Blaze News original: In 2019, nearly 10,000 international athletes competed in Wuhan. The official story about illnesses continues to morph.



Early in the pandemic, there was a concerted effort to downplay the possibility that the COVID-19 virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where radical gain-of-function experiments were conducted on coronaviruses, sometimes with American funding. Now, it appears that the lab origin theory was all along the most likely explanation.

The exact timeline regarding the initial leak and subsequent spread remains, however, somewhat fuzzy. The Chinese regime's cover-up of the initial spread and its destruction of critical evidence have made it difficult to nail down precisely when and how the virus got out.

Blaze News recently discovered that China may not have, however, been the only nation reluctant to disclose illnesses in Wuhan in late 2019.

Playing games with the timeline

Months prior to the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in late December 2019. The constituents of this cluster were far from being patients zero.

Three researchers meddling with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — including an EcoHealth Alliance subcontractor— became sick enough "with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness" that they needed to be hospitalized in November 2019.

Chinese state media indicated that the virus may have begun spreading as early September of that year but, in a desperate effort to assign blame elsewhere, suggested it kicked off in the United States.

Researchers at Boston University and Harvard Medical School analyzed satellite imagery of hospital parking lots in Wuhan as well as search queries on China's equivalent of Google from 2018 up until late 2019 and concluded that the virus may have begun spreading as early as August 2019.

"Between September and October 2019, 5 of the 6 hospitals show their highest relative daily [parking lot] volume of the analyzed series, coinciding with elevated levels of Baidu search queries for the terms 'diarrhea' and 'cough,'" said the study. "Our evidence supports other recent work showing that emergence happened before identification at the Huanan Seafood market."

In August, we identify a unique increase in searches for diarrhea which was neither seen in previous flu seasons or mirrored in the cough search data. While surprising, this finding lines up with the recent recognition that gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms are a unique feature of COVID-19 disease and may be the chief complaint of a significant proportion of presenting patients. This symptom search increase is then followed by a rise in hospital parking lot traffic in October and November, as well as a rise in searches for cough. While we cannot conclude the reason for this increase, we hypothesize that broad community transmission may have led to more acute cases requiring medical attention, resulting in higher viral loads and worse symptoms.

If the virus was in circulation by at least October, then a convention of nearly 10,000 athletes from around the world in Wuhan would have served as the perfect vehicle to take the virus global in short order.

In fact, some researchers have suggested that there was a good likelihood that the 7th Military World Games held in Wuhan from October 18 to October 28 — where delegates from 109 countries competed, in some cases near the Wuhan Institute of Virology — were indeed a super-spreading event.

Mixed messaging

Two Canadian military sources who requested anonymity because they were still serving in the Canadian military told the Financial Post in 2021 that there had been infections at the games.

One service member claimed he got "very sick 12 days after we arrived, with fever, chills, vomiting, insomnia. … On our flight to come home (at the end of October), 60 Canadian athletes on the flight were put in isolation (at the back of the plane) for the 12-hour flight. We were sick with symptoms ranging from coughs to diarrhea and in between."

Upon returning to Canada, the service member said his family members took ill and his symptoms got worse and expanded, such that he experienced fatigue, nosebleeds, fever, and breathing pains.

While tested by a military doctor "for various issues," he said he never was tested "for anything respiratory."

The other service member said, "One-quarter of us got sick, there and when we returned. Some were bedridden for weeks. This made us potential vectors for the virus. The military did nothing. I was sick and others were, too, with Wuhan symptoms. … I was eventually given a swab test, which measures only recent exposure, and told to carry on."

The Canadian athletes were apparently told by the surgeon general that their risk of having been exposed was "negligible."

Julia Scott, a communications adviser with the Canadian Forces Health Services Public Affairs Department, told the Post, "We are not aware of any CAF members or civilians becoming sick at the games or after they returned. There have not been any COVID-19 cases identified amongst this group."

