Rand Paul to refile criminal referral of Fauci to DOJ after Biden autopen revelations



Anthony Fauci was among the individuals with questionable track records who received controversial pardons just prior to former President Joe Biden leaving office.

Fauci, the fifth director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, specifically received a "full and unconditional" 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.

'Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress.'

Molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University, a leading critic of Fauci's flirtations with gain-of-function research, previously provided Blaze News with insights into why Fauci might require an accountability shield, noting that he "violated federal policies on gain-of-function and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research, committed conspiracy to defraud and perjury, used federal funds to commit crimes, and caused and covered up the cause of a pandemic that killed 20 million and cost $25 trillion."

The Oversight Project revealed earlier this year that like the other pardons hastily dispensed before Biden left office, Fauci's was signed with an automatic signature device. Unfortunately for Fauci, there is presently a great deal of uncertainty over the former president's involvement with the autopen pardons and their legitimacy.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) announced on Monday that he was refiling his criminal referral of Fauci to the Department of Justice. Paul's announcement follows the New York Times' publication of Biden's weak defense of his handlers' use of the autopen along with insights into who was actually behind Fauci's last-minute pardon.

"Perjury is a crime," Paul said on X. "And Fauci must be held accountable."

RELATED: Biden tried defending autopen use to the New York Times. He made it a whole lot worse.

 Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

During a Senate hearing in July 2021, Paul pressed Fauci about the National Institutes of Health funding research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the coronavirus.

"Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress," Paul said.

"On your last trip to our committee on May 11 [2021], you stated that the NIH 'has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.' And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute by Dr. Shi and was funded by the NIH," he continued.

'Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly.'

Paul's smoking gun was a 2017 WIV paper on SARS-related coronaviruses that discussed gain-of-function work on coronaviruses and acknowledged funding from NIAID as well as from the United States Agency for International Development's Predict program.

"Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans," said Paul. "This research fits the definition of the research that the NIH said was subject to the pause in 2014 to 2017 — a pause in funding on gain-of-function."

When afforded an opportunity to retract his previous statement, Fauci instead dug in his heels, stating, "Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement," adding that the study referenced in the 2017 paper was not gain-of-function.

"Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly," added Fauci. "And I want to say that officially."

Paul subsequently referred Fauci to the DOJ, asking then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into the former NIAID director over his testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

The senator noted that contrary to Fauci's suggestion, research conducted "at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and funded under NIAID Award R01AI110964 fits the definition of gain-of-function research."

The recipient of this particular award was Peter Daszak's scandal-plagued organization EcoHealth Alliance, which congressional investigators indicated facilitated gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and was formally debarred along with Daszak in January by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

RELATED: Patel's 'breakthrough' in COVID origins probe spells trouble for Fauci — especially if his pardon is voided

 Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Paul asked the Biden DOJ again in 2023 to probe Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released an email apparently showing the former NIAID director acknowledge that gain-of-function was indeed taking place at a Chinese institution which the U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed had received NIH funding along with the WIV.

— (@)  
 

Blaze News has reached out to Paul's office and the DOJ for comment.

Paul's referral comes on the heels of autopen bombshells printed in the New York Times.

Biden told the Times in a phone interview on Thursday that he orally communicated his clemency directions to aides, that the autopen was used liberally because they were dealing with "a whole lot of people" — a record number, actually — and that he did not personally approve every individual categorical clemency.

The White House emails turned over to investigators by the National Archives and reviewed by the Times also cast doubt on the provenance of Fauci's pardon and others like it issued in Biden's final hours in office.

The emails reportedly indicated that the former president's clemency instructions were written up on the basis of hearsay by aides to Biden advisers, then executed by the master of the autopen, Biden White House staff secretary Stefanie Feldman. When it came to the high-profile autopen pardons issued on Biden's final day, the final approval reportedly came not from Biden but from his chief of staff, Jeffrey Zients.

 

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USDA exploring possibility of mass vaccinations for American poultry despite RFK Jr.'s warnings



Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warned earlier this year that vaccinating poultry against highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5) viruses might transform farms into incubators for mutant viruses — viruses that could potentially leap to humans.

"All of my agencies have advised against the vaccination of birds," Kennedy told Fox News' Sean Hannity, "because if you vaccinate with a leaky vaccine — in other words, a vaccine that does not provide sterilizing immunity, that does not absolutely protect against the disease — you turn those flocks into mutation factories."

"They're teaching the organism how to mutate," continued Kennedy. "And it's much more likely to jump to animals if you do that."

