As he readies to release a report on the intersection of the coronavirus pandemic and China, Rep. Devin Nunes is pushing President Joe Biden and his director of national intelligence to declassify intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
He’s also demanding the Biden administration carry out a full investigation into the origins of COVID-19, and release information about any U.S. funding for the Wuhan lab.
Officials from both the Trump and Biden administrations have said the Chinese government worked for over a year to thwart an independent investigation into the origins of the virus, which has killed 3.37 million people worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. Both administrations cast doubt on the manner in which the study from China and the World Health Organization was conducted in early 2021. Though the WHO-China report said a jump from animals to humans was most likely, Trump officials have pointed to an accidental escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a highly plausible origin for the pandemic.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking GOP member on the House Intelligence Committee, in letters obtained by the Washington Examiner, wrote to Biden and his spy chief, Avril Haines, telling the president, “We write to request that you initiate a whole-of-government effort to identify the origins of the virus and to direct federal agencies and departments to examine all plausible scenarios as part of such investigation. During the course of our investigation, which is ongoing, we have identified substantial circumstantial evidence supporting the theory that a laboratory leak could have been responsible for the origination of COVID-19.”
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