"As their stay in Wuhan was well before COVID-19 pandemic was declared and before anyone was aware of the virus, members were not tested upon their return. Testing for COVID-19 was not available in Canada prior to January 2020," continued Scott. "Once we were aware of potential risks, the CAF and Department of National Defence took immediate precautionary measures to avoid any illness or additional exposure to CAF members related to the novel coronavirus."

A narrative slide

Blaze News recently asked the Canadian Department of National Defense whether its awareness about CAF members or civilians becoming sick at the Wuhan games, as expressed to the Post, has shifted in the years since.

In reply, a spokeswoman for the National Defense Department repeated much of what the department had previously told the Post but revealed that it "has subsequently been determined 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, consistent with typical contact precautions when managing patients with mild gastrointestinal illness," added the spokeswoman.

The Mayo Clinic lists the following as symptoms of the stomach flu: diarrhea, nausea, stomach cramps, muscle aches, headache, and fever.

It appears the stomach flu could possibly be mistaken for COVID-19 or vice versa, given that the symptoms listed for COVID-19 by the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include diarrhea, nausea, muscle aches, and headache.

The Canadian Department of National Defense has yet to respond to Blaze News' follow-up questions regarding the basis and timing of its subsequent determination, as well as whether the athletes' supposed gastrointestinal illness has been ruled out as COVID-19.

The spokeswoman's suggestion that athletes were sick en route to Wuhan may muddy the waters, especially since China has proven desperate in the past to claim Western forces brought the virus to Wuhan, potentially via the games.

For instance, Chinese operatives seized upon the theory that Maatje Benassi, a U.S. Army reservist who competed in Wuhan, was patient zero after she crashed during a cycling competition there and suffered a concussion.

Blaze News has reached out to coaches and scores of athletes from various countries who competed in Wuhan as well as officials linked to the International Military Sports Council — the outfit that organizes the competitions — for a better sense of the kind of illnesses that supposedly broke out at the games as well as where they may have originated.

While so far, there has been a deafening silence about infections at the games, it was not so early in the pandemic.

Early allegations of infection

There were multiple reports and admissions of infections at the games early in the pandemic by athletes besides the anonymous Canadians.

French pentathlete Elodie Clouvel, part of the French delegation invited to participate at the games, indicated in early 2020 that she and many other athletes likely contracted COVID-19 at the games, reported the American Prospect.

"We were in Wuhan for the World Military Games at the end of October. And afterwards, we all fell ill. Valentin missed three days of training. Me, I was sick too. … I had things I had never had before. We weren’t particularly worried because no one was talking about it yet," said Clouvel. "A lot of athletes at the World Military Games were very ill. We were recently in touch with a military doctor who told us, ‘I think you had it because a lot of people from this delegation were ill.'"

Luxembourg swimmer Julien Henx told RTL Radio that two of his teammates got sick during the competition and stated, "There were 200,000 Chinese volunteers there, who went home in the evening and could very well have transmitted the virus to them."

German volleyball player Jacqueline 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."

Italian fencer Matteo Tagliarol 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. The illness didn't go away even with antibiotics, I recovered after three weeks and remained debilitated for a long time. Then my son and my partner got sick. When people started talking about the virus, I said to myself: I've caught it too."

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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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KEY PLAYERS in the Covid Cover-Up | Glenn Beck Chalkboard Breakdown

KEY PLAYERS in the Covid Cover-Up | Glenn Beck Chalkboard Breakdown

Dr. Fauci's Lies EXPOSED | ***Must-See New Documentary***

Dr. Fauci's Lies EXPOSED | ***Must-See New Documentary***

It's been a rough week for Fauci's inner circle — and things may get a lot worse



It has been a rough week for scientists who were in Anthony Fauci's inner circle at the outset of the pandemic — particularly for Peter Daszak, head of the scandal-plagued EcoHealth Alliance, and for David M. Morens, senior scientific adviser to the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Where Daszak is concerned, all his years of protest and lab-leak denial were apparently for nought, given that he has finally been cut off from all federal funding.