Despite Kennedy's concern — which is apparently shared by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration — the U.S. Department of Agriculture is looking seriously at mass vaccinations for American poultry.

A USDA spokesperson told Blaze News that the USDA "is exploring the viability of vaccinating poultry for HPAI" but noted that the "use of any vaccine has not been authorized at this time."

This vaccine exploration appears to have taken on greater energy in February when egg prices were reaching record highs.

After flying south of $3 between 1994 and 2022, the price for a dozen eggs began to rise dramatically during the second half of the Biden era, then even higher earlier this year, reaching an all-time average high of $6.22 in March.

RELATED: The 'cage-free' myth: Why everything you think you know about ethical eggs is wrong

 Allen J. Schaben/Getty Images

Although there were multiple factors at play — including the shift in various states to cage-free hens and record consumer demand — the price spikes were largely driven by the mass exterminations of commercial and backyard bird populations ordered by the USDA in response to HPAI viruses.

Blaze News previously noted that between Feb. 8, 2022 — when the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service first confirmed bird flu belonging to the clade 2.3.4.4b in an American commercial flock — and March 2025, the USDA directed the extermination of over 166.41 million birds. Fewer egg-laying birds naturally means diminished supply and higher prices.

'Vaccination in any poultry sector — egg layers, turkeys, broilers, or ducks — will jeopardize the entire export market for all U.S. poultry products.'

In a Feb. 26 op-ed, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins outlined "five steps to tackle avian flu and bring down costs for American families."

In addition to dedicating up to $500 million to help American poultry producers implement "gold-standard" biosecurity measures, increasing financial relief to farms whose flocks are affected by avian flu, removing "unnecessary regulatory burdens on egg producers where possible," and considering temporary import options, Rollins said her agency would "provide up to $100 million in research and development of vaccines and therapeutics, to improve their efficacy and efficiency."

Although egg prices have returned to relatively normal levels, a USDA spokesperson told Blaze News that the agency continues "to evaluate the potential use of vaccines."

"Before making a determination, USDA, in consultation with federal partners, will solicit feedback from state officials, veterinarians, farmers, the public health system, and the American public," said the spokesperson. "USDA is working with federal and state officials and industry stakeholders to develop a potential plan for vaccine use in the United States."

Reuters indicated that industry members anticipate that the agency will complete its plan in July.

RELATED: Cleaning up Biden’s bird flu mess falls to Trump

  Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (left) and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins (right). Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

There is some controversy over the potential mass vaccination of poultry on the business side of the equation.

Dr. John Clifford, a former USDA chief veterinary officer who advises the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, told Reuters that chicken meat producers would be dealt a crushing blow if importers stopped importing U.S. poultry over concerns that vaccines were masking the presence of HPAI in flocks.

Some industry groups are, however, warming up to the idea.

Although the National Chicken Council previously suggested that "vaccination in any poultry sector — egg layers, turkeys, broilers, or ducks — will jeopardize the entire export market for all U.S. poultry products," they have since suggested they are on board with the program if exports go unaffected.

The United Egg Producers are apparently even more gung-ho, having helped hatch a plan suggesting an initial vaccination for baby chicks, a subsequent booster shot, then routine testing.

Nicolas Hulscher, an epidemiologist and administrator at the McCullough Foundation, has suggested mass poultry vaccinations are unwise, telling Blaze News that Kennedy's "worries about mass animal H5N1 bird flu vaccination are fully grounded in robust science."

'Biosecurity remains the best and most prudent approach to mitigate the impact of the disease today.'

When asked about the possibility that the USDA might nevertheless proceed with the mass vaccination agenda, Hulscher said that "the USDA is ignoring the glaring risks of creating dangerous mutant strains with their plans to mass vaccinate poultry against bird flu amidst a bird flu animal pandemic."

Blaze News senior editor Daniel Horowitz drove home the point in a recent op-ed, noting that "leaky, waning vaccines that rely on suboptimal antibodies against rapidly mutating viruses can lead to immune tolerance and imprinting. This can cause the immune system to misfire, resulting in negative efficacy. Any short-term protection against severe disease often comes at a long-term cost as the viruses adapt and grow stronger."

Hulscher suggested that the best way forward when tackling HPAI in domestic flocks is better biosecurity: "Installing surface-air purification systems into farms, combined with iodine-based nasal/oral prophylaxis for farm workers, is a much less risky option than mass vaccination."

On this, it appears the USDA agrees.

