RFK Jr. exposes Fauci's gain-of-function treachery as Trump slams brakes on bioweapons research disaster



Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made blistering accusations against Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, regarding gain-of-function research.

During a Tuesday interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham, Kennedy accused Fauci of deliberately betraying a ban on bioweapon development and attempting to conceal his nefarious activities.

'There is no other way to receive this but @SecKennedy is accusing Fauci of crimes against humanity.'

On Monday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order restricting funding for overseas gain-of-function research, which many argue led to COVID-19.

"These measures will drastically reduce the potential for lab-related incidents involving gain-of-function research, like that conducted on bat coronaviruses in China by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology," a White House fact sheet read.

During this week's interview with Ingraham, Kennedy addressed the administration's recent actions to protect Americans from dangerous research and connected the dots on Fauci's involvement.

"Gain-of-function studies is the kind of science that is designed to make microbes and pathogens more virulent, more transmissible, and more deadly," Kennedy stated.

He explained that the U.S. military and intelligence agencies began gain-of-function research in 1947 to develop bioweapons. However, President Richard Nixon (R) banned the research in 1969, and the ban held through 2001 until the anthrax terrorist attack.

"After the anthrax attacks, Anthony Fauci began — essentially, restarted the arms race and the bioweapons arms race and did it under the pretension of developing vaccines. Because it's the same science they use to develop bioweapons and vaccines," Kennedy told Ingraham.

However, the research took a turn in 2014 when "three of [Fauci's] bugs escaped," he explained.

As a result, hundreds of scientists urged then-President Barack Obama to stop Fauci's research, Kennedy said.

"President Obama declared a moratorium, but instead of shutting down his experiments, [Fauci] moved them offshore, mainly to the Wuhan lab," he claimed. "And now the principal institutions are coming — the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, Department of Energy — all say that it is most likely that those experiments resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning in 2019."

"So President Trump today moved to shut down this kind of research in this country and to stop funding it abroad," Kennedy added.

BlazeTV host and Blaze News columnist Steve Deace reacted to Kennedy's allegations against Fauci, calling for a Department of Justice referral.

"There is no other way to receive this but @SecKennedy is accusing Fauci of crimes against humanity. This is a direct accusation. Shouldn't this now be referred to DOJ for prosecution?" Deace wrote in a post on X.

In the days before leaving office, Biden issued Fauci a sweeping pardon "for any offense against the United States" since January 2014.

Fauci stepped down from his NIAID position in 2022 and now holds a "Distinguished University Professor" position with the School of Medicine's Department of Medicine at Georgetown University.

Neither Fauci nor Georgetown University responded to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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Fauci cabalist, top gain-of-function scientist raise alarm about dangerous new experiments



One the world's most prominent gain-of-function researchers — whose methods were adapted by researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for work on chimeric viruses — and one of the scientists who helped furnish Anthony Fauci with what he needed to downplay the lab-leak theory are now sounding the alarm about dangerous new coronavirus experiments conducted by the Chinese.

Criticism may have been easier this time around, given that the critics and their friends do not appear to be directly linked to the dangerous research in question.

Ralph Baric and W. Ian Lipkin expressed concern in a March 3 New York Times op-ed that Chinese scientists "are experimenting with viruses in ways that could put all of us in harm's way."

Baric, a professor in the departments of epidemiology and microbiology at the University of North Carolina, is a leading proponent of gain-of-function research who successfully fought for an exemption from the Obama administration's moratorium on the dangerous practice in order to keep manufacturing artificial SARS-like viruses. He became an especially controversial figure during the pandemic, which has claimed the lives of over 7 million people worldwide.

Lipkin, the John Snow professor of epidemiology at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, was one of the co-authors of the controversial March 2020 paper "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," which Fauci used on multiple occasions to suggest to the American public that COVID-19 was not a lab leak but rather an animal virus that jumped to a human. Lipkin, who later thanked Fauci for his "efforts in steering and messaging" regarding the virus' origins, has reportedly long had a cozy relationship with Chinese communist authorities.

Baric and Lipkin indicated that they are particularly concerned about experiments conducted by WIV researchers and other Chinese scientists on a deadly coronavirus called HKU5-CoV-2. These experiments are detailed in a recent paper published in the scientific journal Cell.

The duo noted that the virus at the heart of the study "belongs to a subgroup of viruses that are classified alongside the one that causes MERS and that can have fatality rates far higher than that of the virus that caused the Covid pandemic."

While HKU5 can infect humans and has the potential to be far more lethal than SARS-CoV-2, Chinese scientists have apparently been meddling with the fully infectious virus in a lab with "insufficient" containment controls.

There are multiple biosafety level ratings for laboratories ranging from BSL-1 to BSL-4. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "each biosafety level builds on the controls of the level before it."