The Department of Health and Human Services told the British zoologist in a letter Tuesday that it holds him personally responsible for EHA's egregious shortcomings, oversight failures, and opacity as it pertains to the dangerous coronavirus experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Morens, who served as adviser to previous NIAID director Fauci, was accused Wednesday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic of undermining the operations of the U.S. government; unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records; using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act; "acting unbecoming of a federal employee"; and "likely lying to Congress on multiple occasions."

Daszak makes a cameo in many of the emails that Morens may now be regretting.

The duo, who had a hand in helping Fauci downplay the likely lab origin of COVID-19, may soon face greater consequences than strongly worded letters and suspended funding.

"Dr. Daszak's impending debarment does not shield him from accountability to the American people," Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the coronavirus subcommittee, said in a statement Wednesday. "It appears that Dr. Daszak may have lied under oath about his relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his compliance with NIH grant procedures."

As for Morens, the subcommittee indicated that it now has "overwhelming evidence from Dr. Morens's own email that he engaged in serious misconduct and potentially illegal actions while serving as a Senior Advisor to Dr. Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Defunding the unaccountable

The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General blasted EHA in a January 2023 report for dropping the ball on oversight regarding the use of grant money on coronavirus research in China and for failing to comply with federal requirements.

On May 1, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its own report recommending that EHA be permanently cut off from taxpayer funding and that Daszak similarly be cut off as well as criminally investigated.

"Dr. Daszak and his organization conducted dangerous gain-of-function research at the WIV, willfully violated the terms of a multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and placed U.S. national security at risk. This blatant contempt for the American people is reprehensible," Wenstrup said in a statement.

On May 15, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended EHA from participating in federal procurement and nonprocurement programs and proposed its debarment "to protect the public interest."

Whereas a suspension is a temporary action, a debarment serves as a more definitive denial of grant money that can last for several years and is used primarily for serious violations, according to Nature.

In the memo detailing the decision, HHS suspension and debarment official Henrietta Brisbon reiterated the grievances raised in both the subcommittee's report and in HHS' OIG report, altogether making clear that EHA was irresponsible and untrustworthy.

This week, HHS went a step farther, commencing formal debarment proceedings against Daszak.

HHS' Tuesday letter to the British zoologist states, "The alleged conduct of EHA is imputed to you, because during all or part of the time relevant, you participated in, knew of, or had reason to know of EHA's improper conduct, through your role as President of EHA, and also as the [program director/principal investigator]" for the relevant grant.

In addition to blackballing Daszak, the letter indicated he is prohibited from doing business with the federal government and receiving a subcontract from a government contractor valued at $35,000 or more and could face a debarment of over three years.

Wenstrup said of Daszak's fate, "EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak's personal debarment will ensure he never again receives a single cent from U.S. taxpayers nor has the opportunity to start a new, untrustworthy organization."

"This step comes just two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released substantial evidence of Dr. Daszak's contempt for the American people, his flagrant disregard for the risks associated with gain-of-function research, and his willful violation of the terms of his NIH grant," added Wenstrup.

Justin Goodman, senior vice president of the White Coat Waste Project — a watchdog that helped expose Daszak's and Fauci's ties to the gain-of-function experiments at the WIV — told Blaze News in a statement, "The current government-wide suspension, and proposed debarment, of EcoHealth and Daszak will ensure taxpayers aren't forced to fund any more of their wasteful and reckless virus hunting and animal experimentation that can cause pandemics and create bioweapons, especially their scary scheme to build a new bat virus lab on U.S. soil."

Outing the opaque

Blaze News previously reported on Morens' admission in correspondence with Fauci's inner circle that he opted to use a personal email account and delete the exchanges thereon to evade Freedom of Information requests.