The agency spokesperson told Blaze News that in the meantime, "because biosecurity remains the best and most prudent approach to mitigate the impact of the disease today, USDA also continues pursuing collaborative efforts with poultry farmers and companies on education, training, and implementation of comprehensive biosecurity measures."

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‘Disease X’ coming? WHO’s ‘replicon’ plan looks like doom



On Monday, May 5, President Trump signed an executive order banning “dangerous gain-of-function biological research in the United States and around the world.” This directive added muscle to his previous decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization. However, the United States remains vulnerable to international control.

Let’s review the history.

Until President Trump severs all remaining ties between the United States and the WHO, the public health of all Americans remains under threat of global government control.

On January 30, 2020, Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, announced a “public health emergency of international concern.” With these magic words, Tedros put into force the WHO's International Health Regulations that supercharged the WHO into a one-world government health agency with the legal authority to declare pandemic sovereignty over all member nations, including the United States.

Tedros (as he is known) was born in Ethiopia and is not a medical doctor. Still, he is a Marxist and member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a group the Ethiopian government has classified as a terrorist organization. So Tedros, by extension, is not only a Marxist, but he’s also a terrorist. Tedros handled the COVID-19 response by running cover for the Chinese Communist Party, denying resolutely that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and setting the stage for medical martial law and planet depopulation.

On January 20, 2025, President Trump finally withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. Under terms of the WHO constitution, however, America’s involvement will not end officially until January 23, 2026.

Enter the Pentagon’s Defense Health Agency. The DHA monitors vaccine creation and “communicable” diseases and determines disease origination. The DHA uses the CDC for guidance, and its Influenza Division “provides ... leadership for the detection ... and control of influenza in the United States and around the world.” More importantly, the DHA still maintains “a vital partnership” with the WHO in a collaboration that includes "expanding military biodefense vaccine manufacturing."

This could become especially alarming if the world faces “Disease X.”

“Disease X” is the generic term the WHO uses to refer to an anticipated but unspecified future pandemic. That future may be now. Our research suggests that “Disease X” has already been weaponized and released in the form of a gain-of-function-enhanced version of COVID-19 that is more contagious and possibly more lethal than its predecessor.

A new “vaccine” to combat the next pandemic includes a “replicon” that continues to reproduce the active ingredient of the virus spike protein throughout a patient's body, even after the patient is dead. Replicon is a self-amplifying mRNA technology that copies itself and crosses between species. There is no known antidote that can stop the replicon from propagating the pathogenic COVID-19 spike protein.

RELATED: WHO director is upset ‘conspiracy theories’ may derail his global pandemic treaty

 Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

A more contagious and fast-acting version of COVID-19 propelled through the body by a replicon vaccine could well become a highly lethal nightmare pandemic concoction. In 2024, scientists in Japan developed the world’s first replicon vaccine, brand-named “Kostaive.”

Knowing that the United States remains tied to the WHO until next January and that the DHA maintains a “partnership” with the organization, what assurance do we have that our military would not bow to the WHO if the WHO defied the U.S. commander in chief by declaring a “Disease X global health emergency” that required forced replicon vaccination?

Until President Trump issues an executive order severing all remaining ties between the NIH, the CDC, and the DHA and the World Health Organization, the public health of all Americans remains under threat of global government control.

Ghebreyesus is, in our view, the most powerful and potentially dangerous person on the planet. With his connections and self-professed infallibility, what possibly could go wrong?

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from “Disease X and Medical Martial Law: Defeating the Globalist Plan to Depopulate the World and Enslave the Remnant” (Post Hill Press).

'An outrage': Biden admin hid report of US service members getting sick at Wuhan military games in October 2019



Nearly 10,000 athletes from over 109 countries traveled to Wuhan, China, to compete in the 7th Military World Games from October 18 to October 28, 2019.

Participants from various nations, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Luxembourg, reported taking ill with COVID-like symptoms at or after the games — a damning coincidence granted the games took place near the suspected origin of the virus, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where dangerous experiments were long performed with poor safety protocols on coronaviruses.

The Biden administration apparently sat on a December 2022 report indicating that some of the 263 members of the U.S. delegation who attended the games may have also caught COVID-19 or something just like it months before the supposed zoonotic leap at a wet market.

By concealing the document, the administration effectively left the public with then-Pentagon spokesman John Kirby's 2021 assertion to the Washington Post that there was no knowledge of American infections at the games and no evidence to indicate U.S. military personnel were infected before travel restrictions were implemented in early 2020.