'Potentially dangerous research should not be done without proper precautions.'

A BSL-4 lab, for instance, is designed to handle microbes that are "dangerous and exotic, posing a high risk of aerosol-transmitted infections" that could prove fatal. Researchers in such a lab must manipulate the infectious agents using a gas-tight sealed container with a double HEPA filtered exhaust while wearing protective gear. Alternatively, they must wear a full-body, air-supplied positive pressure suit. Researchers must also undergo routine medical surveillance for signs of infection.

Such a high-security lab must also be located in a separate building or in a restricted zone of an existing building with double locking doors and provided with a dedicated supply of air along with decontamination systems.

Despite the dangers posed to the researchers and the rest of mankind, the Chinese researchers have instead been experimenting in a lab described as BSL-2 plus. BSL-2 labs are meant to handle only microbes that pose, at worst, moderate hazards to researchers and the environment.

"Decisions about what level of precaution is appropriate for research are typically made by a study's lead scientist and an institutional biosafety committee," wrote Baric and Lipkin.

The lead scientist on this dangerous study was Shi Zhengli, whose track record for safety is less than stellar and with whom Baric has previously collaborated.

According to a 2021 article in the MIT technology review, Baric asked Shi, who is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the WIV, for the genome of a new coronavirus Shi found in bat excrement. He apparently wanted to take the "spike" gene from the novel virus and stick it into a copy of a SARS virus he had on hand. Ultimately, Baric's team tested the resultant chimeric virus on humanized mice and in a petri dish of human airway cells and discovered that it could indeed infect humans.

Baric and Lipkin noted in their op-ed that while the relevant authorities in China apparently approved the dangerous new experiments on HKU5, "it is not sufficient for work with a new virus that could have significant risks for people worldwide."

"Work with viruses that have the potential to become threats to public health should be restricted to facilities and scientists committed to the highest level of safety," added the duo.

According to Baric and Lipkin, governmental and nongovernmental agencies that fund research on viruses should require "proof that investigators meet global standards." Additionally, scientific journals should insist on similar standards for the studies they accept.

The duo concluded, "Potentially dangerous research should not be done without proper precautions to prevent deliberate or accidental spread."

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Coalition of state AGs seek to bypass Biden pardon and hold Fauci accountable



Just hours before leaving office, former President Joe Biden issued a pardon for Anthony Fauci, giving the fifth director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases a pass for possible federal crimes going back to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for dangerous gain-of-function research.

While Biden's stated intention was to spare the 84-year-old immunologist from "being investigated or prosecuted," the geriatric Democrat could not ultimately spare Fauci from being held accountable for possible violations of state laws.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and 16 other state attorneys general have launched an investigation into Fauci's role in the COVID-19 pandemic response, "demanding accountability for alleged mismanagement, misleading statements, and suppression of scientific debate."

After referencing damning findings by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic concerning Fauci, the attorneys general urged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) in a letter Wednesday to "consider using all available tools" at Congress' disposal to "ensure that former President Biden's shameful pardon does not frustrate accountability."

The state attorneys general evidently have one particular "tool" in mind.

Underscoring that Biden's pardon does not "preclude state-level investigations or legal proceedings," they noted that members of Congress can refer pertinent findings to state officials who "possess the authority to address violations of state law or breaches of public trust."

'We are fully prepared to take appropriate action to ensure justice is served.'

"You are uniquely positioned to assist us by providing us with information that could outline potential courses of action under state law, should they exist," said the letter. "If possible, please furnish us with the necessary details so that we may make informed decisions aimed at holding malign actors accountable."

The congressional report cited in the letter found that:

  • Fauci got the ball rolling on the controversial paper "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" with the apparent aim of discrediting the lab leak theory, which is now widely regarded as the most likely explanation. Fauci may have wanted to push the zoonotic origin theory, not only to avoid blaming China for the pandemic but because his fingerprints were all over the alternative origin. After all, EcoHealth Alliance, whose subcontractor Ben Hu — the Wuhan Institute of Virology's lead on gain-of-function research on coronaviruses — was among the pandemic's suspected patients zero, used NIAID funding to collaborate with the Wuhan lab.
  • Fauci "played semantics with the definition of gain-of-function research" in an apparent effort to deceive federal lawmakers while testifying under oath. The report indicated that whereas Fauci stated on multiple occasions that the National Institutes of Health and NIAID had not funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, his "testimony was, at a minimum, misleading" as such research had been funded through EcoHealth Alliance.
  • The NIAID under Fauci "fostered an environment that promoted evading the Freedom of Information Act."
  • The NIAID failed to adequately oversee EcoHealth Alliance, with Fauci admitting that he signed off on grants without reviewing them.