"As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA'd constantly," Morens reportedly wrote to the top scientists involved determining COVID-19's origins, including Daszak, whose subcontractor Ben Hu conducted deadly gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was reportedly one of the first infected with COVID-19; virologists Robert Garry, Kristian Andersen, and Edward Holmes; and others.

On Wednesday, the coronavirus subcommittee released a memo presenting previously unreleased email correspondence further indicating that Morens helped Fauci avoid transparency when discussing the origins of COVID-19 — an alleged "conspiracy amongst the highest levels" to hide and potentially "destroy official records regarding the origins of COVID-19."

In one email to Daszak, dated April 21, 2021, Morens wrote, "PS, i [sic] forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."

In a May 13, 2021, email where Daszak is copied, Morens wrote, "I suggested to Arthur try to interview Tony directly and connected him to our 'secret' back channel. He emailed Tony a few hours ago."

— (@)

The subcommittee highlighted other efforts by Morens to "backchannel internal NIH information to EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak" and his discussion of Fauci's intention to protect Daszak.

There also appears to be evidence that Morens received instruction from the NIH FOIA office on "how to make emails disappear" upon being met with a FOIA request.

In a Feb. 25, 2021, email where Daszak is copied, Morens wrote, "I learned the tricks last year from an old friend, Marg Moore, who heads our FOIA office and also hates FOIAs."

Like Fauci, Morens apparently preferred to communicate off the record via his personal account.

"I forgot to clarify in my email yesterday that BOTH my gmail and phone calls are now safe. Test is NOT, as it can be FOIA'd, as can my got email," Morens wrote in a Nov. 19, 2021, letter. "So you and Peter and others sshould be able to email me on gmail only, with the caveat that no other govt. employee is copied at a govt address, as all govt emails are potentially FOIA'able."

Morens' help may have come at a price. The subcommittee highlighted one exchange where Morens appears to press Daszak for a "kickback" for his help editing EHA's grant compliance efforts.

According to the subcommittee, Morens undermined NIH efforts to oversee EHA, provided Daszak "with inside information regarding NIH operations," and likely provided false testimony to Congress when giving testifying before the subcommittee on Dec. 22, 2023, and Jan. 18.

The New York Post indicated that when Morens, currently on administrative leave, appeared before the subcommittee Wednesday to testify about the findings detailed in the memo, he faced a bipartisan longue lashing.

Ranking member Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) said, "It is not anti-science to hold you accountable for defying the public's trust and misusing official resources."

"What troubles me most about your conduct, Dr. Morens, is the extent to which it so willingly betrays decades of dedication, diligence, and decorum from the thousands of federal scientists and public health workers who came before you, who have served alongside you, and who will serve on into the future," added Ruiz.

Goodman told Blaze News that for allegedly lying to Congress about what happened in Wuhan, Daszak, Fauci, and Morens "can and should face fines and jail time for perjury, as Senator Rand Paul has requested in referrals to the DOJ."

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House COVID-19 committee wants Wuhan lab-linked EcoHealth Alliance boss criminally investigated, barred from receiving grants



The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a damning report Wednesday recommending that EcoHealth Alliance be permanently cut off from taxpayer funding and that its lab-leak-theory-denying president, British zoologist Peter Daszak, also be cut off from federal funding and criminally investigated.

The report, released ahead of the subcommittee's hearing with Daszak, reiterated previous findings, confirmed old suspicions, and made abundantly clear that EHA — an organization that critics including Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright have long suspected kicked off the pandemic — behaved both opaquely and irresponsibly before, during, and after the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

"Dr. Daszak and his organization conducted dangerous gain-of-function research at the WIV, willfully violated the terms of a multi-million-dollar NIH grant, and placed U.S. national security at risk. This blatant contempt for the American people is reprehensible," Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement.

Background

EHA appears to be an organization central to the COVID-19 pandemic — a world-altering event that claimed the lives of millions of people worldwide.

