Management took actions 'pressuring [analysts] to withdraw their support' from the alternative viewpoint on China 'in an attempt to suppress it. This was seen by National Intelligence Officers as politicization,’ and I agree.”
Ratcliffe went on to defend Christopher Porter — the former national intelligence officer for cyber at the National Intelligence Council, who led the U.S. intelligence community's analysis of threats to American elections — for refusing to back down from flagging the threat of Chinese election interference. Contrary to the supposed majority view, Porter apparently maintained that “China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection chances.”
Porter, who expressed his gratitude on Tuesday that Patel "is standing up for the truth senior Intelligence Community leaders conspired to hide,” claimed that the CIA and senior leadership at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence harassed him and drove him out of the building when he said that China had interfered in 2020.
"Just remember, this wasn’t an oversight: it was a deliberate effort by the Intelligence Community to hide these facts from the public so President Trump couldn’t defend his campaign for reelection," added Porter.
The ombudsman took pains to explain that "due to varying collection and insight into hostile state actors’ leadership intentions and domestic election influence campaigns, the definitional use of the terms 'influence' and 'interference' and associated confidence levels are applied differently by the China and Russia analytic communities.”
RELATED: Chinese official avows Beijing is behind cyberattacks on US, identifies motive: Report
Zulauf suggested further that the difference in application of these analytic terms led to "differences in the volume, frequency, and confidence levels of the intelligence coming from the China and Russia analytic communities," though they were "very similar in their potential effects."
In his report, Zulauf found that "there were attempts to politicize intelligence."
Zulauf referred to several examples, "the most egregious" of which was delivered by National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director Bill Evanina on March 10, 2020. Evanina delivered remarks that were construed as the opinion of the IC, yet analysts called the introductory statement and talking points a “gross misinterpretation” of the IC’s views.
The ombudsman also highlighted “what appears to be politically motivated editing” of a May 2020 National Intelligence Council Memo in what he described as one example of “the overall pattern of perceived politicization.”
Then-National Intelligence Chair Christopher Kojm, who later ended up on Biden’s presidential transition Agency Review Team, “crafted the language” of the memo, which reportedly “led with intelligence gaps and ‘buried the lead’ regarding what the IC does know about election security threats.”
“The result was a final product whose delayed publication meant it diverged sharply from the up-to-date IC view communicated in other product lines,” wrote Zulauf. “I have e-mail exchanges to document this delay, allusions to political repercussions, and frustration from intelligence professionals with the delay.”
“NIC officials pointed to ODNI senior officials as intervening in the changes to conclusions, saying that they were overly sensitive to political customers who saw the dissonance between China and Russia reporting and the inconsistent application of definitions,” added Zulauf.
The alleged cover-up of the Chinese election fraud plot appears to be par for the course within what the ombudsman referred to as this “hyper partisan state” of play.
It appears this narrative curation ultimately proved successful.
In March 2021, the National Intelligence Council released an assessment report stating with high confidence that “China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.”
'They should be investigating and getting this ready for prosecution.'
The report noted further that the intelligence community had “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”
Patel told Just the News he declassified the intel documents pertaining to the August 2020 intel report and provided them to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for further review.
The news of the documents’ location and declassification was well received by a number of Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Ana Paulina Luna (Fla.), who stated, “America needs to wake up. Trump is NOT the enemy, it’s the CCP.”
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, suggested to Blaze News that “a limited disclosure to Congress is not sufficient.”
“They’re the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” continued Howell. “They should be investigating and getting this ready for prosecution.”
Blaze News reached out to the ODNI and the White House but did not immediately receive responses. When pressed for comment, the FBI referred Blaze News to Patel's post on X.
Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.
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North Korea claims new destroyer can now float weeks after humiliating 'launch'
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un attended the communist regime's launch ceremony of the second of its two new Choe Hyon-class destroyers at the Cheongjin shipyard in eastern port city of Chongjin on May 21. The side-launch went really, really poorly.
Jong Un looked on as his brand-new, 5,511-ton, 144-meter warship immediately capsized.
