Four more years (it's only fair)

Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist and federal inmate, made a startling prediction this week during an interview with Chris Cuomo, the former CNN host best known for giggling with his big brother, former New York governor and sex pest Andrew Cuomo, while COVID-19 was ravaging the state's nursing homes. "I'm a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028," Bannon said. "A man like this comes along once every century, if we're lucky."

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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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USAID: A slush fund for the deep state



As I write this, President Trump is on the verge of shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development. This will be one of the most important and essential moves of his presidency. Few institutions in modern history have operated with such sinister intent while positioning themselves as a force for good.

When USAID collapses, it will be a victory for the American people.

The agency provided tens of millions of dollars to the same organization linked to dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

For decades, USAID has been billed as the United States' primary vehicle for humanitarian and development assistance abroad. We're assured that its mission is noble: fostering economic growth, providing disaster relief, and supporting democracy-building initiatives.

However, its actual mission is anything but noble.

A vehicle for absolute chaos

It involves supporting covert operations, regime-change efforts, and activities that align more with the CIA than with humanitarian initiatives. For far too long, USAID has served as a dangerous instrument of empire, one that has actively weakened democracy abroad while draining American taxpayers at home.

To understand USAID’s true nature, one must start with its origins. The agency was established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, ostensibly to assist developing nations in modernizing and alleviating poverty.

But from the very beginning, the waters were poisoned.

Former USAID Director John Gilligan admitted as much, stating, "At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people."

This was no accident. USAID has long served as a hub for intelligence operations, shaping political movements and offering protection for various swamp creatures, one of whom will be discussed shortly.

Forced sterilization

One of USAID’s most notorious branches was its Office of Public Safety, which functioned throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. OPS presented itself as an organization dedicated to training foreign police forces in modern law enforcement techniques.

In reality, it was a training ground for torturers. In Brazil, USAID-linked operatives taught police forces to refine their brutality, introducing methods that would later be classified as "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

"Enhanced interrogation" is a more polite way of saying state-sanctioned sadism. The same techniques that would later be framed in legal terms during the War on Terror — stress positions, sensory deprivation, waterboarding — were initially described as "security assistance" to South American forces. The office was eventually shuttered in 1974, yet USAID’s role in such sordid operations never truly ended.

Beyond its direct involvement in torture, the agency has also played a key role in population control efforts. In the 1960s, USAID began funding forced sterilization programs across the globe.

Under the leadership of Dr. Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt, USAID’s Office of Population implemented mass sterilization campaigns in countries ranging from India to Peru. These programs often targeted impoverished communities, where women were subjected to sterilization procedures without informed consent.

Worse, USAID funneled money to organizations that distributed defective contraceptives and IUDs, many of which caused severe harm or even death.

While they marketed these programs as efforts to combat poverty, they were nothing more than eugenics under a different name.

Aiding China

In 2014, it was revealed that USAID had made a number of bungled, easily detected attempts to recruit anti-government activists in Cuba — including the creation of a "Cuban Twitter," launching a hip-hop festival, and staging an HIV workshop. These efforts resulted in the arrest of one American and the detainment and interrogation of a number of Cubans.

More recently, USAID has been involved in questionable funding of controversial scientific research. The agency provided tens of millions of dollars to Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, the same organization linked to dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Disguised as an academic grant, it was essentially a blank check for experiments that manipulated viral evolution, raising significant questions about what the U.S. government knew and when.

Funding left-wing lunacy

The agency has a notorious reputation for squandering taxpayer money on unsuccessful, even pointless, projects. Billions of dollars have been funneled into initiatives that produce little to no measurable success. In many cases, USAID has actually made conditions worse by fostering corruption and dependency rather than genuine economic growth.

This fact is not lost on Richard Grenell. The former acting director of national intelligence and U.S. ambassador to Germany recently took to X to point a virtual finger at one of the biggest wasters of money: Samantha Power.

A deep-state official and a puppet of the Obama administration, Power served as the USAID administrator until very recently. Grenell accused her of wasting excessive sums on extreme left-wing agendas that most Americans would actively oppose. He suggested that an investigation is long overdue. He's right. The American people deserve answers. They deserve the truth.

You, the reader, deserve full transparency.

This includes information about USAID’s connections to corrupt corporate interests. Behind the vague promise of "economic development," the agency has consistently acted as a gateway for U.S. corporations to exploit foreign markets. It has financed projects that benefit multinational agribusinesses, biotech companies, and pharmaceutical giants instead of the populations it claims to assist.

For instance, in Ethiopia, USAID overlooked human rights violations while directing aid money into development initiatives that displaced thousands. The agency has consistently operated more as a tool of economic imperialism than as a humanitarian organization.

End the madness

When President Trump shuts down USAID, he will be doing the country a massive favor. He will eliminate a fraudulent, exploitative, intelligence-linked entity that has long since outlived any usefulness it may once have had. One might argue that it was never useful to begin with — unless, of course, you happen to be someone like Samantha Power.

She's gone, and it's time her beloved agency went the same way.

The notion that America should act as a global benefactor through an organization that consistently undermines its own interests is absurd. True humanitarian assistance should be voluntary and transparent, not a front for crime and coercion.

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The congressional report cited in the letter found that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elon Musk’s Claim Linking USAID To Bioweapons Isn’t As Far-Fetched As The Deep State Wants You To Think

'Where it went wrong is when the virologists got the idea to manipulate the viruses'

‘It will seal his fate’: Rand Paul GOES OFF on rumor that Biden will pardon Dr. Fauci



Rumors have begun circulating that President Biden will issue preemptive pardons for many people he believes Donald Trump will go after as president — including Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“It doesn’t seem like you could do that, but they’ll try it anyway,” Glenn Beck of “The Glenn Beck Program” tells guest Senator Rand Paul.

“I’ve sent referrals, criminal referrals, on Anthony Fauci twice to the Department of Justice without really a response. Merrick Garland hasn’t done his job; he’s probably been the most partisan attorney general we’ve ever had. I will send those referrals again if they preemptively pardon Anthony Fauci,” Paul explains.

“It will seal his fate as the architect, author, and godfather of the pandemic,” Paul continues. “He’s the one that funded it; he’s the one that funded the research in Wuhan; he’s the one that allowed the research not to be scrutinized.”


“There was a safety committee that was supposed to scrutinize dangerous research. It was set up because of fear of exactly this happening. There have been scientists talking about this for 20 years, worried that this is going to happen. Anthony Fauci sidestepped the safety committee and allowed this research to go on,” he explains.

“Then when it came forward that he had done it, he was like, ‘Oh, nothing to see here, we didn’t really do it. Oh, well, we funded EcoHealth, and they funded Wuhan, but oh, nothing to see here,’” he continues. “And then he had the gall to say it wasn’t gain-of-function and it wasn’t dangerous. That’s a lie.”

Which is why Paul doesn’t believe a presidential pardon will do much for Fauci at this point.

“If the president pardons him, I think it’ll just cement his role in history as being the architect of gain-of-function,” Paul tells Glenn, who believes that this is where Trump’s appointed FBI director, Kash Patel, can come in.

“I hope he releases just the raw evidence that has been gathered,” Glenn says. “You know, kind of like the Twitter files, where we can see all the stuff that has been classified that should be seen by the American people.”

“The FBI did do their job. They did a report, and they said that they thought COVID came from a lab, that the virus or the pandemic started with a lab leak, but they haven’t released their report. They’ve been told to declassify it,” Paul says, adding, “I truly believe Kash Patel will look at that.”

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