Blaze News previously reported on the basis of federal documents obtained by the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project that the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, under the leadership of Anthony Fauci, and the United States Agency for International Development funded an EcoHealth subcontractor's work on coronaviruses to the tune of $41 million.

That subcontractor, named as an investigator on the grants, was Ben Hu.

Hu, the Wuhan Institute of Virology's lead gain-of-function researcher on coronaviruses, happened to be one of the three lab researchers infected with COVID-19 in November 2019 — all three possibly patients zero.

The White Coat Waste Project revealed that Hu had his name name on U.S. taxpayer-funded grants awarded by the then-Fauci-led NIAID and the USAID.

An EcoHealth-administered grant of $3,586,760 from the NIAID was marked "pending" for a project titled "understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence" for work to be undertaken from June 2019 through May 2024. The same project had previously received $3,086,735 in American taxpayer money from NIAID between June 2014 and May 2019.

2. @WhiteCoatWaste got the NIAID grant with Ben Hu's name on it. This is the NIH institute that Tony Fauci ran. Ya' know, the guy who said he didn't fund this research?\n\nDocument shows Ben Hu is a subcontractor to Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance.\n\nHu also reports a USAID grant.
— (@)

After the pandemic hit and people started asking questions, Daszak immediately got defensive. After all, he likely knew that these and other paper trails linked his organization to dangerous experiments that may have been responsible the manufacture and escape of a mass-killing virus.

In 2020, he called NIH requests that U.S. federal officials inspect the WIV "heinous" and derided suggestions that the virus might have leaked from the WIV as "conspiracy theories."

In a Sept. 7, 2021, email to David M. Morens, senior scientific adviser to the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a witness grilled in the new House report, Daszak wrote, "The lab leakers are already stirring up bullshit lines of attack that will bring more negative publicity our way — which is what this is about — a way to line up the [gain-of-function] attack on Fauci, or the 'risky research' attack on all of us."

The final report

Over a year after the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General made clear that EHA had dropped the ball on oversight regarding the use of grant money on coronavirus research in China and failed to comply with various federal requirements, the COVID Select Subcommittee released its report further exposing EHA's dangerous failures as well as the "serious, systemic weaknesses at the National Institutes of Health that enabled EcoHealth to fund dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China."

The subcommittee concluded after reviewing over 1 million pages of documents and interviewing dozens of witnesses that:

  • EHA "violated its grant terms and conditions by failing to report a potentially deadly experiment conducted by the WIV";
  • EHA used American taxpayer funds to "facilitate gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in Wuhan at the WIV, contrary to previous public statements, including those by Dr. Anthony Fauci";
  • While trying to get his grant reinstated, Daszak "omitted the material fact that unanalyzed samples and sequences — that the U.S. paid for -— are in the custody and control of the WIV"; and
  • EHA lied about being unable to submit its Year 5 Report and missed the National Institute of Health's deadline for filing it by two years.

The late submission of the five-year report is particularly interesting, as the report concerned the use of NIH funds on research regarding pandemic prevention. The fifth year in which these funds were received and used "concerningly coincides with the time period immediately preceding the COVID-19 pandemic," according to the committee.

The report was released ahead of the committee's hearing with Daszak.

Anthony Bellotti, president and founder of the White Coat Waste Project, said in a statement to Blaze News, "As the group that first exposed and ended EcoHealth's batty boondoggle with the Wuhan animal lab and uncovered damning documents detailing how EcoHealth's reckless gain-of-function experiments probably infected Patient Zero and prompted the pandemic, we're glad that Peter Daszak is finally being hauled before Congress to answer for lying, wasting taxpayers' money, breaking the law, abusing animals, and threatening public health."

"It's high time EcoHealth and Daszak were held accountable because our investigations have documented how they've gotten off scot-free so far and raked in $60 million of new taxpayers’ cash just since the pandemic began," added Bellotti.