After laying on its side for weeks, North Korean state media now claims the ship was been righted. Nevertheless, the damage has been done — both literally and figuratively.
'Criminal act caused by sheer callousness, irresponsibility, and unscientific empiricism.'
The Korean Central News Agency attributed the failure to "inexperienced command and operational carelessness in the course of the launch," claiming that "the launch slide of the stern departed first and stranded as the [hydro-pneumatic catapult] failed to move in parallel, holes made at some sections of the warship's bottom disrupted its balance, and the bow failed to leave the slipway, leading to a serious accident."
Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector who helms the World Institute for North Korea Studies, told the Guardian, "It appears the dock was hastily constructed, and multiple issues may have arisen during the shipbuilding process."
Jong Un rushed to the conclusion that the incident was a "criminal act caused by sheer callousness, irresponsibility, and unscientific empiricism, which should never occur and could not be tolerated."
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While the communist regime lost face over the accident, the individual it scapegoated — Ri Hyong Son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee — will likely lose a great deal more. Son was arrested and deemed "greatly responsible," according to state media.
38 North, a project of the Stimson Center, a peace-oriented think tank, indicated that in the wake of the accident, there were desperate efforts in recent days to manually right the ship. Satellite imagery revealed that numerous barrage balloons were employed to keep the communist ship afloat while cables were fastened to the destroyer to stabilize its position.
Additional satellite images reportedly indicate damage to the sonar bow section, which will require significant repairs at a dry dock.
State media claimed Friday — and satellite imagery confirms — that the ship had been balanced and launched the previous day and can now stay afloat, moored at the pier.
The South Korean military reportedly indicated that the battered and bruised vessel may have been developed with the help of the Russians in exchange for the regime sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine.
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'Insane': GOP condemns Gov. Hobbs for killing bill that would prevent Chinese communists from owning land near military bases
The Arizona Senate passed legislation in a 17-11 party-line vote last month that would prohibit the communist Chinese regime or one of the enterprises under its direct control from purchasing, owning, or acquiring an ownership interest of 30% or more of property in the state, including property of strategic significance around U.S. military sites.
Lawmakers stressed within the text of the bill that it was necessary to "halt or reverse the influence operation of the Chinese Communist Party that poses a risk to the national security of the United States"; "to protect the critical infrastructure of this state"; and to protect Arizona's "military, commercial and agricultural assets from foreign espionage and sabotage" in order to "place this state in a significantly stronger position to withstand national security threats."
'Governor Katie Hobbs continues to violate her oath of office.'
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs evidently disagreed — and that disagreement has earned her more disgust from Arizona Republicans.
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Hobbs vetoed the bill sponsored by Arizona Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp, claiming it was "ineffective at counter-espionage and does not directly protect our military assets."
The governor added that the bill "lacks clear implementation criteria and opens the door to arbitrary enforcement."
Shamp lashed out at Hobbs over her decision, noting that "with every politically motivated veto of public safety legislation put on her desk by Republicans, Governor Katie Hobbs continues to violate her oath of office she swore to uphold by endangering the lives and livelihoods of all Arizonans."
"SB 1109 was a commonsense security measure to ensure enemies of the United States would not have easy access to our military bases and critical infrastructure to carry out harm," Shamp continued.
"It is utterly insane that Arizona's top elected official would rather be an obstructionist against safeguarding our citizens from threats than to sign legislation giving our state a fighting chance at proactively preventing attacks," she added.
Beijing has provided America with plenty of cause in recent years to suspect ill will and continued sabotage.
China has, for instance, sent spy craft over the U.S. mainland; operated illegal police stations on American soil; threatened diplomats; dispatched agents to execute espionage and political destabilization missions; reportedly provided terrorist cartels with illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and pill press equipment; admitted to orchestrating significant cyberattacks on American institutions and critical infrastructure; engaged in numerous military provocations; and watched with interest as party members gobble up American properties.
According to the Annual Threat Assessment report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in March, "China stands out as the actor most capable of threatening U.S. interests globally."