The state attorneys general noted further that it is clear that Fauci also "led a deliberate campaign to stifle the voices of premier health scholars regarding the lack of adequate testing of vaccines" and engaged in a propaganda campaign that "contributed to serious vaccine injuries — and in some cases, death."

Federal lawmakers may soon get their hands on evidence of other possible causes for state action.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced on Jan. 27 that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee subpoenaed 14 agencies in connection with the origins of COVID-19 and taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) revealed the following day that he had "issued his first subpoena as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to the Department of Health and Human Services for records relating to COVID-19 vaccine safety data and communications about the COVID-19 pandemic, including a subset of Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails."

"President Biden's blanket pardon of Dr. Fauci is a shameful attempt to prevent accountability," Wilson said in a statement. "If any of these findings indicate violations of state laws, we are fully prepared to take appropriate action to ensure justice is served."

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Matt Taibbi tells Tucker Carlson why Biden's pardon for Fauci could help bring curtain down on COVID cover-up



Investigative reporter Matt Taibbi and Tucker Carlson recently spoke at length about long-standing efforts by deep-staters to control information flows, apparent last-ditch attempts by elements of the previous administration to embroil the U.S. in a direct conflict with Russia, and the likelihood that President Donald Trump has been targeted for assassination on more occasions than have been publicly admitted.

While the conversation was wide-ranging, it largely centered on the question of what impact Trump's mass disclosures — particularly his planned declassification of government documents — might have, not only on his safety but regarding various matters left unresolved or swept under the rug over the past four years, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its possible manufacture.

Taibbi told Carlson that in this time of revelation and reopened investigations, former President Joe Biden's strategic blunder could ultimately prove to be what forces Anthony Fauci to spill the beans.

While Biden apparently sought to spare Fauci from accountability, Taibbi indicated that the former president's pardon of Fauci on the eve of Trump's inauguration actually painted a target on his back and deprived the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of his key means of self-preservation.

"The thing is about these pardons — they're a mistake. If you want to know what's happening, they just made it a lot easier for us to find out," said Taibbi. "Once the pardon's delivered, the person can't plead the Fifth. If they're brought before a grand jury, they can't take the Fifth any more. If they're brought before a congressional committee, they can't invoke the right against self-incrimination."

'It's going to be like a turkey shoot.'

Citing the insights of past and current congressional investigators as well as criminal defense attorneys, Taibbi suggested that the consensus is that it is "illogical to give somebody a pardon if you're trying to cover up things" unless "there are very serious crimes involved."

In either case, the pardon serves as a giant "red flag."

When asked what possible crimes Fauci might have needed cover for, going all the way back to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for dangerous gain-of-function research that makes pathogens more deadly and/or more transmissible — Taibbi noted that "the one thing that comes to mind immediately is perjury."

"Lying under oath to the Congress. In particular, saying, you know, that we have never funded gain-of-[function] research, that we weren't doing it during this time period — even as there are other people in the government, like the deputy director of the NIH, saying, 'Yes we were,' or Ralph Baric, who was one of the scientists at UNC, saying, 'Yes, absolutely, that was gain-of-function,'" said Taibbi.

Fauci misled Congress by stating in May 2021 that the National Institutes of Health "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

In addition to putting the former NIAID director back on the hot seat, Taibbi suggested that other people with fingerprints all over the pandemic, including Peter Daszak — the British zoologist who was formally debarred along with his scandal-plagued organization EcoHealth Alliance this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — may similarly be trotted out to answer questions, including questions about documents that the Trump administration may release.

"There are documents that we know exist that we're going to get now with FBI communications between the bureau and a lot of these scientists dating back 10 years, and it's going to tell a very crazy story," said Taibbi. "There's a reason why Fauci's pardon is backdated to 2014, because that's the time period that they're going to have to start looking [at]."

The investigative reporter suggested that key questions to revisit with these scientists will be, "When did we start defying the ban on gain-of-function research? ... Why were we doing it? What connection did that have to the Wuhan thing? What kind of advanced notice did we get? What kind of lies were told about it? Who were responsible for those lies? What kind of information did we get about the inefficacy of the vaccine?"

"COVID is a gigantic rats' nest of stuff," continued Taibbi. "It's going to be like a turkey shoot, where every direction they look, they're going to find something revelatory."

The investigative reporter suggested that the Republican-controlled government could illuminate what authorities actually knew about what was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where American tax dollars ended up courtesy of Fauci; whether there was advance warning that the pandemic was coming; and whether investigations into the possibility of a lab leak were suppressed "because of the connections to U.S. research."

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If Fauci Can’t Be Jailed For His Covid Cover-Up, Congress Should Make Him Explain It

The investigation into one of the biggest scandals in U.S. history doesn’t stop simply because Biden or Fauci says so.

