“Whatever we can do, I don’t think China is ever going to turn over documents to the committee, but we’re going to do whatever investigation that is appropriate.”
The Colorado Democrat said she has spoken about such an investigation with the ranking Republican on the subcommittee for oversight, Rep. Morgan Griffin of Virginia. Burgess, who is a medical doctor, also sits on the oversight panel.
The Texas Republican had just noted that “this is a novel disease, and the scientists were sometimes embarrassed because what they had said at the beginning wasn’t what they ended up saying several weeks or months later.”
“I can think of no other area where that has been more pronounced than in where did this virus originate, and the stories we are hearing now are not comporting with the stories we heard early on” regarding how the virus first developed in China.
The official explanation of the Chinese government is that the virus originated in an open-air meat market in Wuhan, China, from bats brought in from another region of the country and sold there for human consumption.
The World Health Organization (WHO) originally accepted the Chinese regime’s explanation, but more recently has conceded that a lab leak can’t be definitively ruled out.
Critics have contended almost from the first day of the U.S. lockdowns last year that there’s evidence the disease may have been leaked, accidentally or otherwise, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIR).
The WIR is closely linked with the Beijing regime, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The lab also does much research in cooperation with and for the Chinese military.
“I have now asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days,” Biden said in the statement released by the White House.
“As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China. I have also asked that this effort include work by our National Labs and other agencies of our government to augment the Intelligence Community’s efforts. And I have asked the Intelligence Community to keep Congress fully apprised of its work.”
Earlier work by the intelligence community produced no definitive conclusion, with some agencies leaning toward supporting the official Chinese explanation and others to the possibility of a lab leak.
“The majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,” Biden said.
“The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence.”
“We welcome and are encouraged by the bipartisan support within the Committee to investigate if COVID-19 originated in a laboratory accident. We can’t leave any stone unturned,” she said.