The America First Policy Institute noted last year that the communist Chinese regime's acquisition of American land is accelerating, and Arizona might be a prime target on account of the military installations it is home to, including Barry M. Goldwater Range, Davis-Monthan, and Luke Air Force bases.
'Governor Hobbs’ veto of SB 1109 hangs an "Open for the CCP" sign on Arizona’s front door.'
"Hobbs is a total disgrace," added Shamp.
A statement posted to the X account of U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) similarly suggested that Hobbs' "latest insane veto leaves Arizona’s critical infrastructure, including Luke Air Force Base, vulnerable to espionage and surveillance risks from nearby foreign-owned farmland." The statement suggested that state Republicans' goal could alternatively be realized at the federal level.
RELATED: Rubio to 'aggressively' revoke Chinese nationals' student visas to eviscerate CCP's spy invasion
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) introduced the No American Land for Communist China Act in February. The bill, which presently appears to be inert, would prohibit any agent of the Chinese regime and any business under its control from purchasing real estate located adjacent to covered federal lands.
Various other bills have been introduced in recent years that would prevent elements of the Chinese regime from acquiring land, in most cases farmland or land near military sites.
Karrin Taylor Robson, a Republican attorney who is running to unseat Hobbs in next year's gubernatorial election, vowed to prevent the Chinese Communist Party from getting "a single acre" if elected governor.
Michael Lucci, the founder and CEO of State Armor, a foreign policy outfit that helps states combat the influence of the CCP, said in a statement to Fox News, "Governor Hobbs’ veto of SB 1109 hangs an 'Open for the CCP' sign on Arizona’s front door, allowing Communist China to buy up American land near critical assets like Luke Air Force Base, Palo Verde nuclear power plant, and Taiwan Semiconductor’s growing fabrication footprint."
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Chinese official avows Beijing is behind cyberattacks on US, identifies motive: Report
U.S. officials and tech companies have long understood that the communist regime in Beijing has orchestrated numerous significant cyberattacks on American institutions and critical infrastructure. In a secret December meeting, Chinese officials apparently admitted as much and identified a major reason for doing so: America's continued support for the island nation of Taiwan.
A pair of anonymous sources said to be familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that Chinese officials met with elements of the outgoing Biden administration during a December summit in Geneva that was led by Nate Fick, the State Department's then-ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy.
Whereas previously, China has played off Volt Typhoon — its hacker outfit tasked with espionage and information gathering — as a criminal crew of rogue hackers or the product of Western fantasy, the Chinese delegation apparently acknowledged that it was indeed a state-backed enterprise.
According to Microsoft, Volt Typhoon has pursued "development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises."
Blaze News previously reported that Volt Typhoon — distinct from Salt Typhoon, the Chinese state-sponsored hacker group that recently compromised at least eight American telecommunications companies, enabling Beijing to spy on the Trump and Harris presidential campaigns — has hit critical infrastructure in Guam and other American regions, affecting communications, manufacturing, transportation, government, maritime, and other sectors.
The U.S. National Security Agency, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, and various allied cybersecurity agencies in the Anglosphere issued a joint advisory in 2023 highlighting "a recently discovered cluster of activity of interest" associated with the group. In their advisory, the cybersecurity groups noted that "one of [Volt Typhoon's] primary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) is living off the land, which uses built-in network administration tools to perform their objectives."
The New York Times reported at the time that while the Volt Typhoon attacks on the U.S. presently amount to a likely espionage campaign, "the Chinese could use the code, which is designed to pierce firewalls, to enable destructive attacks, if they choose."
In January 2024, the Department of Justice announced that it had disrupted certain efforts by Volt Typhoon to "target America's critical infrastructure using a botnet."
Former FBI Director Christopher Wray noted, "Volt Typhoon malware enabled China to hide as they targeted our communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors."
According to current and former U.S. officials, Wang Lei, a senior cyber official with China's ministry of foreign affairs, not only acknowledged the infrastructure hacks at the December 2024 summit but indicated that they were executed in response to the American military's backing of Taiwan.