Biden spy chiefs sidelined FBI, researchers who suspected COVID-19 lab leak: Report



According to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, spy chiefs prevented the FBI and Pentagon scientists from providing a counterpoint to their preferred COVID-19 origin theory at an important intelligence briefing in 2021.

There was a concerted effort by elements of the Biden administration and the scientific establishment during the pandemic to downplay the possibility that the COVID-19 virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where dangerous gain-of-function experiments were conducted on coronaviruses, sometimes with American funding.

While characterizing what was all along the most likely explanation as a conspiracy theory and in some cases censoring discussion of it online, the powers that be also did their best to suggest that a cross-species leap to humans was ultimately to blame. Official acceptance of this narrative would help shift blame for millions of deaths away from the communist Chinese regime, Peter Daszak's debarred EcoHealth Alliance, and the numerous American federal agencies that were involved with radical experimentation at the epicenter of the pandemic.

According to the Journal, when it came time for the intelligence community to present its findings to President Joe Biden, spy chiefs excluded the FBI — which had concluded with "moderate confidence" that a lab leak was the likely cause — from its Aug. 24, 2021, briefing along with damning genomic analysis from Pentagon scientists, which again pointed to human error.

Jason Bannan, a microbiologist who worked as a scientist at the FBI for nearly 20 years, told the Journal that his superiors primed him for the August intelligence community briefing with Biden but that he was never given the opportunity to offer what would have apparently been a contrasting view to the zoonotic origins narrative ultimately pushed by the director of national intelligence, former CIA Deputy Director Avril Haines.

A report earlier this year from Michael Shellenberger's investigative outfit, Public, indicated that the bureau possibly knew about a lab leak at the WIV as early as March 2020.

"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan," FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a February 2023 interview. "I will just make the observation that the Chinese government ... has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we're doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing. And that's unfortunate for everybody."

"Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing," said Bannan. "I find it surprising that the White House didn't ask."

The champions of the zoonotic origin theory may have wanted to limit the bureau's presence at the briefing in order to maintain the credibility of their preferred narrative. After all, experts at the FBI apparently weren't playing ball.

'The scientists who had the subject matter expertise were silenced.'

The Journal indicated, for instance, that the National Intelligence Council prepared a chart for inclusion in its report to Biden that insinuated commonalities between the COVID-19 pandemic and past zoonotic outbreaks. However, FBI experts allegedly suggested that the chart betrayed a proper understanding of striking and critical differences between the new virus and past viruses, especially regarding their contagiousness.

Experts at the FBI also apparently ruffled feathers — particularly those of Adrienne Keen, a State Department official who served as a consultant to WHO but now works at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — by highlighting the thesis of a WIV scientist, Yu Ping, which indicated that the virus responsible for the pandemic was indigenous to the mountainous Yunnan province in the west of China. The trouble for proponents of the zoonotic origins theory was that the initial spread was not in Yunnan but nearly 1,000 miles away, in the neighborhood of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Hubei province.

The insights of scientists at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency were similarly poorly received and ultimately glossed over.

The Journal noted that John Hardham, Robert Cutlip, and Jean-Paul Chretien, whose 2020 paper challenging the zoonotic origin claim was quarantined, conduced a genomic analysis that showed that the virus had undergone meddling in a lab.

The trio, working at the DIA's National Center for Medical Intelligence, determined that the virus' spike protein was not a product of evolution but of human engineering, made using techniques developed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and described in a 2008 paper — a telltale sign of gain-of-function experimentation.

Although the trio reportedly briefed their counterparts, including one of Bannan's partners at the FBI, Hardham, Cutlip and Chretien were ordered by a superior at the Center for Medical Intelligence Center in July 2021 to cut the FBI off from further disclosures about their work.

In addition to having their work siloed, the National Intelligence Council's briefing to the president reportedly excluded a number of the Pentagon scientists' proposed edits.

While it appears there was a desire for narrative conformity, a spokeswoman for the director of national intelligence's office suggested to the Journal that divergent viewpoints were fairly represented.

A source familiar with the investigation told the New York Post, "The scientists who had the subject matter expertise were silenced."

The NIC report that Haines and two of her senior analysts presented to Biden in August ultimately concluded with "low confidence" that the virus was the result of a cross-species leap and "was probably not genetically engineered."

"What ended up on the intelligence community's cutting-room floor needs to be re-examined," said Bannan.

The Journal suggested that politics was a factor in the approach taken to the competing theories both in Washingon, D.C., and in the scientific community. Then-President Donald Trump suggested in May 2020 that he had seen evidence that gave him a "high degree of confidence" that the virus originated in a Chinese lab.