The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act included a requirement that former President Joe Biden's then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin submit to congressional lawmakers a report on the military games detailing:

  • the number of American athletes and staff "who attended the 2019 World Military Games and became ill with COVID-19-like symptoms during or shortly after their return to the United States";
  • the results of any blood testing done on American participants;
  • the number of home station Pentagon facilities of participating members that experienced outbreaks in early 2020; and
  • whether the Pentagon discussed the illnesses surrounding the games with other militaries.

In addition to disclosing such information to the House and Senate armed services committees, the NDAA required that the Biden administration make the report publicly available.

'It is an outrage that the Biden White House and the 118th Congress Senate and House Armed Services Committees did not publicly release this information.'

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Biden administration refrained from releasing the report to the public, and it wasn't until March 2025 when the Trump administration uploaded it to the Defense Department website that the document became widely accessible.

Contrary to Kirby's suggestion that there was no knowledge or evidence of infection, the Pentagon concluded that of the 263 total American participants in the game — of whom 2019 were military personnel — seven service members "exhibited COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms during the timeframe of October 18, 2019, through January 21, 2020."

Members of the U.S. delegation to the games were not tested for COVID-19 or antibodies "as testing was not available at this early stage of the pandemic," so there is apparently no definitive proof these were indeed COVID-19 infections.

The report indicated the symptoms could have been caused by other respiratory infections and that all seven infected service members' symptoms resolved within six days.

The report noted further that there was "no statistically significant difference in COVID-19-like symptoms cases at installations with participating athletes when compared to installations without them."

Molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University told the Free Beacon, "It is an outrage that the Biden White House and the 118th Congress Senate and House Armed Services Committees did not publicly release this information when it became available in 2022, but, instead, withheld this information for the duration of their terms."

"This new information strengthens U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that COVID-19 was circulating in Wuhan in October-November 2019, U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that researchers working with genetically enhanced SARS viruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology contracted COVID-19 in October-November 2019, and phylogenomic data indicating that the virus that causes COVID-19 entered humans in July-November 2019," added Ebright.

Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-Iowa) told the Free Beacon that the report helped put a nail in the coffin of the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market in December 2019.

"Taxpayers deserve to know the truth about COVID-19 origins, but the Biden administration concealed this information from the American people for years," said Ernst. "This report should have been made public immediately and not restricted to Washington insiders. If Americans visiting Wuhan were potentially infected with the COVID-19 virus in October 2019, those claiming the pandemic began in a wet market just two months later would be completely off base."

Ahead of the games — as early as August 2019 — hospitals in the region were apparently overwhelmed with an unseasonably high number of patients, while regional queries for the terms "diarrhea" and "cough" spiked on China's equivalent of Google.

An American researcher and several European researchers noted their suspicions in a September 2022 study that the Wuhan games "may have contributed to the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2" but indicated that "no official information has been made available despite reports that some foreign participants experienced Covid-19-compatible symptoms that were attributed to influenza or gastroenteritis."

French pentathlete Elodie Clouvel, Luxembourg swimmer Julien Henx, German volleyball player Jacqueline Brock, and Italian fencer Matteo Tagliariol also indicated they and/or members of their team got sick while in Wuhan.

Brock indicated in early 2020 that "after a few days, some athletes from my team got ill, I got sick in the last two days."

"I have never felt so sick," continued Brock. "Either it was a very bad cold or COVID-19."

Tagliariol told Corriere della Sera, "When we arrived in Wuhan, almost all of us got sick. But the worst was returning home. After a week I had a very high fever, I felt like I couldn't breathe."

Canadian military sources told the Financial Post in 2021 that one service member reported feeling "very sick 12 days after we arrived, with fever, chills, vomiting, insomnia."

Scores of Canadian athletes were apparently placed in isolation on their 12-hour flight home at the end of October. The athletes' symptoms included coughing and diarrhea.

The Canadian Department of National Defense told Blaze News last year that "some athletes experienced gastrointestinal symptoms on the flight to Wuhan for the Military World Games and during the return flight home to Canada."

"Their symptoms and illness course of one to three days were consistent with gastrointestinal illness, or a 'stomach flu,' and were managed as such," said a spokeswoman for the National Defense Department.

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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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Listen Closely to Hear Bill Gates' Chilling Warning on ‘The View’
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Listen Closely to Hear Bill Gates' Chilling Warning on ‘The View’

 

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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FACT CHECK: No, The Food And Drug Administration Did Not Say Mpox Is Fictional

The document cited in the article does not make this claim

Latest Covid Shots Released Without Safety Data Under 4.5-Year-Old ‘Emergency’

HHS and the FDA should be leading the world in health care policy, not being over one year behind the curve.

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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