Wang's comments were reportedly in response to American officials' suggestion that China's prepositioning in civilian infrastructure could be viewed as an act of war.
U.S. officials told the Journal that while the Chinese delegates at the summit did not explicitly state that Beijing was directly responsible for the group and its actions, "American officials present and others later briefed on the meeting perceived the comments as confirmation of Beijing's role and was intended to scare the U.S. from involving itself if a conflict erupts in the Taiwan Strait."
Dakota Cary, a China expert at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, told the Wall Street Journal that an official such as Wang would acknowledge the cyberattacks only if told to do so by Xi Jinping's regime and that doing so would likely serve to signal to the inbound Trump administration the stakes of America's involvement with Taiwan.
The State Department did not comment on the December meeting but told the Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration has made clear to Beijing that it will "take actions in response to Chinese malicious cyber activity."
The Chinese embassy in Washington apparently accused the U.S. of "using cybersecurity to smear and slander China" and spreading so-called disinformation.
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The New York Times Compares Trump’s Presidency To The Chinese Cultural Revolution, But Survivors Disagree
'There are lots of Chinese Cultural Revolution survivors in this country, but The New York Times has no courage and no objectivity to talk to us.'Heritage report breaks down precisely how to hold China accountable for the COVID-19 cover-up, $18 trillion in damages
There have a been multiple efforts in recent years to hold the Chinese regime accountable in full or in part for the pandemic. For instance, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) introduced the China Lied, People Died Act last year, which would have prohibited "the availability of Federal funds for programs, projects, or activities in the People's Republic of China until amounts made available for COVID-19 relief in the United States have been reimbursed, and for other purposes."
Like Nehls' bill, most efforts to make Beijing pay for its maleficence have gone sideways or nowhere at all. According to the Heritage Foundation's Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19, not all is hopeless.
The commission, chaired by former Director of National Intelligence and Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe (R), released a report Monday both assessing the cost of the pandemic and outlining ways that China can be made to answer for its role in maximizing the fallout of COVID-19.
The report noted that while other states, organizations, and individuals may have played contributing roles in the pandemic, "China has been in a league uniquely of its own in its active and aggressive opposition to honesty, transparency, and accountability regarding the virus and its spread."
"This behavior by the Chinese government, more than anything else, was the proximal origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, added the report."
Cover-up
The Heritage commission's report underscored both the intentionality and impact of the Chinese regime's cover-up of the spread of COVID-19.
"There were seven weeks during which Chinese officials could have shown good faith and honored their international commitments to try to prevent a domestic epidemic from becoming a global pandemic," said the report. "They consistently chose to do otherwise."
Blaze News previously detailed how Chinese authorities delayed warning the world about the emergency of COVID-19 and silenced those individuals who tried to raise the alarm.
While it appears the virus began spreading by the fall of 2019 at the latest, communist officials waited until Dec. 31, 2019, to alert the World Health Organization, then claimed, "The disease is preventable and controllable."
The Heritage commission's report noted that even when China finally got around to informing the WHO, it "withheld vital information," including the type of virus behind the illness, the actual number of infected persons, and insights into human-to-human transmission.
A Five Eyes intelligence dossier accused the Chinese regime in May 2020 of engaging in an "assault on international transparency" to the "endangerment of other countries," reported the New York Post.
The intelligence dossier indicated that Chinese officials had scrambled to bury evidence of the virus and its origins, "destroying" lab samples, censoring evidence of spread, and denying sample requests from other countries.
Extra to destroying lab evidence, the Heritage commission noted that Chinese authorities barred researchers and scientists, especially those linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from sharing information about the virus their peers had likely engineered.
While lying to the world about the virus, the Department of Homeland Security intelligence service indicated that "the Chinese Government intentionally concealed the severity of COVID-19 from the international community in early January while it stockpiled medical supplies by both increasing imports and decreasing exports."