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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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Pentagon makes horrifying admission about its funding of Chinese gain-of-function experiments



The year millions of people were killed worldwide by a virus likely engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese scientists in Beijing began toying with a more deadly coronavirus variant called GX_P2V that killed humanized mice 100% of the time, largely with late-stage brain infections. While not formally linked, the study referenced parallel work executed by Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist Dr. Shi Zhengli.

In March, Chinese researchers at the Hebei Medical University revealed they had created a mutant version of the virus vesicular stomaitis, known to infect cattle, by giving it a protein from the Ebola virus. The hamster test subjects infected with the recombinant virus suffered weight loss, ulcerated eyes, inflammation, multi-organ failure, and then all died.

Apparently, the Pentagon has no idea to what extent it has bankrolled these kinds of potentially ruinous experiments in communist China.

The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General released a partially redacted report Tuesday detailing the results of its efforts to track down the money the Pentagon has invested helping the communist Chinese enhance deadly pathogens.

The report made clear it was referring to gain-of-function experiments, referencing a definition published in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, which states, "The term 'gain-of-function' means 'to enhance a function by genetic manipulation' or 'to add a new function' and applies to much research involving genetic recombination and genetic manipulation."

The DOD Office of Inspector General sought specifically to track the amount of federal funds given either directly or indirectly by the Pentagon to:

  • the communist regime itself;
  • the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other organizations administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences;
  • Peter Daszak's scandal-plagued and debarred EcoHealth Alliance, whose gain-of-function subcontractor was among the likely patients zero;
  • the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences; and
  • any other related lab in the Asian nation.

Of special concern was whether and where funds were spent on "research or experiments that could have reasonably resulted in the enhancement of any coronavirus, influenza, Nipah, Ebola, or other pathogen of pandemic potential or chimeric versions of such a virus or pathogen."

The conclusions of the report were damning.

The Pentagon has admitted that it has no idea to what extent it has funded the creation of deadly viruses in an adversarial nation it has identified as its "top pacing challenge" — a country whose overall biorisk management score is less than stellar.

The report noted at the outset that Army officials had identified 12 relevant research programs and that for "seven awards, a prime awardee provided funds to a subawardee or contracting research organization in China or other foreign countries for research related to potential enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential."

The Inspector General's Office could also account for over $54 million given to EcoHealth Alliance for 13 projects executed from 2014 through 2023 but suggested that none of this funding went to China or its affiliates for gain-of-function research.

After accounting for the top of the Pentagon funding iceberg, the report indicated what lies below the surface is wholly "unknown."

Why is the answer to this question not 'zero dollars'?

Citing "significant challenges in searching for awards" due to "limitations in the DOD's systems used to track contracts and grants," the Inspector General's Office concluded, "The full extent of DOD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown."

The report noted that when it came to funding Chinese gain-of-function experiments, the DOD neither used "a budget line item or any other consistent indicator, such as assistant listing codes, that makes databases of grants, contracts, and other transaction agreements easily searchable or reviewable" nor tracked "funding at the level of detail necessary" to make accurate determinations.

Apparently, the Government Accountability Office reached a comparable conclusion in a 2022 report.

Similarly troubling was the Office of the Inspector General's admission that found it impossible "to identify a single source that encompasses all pathogens of pandemic potential." In other words, the Pentagon does not appear to have an accessible authoritative list detailing just how many deadly diseases it has funded the creation of in China.

Despite the acknowledgement the Pentagon hasn't tracked its spending on the manufacture of killer viruses in China, DOD officials reassured the Inspector General's Office that "DOD organizations did not actively participate in or knowingly fund research or experiments that could have reasonably resulted in the enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential from 2014 through 2023."

The report was not well received.

Molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University wrote, "Your tax dollars on fire."

Stanford University epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya tweeted, "The Biden DOD has lost track of how much money it has given to Chinese laboratories for 'enhancing' pathogens. Why is the answer to this question not 'zero dollars'?"

"Deadly coverup. Deadly incompetence," wrote Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson. "What's the difference? But this 'I dunno' may as well translate as: we (YOU) paid for the creation of covid."

Blaze News columnist Auron MacIntyre responded, "US agencies can track and censor your social media posts about the pandemic but can't track how much they spent to manufacture it."

"It wasn't the Pangolin," wrote Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. "It was the Pentagon."

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Prominent scientists demand retractions from journals that published 'unsound' articles downplaying possible COVID-19 lab origins



Former National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance boss Peter Daszak, and elements of their inner circle were far from the only people in the Western medical establishment who actively downplayed the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a lab where the likely patients zero executed dangerous experiments on coronaviruses with American taxpayer dollars.

Early in the pandemic, multiple scientific publications ran articles decrying "conspiracy theories" that suggested the virus may have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Various authors argued, instead, that it was more likely that the virus made a cross-species leap into humans, possibly at a Chinese wet market.