"Peter Daszak is the closest this committee will ever get to questioning a Chinese spy," Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) told the Daily Mail. "His direct role in providing funding for the Wuhan lab and his lies and personal involvement in the COVID cover-up that followed were directly responsible for the public health and economic disaster that followed."

"As the saying goes, 'follow the money,' and the money was flowing directly from Dr. Fauci and the NIH to Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance and his gain-of-function research," continued Jackson. "This IS where COVID originated, and this IS who funded it!"

In his opening remarks, Rep. Wenstrup stressed that "EcoHealth’s actions themselves are a threat to national security."

— (@)

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Rand Paul claims '15 US agencies' knew about Wuhan’s development of COVID-19 and did NOTHING



Apparently, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) did a little digging into the COVID-19 pandemic and what he found was that “15 U.S. agencies knew full well that the Wuhan lab was trying to create a virus like COVID-19 in 2018, and they did nothing,” reports Pat Gray.

“If that’s true — and certainly it is — somebody’s head needs to roll, somebody needs to go to prison over this,” he tells Jeffy, adding that “that someone is Anthony Fauci.”

“How many millions of people died because nobody said anything, nobody did anything about it?” Pat asks.

Of course, the left is “trying to blame those deaths on Donald Trump because he didn’t act supposedly the way they wanted him to,” and yet “these people did nothing” even though “they knew about [the virus’ development] the whole time.”

“These officials, according to Rand Paul, knew that the Chinese lab was proposing to create a COVID-19 like virus, and not one of them revealed that scheme to the public,” reads Pat. “In fact, 15 agencies with the knowledge of that project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research.”

Further, “Government officials representing at least 15 federal agencies were briefed on a project proposed by Peter Daszak — Ecohealth Alliance head and the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” which “proposed to insert furin cleavage sites into a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus that would’ve been shockingly similar to the COVID-19 virus.”

“All technical stuff aside,” says Pat, “they knew about it, they did nothing, and nothing is going to happen to anyone — and we all know it.”

To learn more about Fauci’s likely role in the scandal, watch the clip below.


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Lawsuit accuses CIA of withholding possible evidence that its analysts took bribes to conceal lab origin of COVID-19



A new federal lawsuit accuses the CIA of withholding possible evidence that its analysts were paid to deep-six findings that the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic was a Chinese lab leak.

The lawsuit, filed Friday by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project and obtained by the Daily Caller, suggests that just as the CIA has neglected to publicly provide congressional investigators with the information they requested, it has similarly failed to provide Heritage with a timely response.

What's the background?

A CIA whistleblower described as a "multi-decade, senior-level" official claimed in September that the agency bribed six analysts on its COVID Discovery Team to reject the theory that the COVID-19 virus initially spread as the result of a research-related leak at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology — a communist-controlled lab controversial for its dangerous experiments on coronviruses.

Blaze News previously noted that federal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealed earlier this year that the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, under former director Anthony Fauci, funded experiments at the WIV.

Millions among the dollars funneled from Fauci's agency to the WIV were mediated by Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, whose subcontractor Ben Hu — the lead on gain-of-function research on SARS-like coronaviruses — was among the patients zero at the lab and ostensibly among the very first infected in the world.

According to a Sept. 12 letter penned by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the CIA whistleblower revealed that at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the COVID Discovery Team "believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis."

The whistleblower indicated that "to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position."

The whistleblower's allegations were significant because a declassified report released in June by the director of national intelligence stated, "The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting."

In response to the whistleblower testimony, congressional lawmakers demanded that the CIA turn over all documents and communications pertaining to the COVID Discovery Team, its establishment, and its investigation of the origins of the virus, as well as all documents pertaining to members' pay history, by no later than Sept. 26.

Republican senators similarly wrote to CIA Director William Burns in early September demanding transparency on this issue.

The Heritage Foundation and Mike Howell of the Oversight Project then hit the agency with a Freedom of Information Act request to the same effect on Sept. 20.