Not only did China deceive the world and exploit the deception, it locked down domestic travel while allowing infected Chinese citizens to travel internationally. According to the New York Times, 175,000 people left Wuhan on Jan. 1, 2020, alone. A total of 7 million people left Wuhan that month before travel was restricted, thousands of whom were infected.
The Heritage commission's report noted that there were 1,300 direct flights from Wuhan to 17 cities in the U.S. before the American government restricted travel on Jan. 31, 2021 — a move China and the WHO recommended against.
Costs
The commission noted that as of last month, over 1.1 million Americans were estimated to have been slain by the foreign-born virus. COVID-19 claimed the lives of roughly 28 million people worldwide.
Besides filling morgues and leaving empty chairs at dinner tables around the country, the report noted the pandemic drove roughly 97 million people worldwide into poverty; dropped the world's collective GDP by several points; sent unemployment skyrocketing; ejected billions of children out of classrooms, setting them back academically; and adversely impacted vulnerable persons' mental health.
'The Chinese government must be held accountable for its role in obfuscating the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic.'
The report emphasized that in the U.S., the pandemic left behind not only broken hearts and stunted children but also financial burdens.
The Heritage commission estimated that as of December 2023, the total cost of the pandemic in the U.S. had exceeded $18 trillion.
Deaths accounted for over $8.6 trillion of the total cost. Lost income alternatively accounted for $1.82 trillion of the total; chronic conditions for $6.02 trillion; mental health issues for $1.98 trillion; and educational losses for nearly a half-trillion dollars.
Comeuppance
The Heritage commission determined that "the Chinese government and its affiliates can be and should be held liable for damages to the United States and its people caused by Chinese negligence and malfeasance related to the COVID-19 pandemic."
To hold China accountable, however, the report noted that lawmakers must revise the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act to remove "a foreign sovereign's immunity in the specific context of the extraordinary circumstances of global pandemics that lead to more than one million excess deaths of American citizens and residents and are caused by a foreign state."
With FSIA amended to no longer stand in the way of holding China liable for damages, the commission indicated there would be several possible causes of action, including negligence; strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities; public nuisance; anti-competitive behavior; fraudulent misrepresentation; and civil Racketeer and Corrupt Organization Act violations.
In addition to targeting China generally, the commission indicated that two Chinese airlines that have subjected themselves to U.S. jurisdiction — China Southern Airlines Company Ltd. and China Eastern Airlines Company Ltd. — could also be fair game, along with Chinese manufacturers of personal protective equipment and the Chinese National Pharmaceutical Group.
The commission made clear, however, that there are other ways to skin a cat.
The commission made multiple recommendations, including:
- Congress should create a reparations task force to cover claims against China and explore ways to expand U.S. federal court jurisdiction such that Chinese individuals and agencies can be held liable for U.S. civil claims.
- Congress should pass former Republican Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher's BIOSECURE Act to "begin decoupling U.S. government and commercial supply chains from Chinese state-backed companies."
- Congress should pass a law requiring an audit of all American funding for biomedical and other such research activities in China, where the working presumption is that all research should be canceled unless "relevant sponsors can demonstrate that their research projects are overwhelmingly in the public interest and entail extremely low risk of harm."
- The president should impose sanctions on Chinese officials and organizations linked to the cover-up of the virus and its initial spread and get serious about the threat of gain-of-function research.
- The president should block U.S. outbound investment in the Chinese biotechnology sector.
- The president should lean on the WHO to hold China accountable for violating Articles 6 and 7 of the International Health Regulations.
A failure by American leaders to act would incentivize the CCP "to persist in its nontransparent, noncooperative, and even hostile behavior," said the report.
Ratcliffe said in a statement, "The Chinese government must be held accountable for its role in obfuscating the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic — a pandemic that caused more than 1 million American deaths and $18 trillion in economic damage in the United States."
"While most of our government and media have focused on legitimate concerns about the origins of the virus, we must also focus on how the [Chinese Communist Party's] lack of transparency and distortion of facts accelerated a global pandemic, regardless of how COVID-19 originated," added Ratcliffe.
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