Now that it's abundantly clear that the lab origin theory was all along the most likely explanation, molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University and dozens of other scientists are seeking accountability for perceived efforts to cure the origins narrative. They have sent open letters to the editors of the journals Science, Emerging Microbes & Infections, and Nature Medicine, requesting the retraction of "scientifically unsound papers" concerning the origins of the virus.

"Scientists have a responsibility to science and the public to point out scientific misconduct, particularly scientific fraud, when they discover it," Dr. Ebright told Blaze News. "This is especially true for scientific misconduct on matters of high public importance, like the origin of COVID-19."

Emerging Microbes & Infections

The first of the four papers of interest was published online in Emerging Microbes & Infections on Feb. 26, 2020, and authored by Shan-Lu Liu and Linda Saif of Ohio State University; Susan Weiss of the University of Pennsylvania; and Lishan Su of the University of Maryland.

The paper, entitled, "No credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2," stated, "There are speculations, rumours and conspiracy theories that SARS-CoV-2 is of laboratory origin. Some people have alleged that the human SARS-CoV-2 was leaked directly from a laboratory in Wuhan where a bat CoV (RaTG13) was recently reported, which shared ∼96% homology with the SARS-CoV-2."

After downplaying a number of possible lab-made culprits, including a chimeric coronavirus that could replicate in human airway cells and possibly transmit to humans, the authors concluded, "There is currently no credible evidence to support the claim that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a laboratory-engineered CoV."

The June 14 open letter to the editors of the journal stated, "The authors' and editor's private email communications, obtained through an Ohio Public Records Act request, provide compelling evidence that there is clear basis to infer the paper may be the product of scientific misconduct, up to and including fraud."

When Weiss, for instance, expressed uncertainty about how the furin cleavage site could possibly end up in the virus naturally, her colleague Liu "completely agree[d]" but signaled a greater eagerness to dispel the notion that the "furin site may be engineered."

Despite publicly suggesting there was no credible evidence of a lab origin, Weiss noted days before the publication of her paper:

Henry and I have been speculating- how can that site have appeared at S1/S2 border- I hate to think it was engineered- among the MHV strains, the cleavage site does not increaser (sic) pathogenicity while it does effect entry route (surface vs endosome). so for me the only significance of this furin site is as a marker for where the virus came from- frightening to think it may have been engineered.

Concealed doubts and persuasive counterpoints were not the only things said to have compromised the integrity of the paper.

University of North Carolina virus expert Ralph Baric has long toyed with coronaviruses. Years ahead of the pandemic, he expressed an interest in continuing to experiment with a chimeric virus that could infect human lung cells. He even shared transgenic mice with the Wuhan lab where Chinese virologist Zhengli Shi was executing radical experiments.

In violation of publisher Taylor and Francis' authorship policies, "Ralph Baric and Shi Zhengli, despite clear conflicts of interest, made substantial contributions to the manuscript but were not credited as authors or acknowledged," said the letter.

Besides secretly involving people with potential conflicts, Su, Liu and the journal's editor-in-chief Shan Lu reportedly also had "privileged information about a SARS-CoV-2 infection in a Beijing lab in 2020," but decided to keep this under wraps.

Su wrote to Lieu on Feb. 14, 2020: "Your former colleague was infected with sars2 in the lab?"

"Yes," responded Liu. "He was infected in the lab!"

"I actually am very concerned for the possibility of SARS-2 infection by lab people. It is much more contagious than SARS-1. Now every lab is interested in get a vial of virus to do drug discovery. This can potentially [be] a big issue. I don’t think most people have a clue," wrote Shan Lu.

Despite weighing in heavily on the paper, Lu elected not to be included in the coauthorship, stating in a Feb. 12, 2020, message, "I definitely will not be an author as you guys did everything. It can also keep things somewhat independent as the editor."

Extra to collapsing the distance between author and editor, Lu subsequently admitted he accepted the paper with "basically no review."

— (@)

"Taken together, the authors' and editor's private communications indicate the paper is a product of scientific misconduct, up to and including fraud, by the authors and by the Editor-in-Chief of Emerging Microbes & Infections, Shan Lu," said the open letter. "Now that these documents have come to light, we urge Emerging Microbes & Infections to issue an Expression of Editorial Concern for this paper and to initiate a retraction process."

Taylor and Francis, the publisher of the journal, said in a statement to Blaze News, "We can confirm that the Editor of the journal forwarded the open letter to Taylor & Francis on 14th June and that our Publishing Ethics & Integrity team are investigating the concerns raised, in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines and our Editorial Policies."

Nature Medicine

The journal Nature Medicine published the controversial paper "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" on March 17, 2020, which Fauci used on multiple occasions to suggest to the American public that COVID-19 was not a lab leak but rather an animal virus that jumped to a human.