The FOIA suit

Heritage indicated in its Friday complaint that the CIA did not ultimately comply with its September FOIA request regarding who allegedly "received monetary incentives to change their position on the origins of the virus."

The complaint asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the CIA to both "conduct a search or searches reasonably calculated to uncover all records responsive to Plaintiffs' FOIA Request" and to produce all non-exempt records inside 20 days of the court's order or "by such other date as the Court deems appropriate."

"The Biden administration has refused to be transparent with Congress and the American people over the origins of COVID-19," Kyle Brosnan, chief counsel for the Oversight Project, told the New York Post.

"A CIA whistleblower has made serious allegations that the agency bought off employees of the agency to further obstruct efforts to get to the truth of the virus's origins," continued Brosnan. "This obstruction cannot stand, and we're fighting in federal court to get to the bottom of this."

Fauci on the hot seat in 2024

It's not just America's spies whose feet are now being held to the fire.

Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is set to testify before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.

The subcommittee noted on X that "thankfully, Dr. Fauci's retirement from public service does not shield him from Congressional oversight nor accountability to the American people."

The subcommittee further reminded the public that Fauci commissioned, edited, and gave final approval to the impactful March 2020 study published in the journal Nature, "The Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2" — an oft-cited study whose authors expressed concerns in private about the "sh** show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release," making clear that their cause was "political."

Fauci repeatedly referenced this paper on the national stage, including once from the White House podium, to bolster the zoonotic origins theory ultimately entertained by the CIA team.

The subcommittee also highlighted how Fauci was cognizant of the dangerous gain-of-function research taking place in Wuhan but "did nothing to stop it or warn the American people."

The subcommittee failed to mention in its short list of Fauci's faux pas Wenstrup's late-September revelation that "according to information gathered by the Select Subcommittee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, played a role in the Central Intelligence Agency's review of the origins of COVID-19."

"The information provided suggests that Dr. Fauci was escorted into Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarters — without a record of entry — and participated in the analysis to 'influence' the Agency’s review," continued the chairman.

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THESE recently obtained Fauci emails may put him in JAIL



What should be done with Anthony Fauci?

Senator Rand Paul thinks jail time might be sufficient — but not likely.

“We referred him twice to the Department of Justice; we haven’t gotten a lot of action. We barely can even get a letter back saying they’ve received the referral,” the senator tells Dave Rubin.

However, the referral sent was a criminal referral for lying to Congress, which is a felony. Fauci could face up to five years in prison for that.

“I think he deserves that, but above and beyond that, he also deserves the culpability basically for funding the research that became the pandemic. And this is a big deal. This is no small mistake that he made,” Rand says.

“It may be one of the worst mistakes made in modern history.”

And why did that mistake happen?

“Because Dr. Fauci’s opinion is that, even if a pandemic were to occur, gain of function — this juicing up of viruses research — is worth it,” Rand says.

Rand doesn’t believe that the millions of Americans who died or whose family members died would agree that it was worth it.

“I think you’d find that most American families, and frankly, worldwide, would be upset, you know, that this actually came from government-funded projects at the behest of Anthony Fauci,” he says.

However, the American people might be more distrusting next time around, especially considering the recent release of damning emails from January 2020.

In these emails, Fauci’s tenor reflects that he’s concerned not only about the origin of the virus, but that the origins could “boomerang and come back” and that he would be exposed as the one who approved the funding that created it.

“We know, for one thing, Fauci allowed this research to happen in communist China without any review by the safety committee. That alone is malfeasance, and he should be punished for it as well,” Rand adds.

While the pile of evidence for Fauci’s betrayal of the American people is stacked astoundingly high, the mainstream media doesn’t seem to care — at all.

Rand is ultimately in disbelief, as there’s never “been a cover-up so thoroughly exposed and caught and delivered by their own emails,” and “yet not one person from the mainstream media has reported on this at all.”


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