Blaze News previously reported that despite privately discussing the prospect that the natural-origins theory was rubbish, the paper's four official authors — Kristian Andersen, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward Holmes, and Robert Garry — concluded, "We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible."

Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist and Scripps Research Institute immunology professor, was especially doubtful in private about the conclusion he gave his name to.

On Jan. 31, 2020, Andersen wrote to Fauci, "You have to look very closely at the genome to see features that are potentially engineered. ... I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Farzan], and myself all find the genome to be inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory."

On Feb. 8, Andersen stated, "Passage of SARS-like CoVs have been ongoing for several years, and more specifically in Wuhan under BSL-2 conditions. ... The fact that Wuhan became the epicenter of the ongoing epidemic caused by nCoV is likely an unfortunate coincidence, but it raises questions that would be wrong to dismiss out of hand. Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory, but we are at a crossroad where the scientific evidence isn't conclusive enough to say that we have high confidence in any of the three main theories considered."

Andersen also expressed concern about a paper penned by Ralph Baric and Zhengli Shi concerning the apparent insertion of furin cleavage sites into SARS, which he and his colleagues figured for a "how-to-manual for building the Wuhan coronavirus in a laboratory."

Last month, Ebright and five others wrote to Joao Montiero, the chief editor of Nature Medicine, requesting a retraction. They noted that documentation obtained through public records requests along with congressional testimony from Andersen and Garry "provide conclusive evidence of misconduct."

The letter does not mention Fauci's alleged involvement in the development of the paper but instead World Health Organization scientist Jeremy Farrar's unacknowledged role in the "paper's development, including its prompting, organizing, editing, and approval."

'It is imperative that this misleading and damaging product of scientific misconduct be removed from the scientific literature.'

"This omission of a significant role played by the head of a funding agency, allegedly to maintain his 'independence,' represents a serious breach of publishing ethics that completely undermines the credibility of the journal and calls into question the motivation behind the paper," said the letter. "The classification of the paper as an 'opinion' rather than a 'research article' further exacerbates the issue, as the authors' intentional withholding of Farrar's involvement damages public trust in the editorial process."

Ebright and scores of other scientists pressed Nature Medicine last year for a retraction as well, noting in an open letter dated July 26, 2023, "It is imperative that this misleading and damaging product of scientific misconduct be removed from the scientific literature. We, as STEM and STEM-policy professionals, call upon Nature Medicine to publish an expression of editorial concern for the paper and to begin a process of withdrawal or retraction of the paper."

Blaze News reached out to Montiero for comment, but he did not respond by deadline.

Science

Ebright, Stanford University epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and dozens of other scientists signed another open letter on June 14 to the editors of the journal Science with regards to two papers: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic," and "The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2," both of which named Jonathan Pekar of the University of California, San Diego, as an author along with Andersen, Holmes, Garry, evolutionary biologist Andrew Rambaut, and Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona.

Blurbs leading into the papers, which were both largely funded by Fauci's NIAID — whose parent agency supported and financed research at the Wuhan lab — and published on July 26, 2022, stated, "The precise events surrounding virus spillover will always be clouded, but all of the circumstantial evidence so far points to more than one zoonotic event occurring in Huanan market in Wuhan, China, likely during November–December 2019."

According to the scientists seeking retractions, the analyses and the premises of "Worobey et al. 2022 and Pekar et al. 2022 are unsound," and the papers may be "products of scientific misconduct, up to and including scientific fraud."

"Phylogenomic evidence, epidemiological evidence, and documentary evidence all indicate that SARS-CoV-2 entered humans in July-November 2019," says the letter. "Arguments based on data for the Huanan Seafood Market on or after mid- to late December 2019 — as in Worobey et al. 2022 and Pekar et al. 2022 — cannot, even in principle, shed light on spillover into humans that occurred one to five months earlier, in July-November, 2019."

— (@)

The open letter noted that Andersen, Garry, Holmes, and others knew full well that the "premises and conclusions of their paper were invalid at the time the paper was drafted."

A spokesman for American Association for the Advancement of Science, the publisher of the Science family of journals, confirmed to Blaze News that it had received the letter.

"We follow COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) processes to address any concerns raised on published papers and are doing so here," said the spokesman.

The AAAS spokesman noted in a subsequent email, "We will follow up when we make a final decision."

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'NIAID cannot be trusted': Fauci's agency planned to make monkeypox more deadly, says congressional report



The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under Anthony Fauci funded deadly gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the likely epicenter of the pandemic. Although millions of Americans died from COVID-19, the NIAID apparently did not learn its lesson.

According to congressional investigators, the NIAID received approval to execute radical gain-of-function experiments on MPXV, the virus that causes monkeypox.

Monkeypox is endemic in various African regions but made a global play in April 2022. The New England Journal of Medicine indicated on the basis of diagnoses in 16 countries that 98% of the persons infected with the virus were homosexual.

Those infected with monkeypox often experience a painful rash that can look like pimples or blisters, respiratory problems, exhaustion, fever, swollen lymph nodes, and chills. Like COVID-19, monkeypox can be spread via respiratory droplets, through "direct contact with a rash or sores of someone who has the virus," and through "contact with clothing, bedding, and other items used by a person" with the virus.

While it's unclear what nightmarish symptoms a lab-engineered version of monkeypox could produce, it's clear that some of Fauci's people were eager to find out.

Over the past two years, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce — which has jurisdiction over public health agencies — has been looking into a particular research project that was "planned and/or conducted" at the NIAID prior to Fauci's retirement.

Committee members were alerted to the experiment by a Sept. 15, 2022, interview in Science magazine, in which Dr. Bernard Moss, a NIAID pox virologist, revealed that his team was working on endowing a West African variant of monkeypox responsible for the global outbreak at the time, "clade 2," with genes from a far more deadly variant, "clade 1."

Whereas clade 2 has roughly a 1% mortality rate, clade 2 reportedly has a mortality rate ranging from 10%-15%.

Congressional investigators noted that Moss' admission troubled some of his peers.

Epidemiologist Thomas Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the magazine the following month that if a more powerful version of the outbreak strain ever escaped the NIAID lab, it could trigger an "epidemic with substantially more lethality."

The committee noted in an interim staff report Tuesday, "If the experiment transferred genes from clade IIb MPXV — which caused the 2022-2023 mpox epidemic — into clade I virus, the resulting chimeric virus could have a reproductive number (R₀) of 1.10 to 2.40 coupled with a case fatality rate of 10 – 15 percent in the unvaccinated."

According to the interim report, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the NIAID "repeatedly obstructed and misled" the committee about the experiment referenced by Moss in Science.

'NIAID cannot be trusted to oversee its own research of pathogens responsibly.'

Whereas HHS and the NIH denied that that the experiment(s) had been proposed, planned, approved, or conducted, the committee noted that internal NIH documents "show this experiment was formally proposed and received approval before the NIH's Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) on June 30, 2015."

HHS Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Melanie Egorin confirmed in a March 19 letter to the committee that the experiment was greenlit.

The committee has been unable to confirm whether or not the dangerous experiment actually took place but indicated there was a window of time between June 2015 and May 2023 when researchers could have done so.

In the first three years, there were reportedly no requirements imposed on the experiment. In 2018, scientists were asked only to notify the NIH's IBC when getting ready to make clade 2 more potent.

Science indicated that at the very least, part of the experiment was conducted. Researchers moved genes from clade 2 to clade 1.

"The deliberate, prolonged effort to deceive the Committee is unacceptable and potentially criminal," said the interim report. "HHS, the NIH, and NIAID continue to insist the GOFROC experiment transferring material from clade I into clade II was never conducted, despite being approved for a period of over eight years. However, HHS has repeatedly refuse to produce any documents to corroborate this claim."

The report suggested that the refusal to cough up evidence might suggest "that the information not produced was unfavorable" and that the HHS is effectively lying.

Despite painting HHS as obstructionist, the report emphasized that the "NIAID is the agency that bears the most responsibility for misleading the Committee."

The primary conclusion drawn at this point in the investigation is that NIAID cannot be trusted to oversee its own research of pathogens responsibly. It cannot be trusted to determine whether an experiment on a potential pandemic pathogen or enhanced potential pandemic pathogen poses unacceptable biosafety risk or a serious public health threat. Lastly, NIAID cannot be trusted to honestly communicate with Congress and the public about controversial GOFROC experiments.

Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said of the report, "In order to start rebuilding trust in our government health agency guidance, agencies like the NIH must be honest and transparent with Congress and the American people."

"This report demonstrates a disturbing lack of judgment and accountability from HHS, the NIH, and particularly, NIAID. It is unacceptable and demonstrates the clear need for reform," added Rodgers.

Justin Goodman, senior vice president of the White Coat Waste Project — a watchdog that helped expose EcoHealth Alliance's and Fauci's ties to the gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — told Blaze News, "These treacherous monkeypox gain-of-function experiments are the latest example of Fauci's rampant waste, fraud, and abuse and disregard for taxpayers and lawmakers."

"Even though Fauci is gone from government, his atrocious animal testing legacy is alive and well, and we're working with Republicans and Democrats to cut NIH's reckless spending," continued Goodman. "The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness."

An HHS spokesman said in a statement, "The committee is looking for an issue where there isn't one. HHS and its divisions, including NIH, follow strict biosafety measures as our scientists work to better understand and protect the public from infectious diseases — like mpox."

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