WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department seeking an order requiring the Biden Administration to turn over records explaining President Biden’s order to stop an independent investigation into the origins of the COVID pandemic.
In May, AFL filed a FOIA with the State Department seeking government records that would allow the public to know how, why, and when President Biden stopped an independent investigation of the pandemic’s origins. For months, the State Department has largely ignored this request.
As early as November 2019, U.S. intelligence services strongly suspected the COVID-19 virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, a facility closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army.
In or about April 2020, shortly after the scope and scale of the pandemic began clear, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Education consulted on separate investigations into U.S. taxpayer funding (overseen by the National Institutes of Health’s director Dr. Anthony Fauci) and support from U.S.- based institutions of higher education, respectively, for the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the dangerous activities carried on there.
According to an August 2021 Congressional report, “the preponderance of evidence” suggests COVID-19 was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sometime prior to September 12, 2019. Then, “Researchers at the [Wuhan Institute of Virology], officials within the CCP, and potentially American citizens directly engaged in efforts to obfuscate information related to the origins of the virus and to suppress public debate of a possible lab leak.”
The Trump Administration tasked a group at State to investigate the origins of the pandemic. However, leaders of the Democratic Party, including members of the Biden Administration and Congress, routinely ridiculed former President Trump for suggesting that the virus may have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was used to benefit the CCP. But on May 26, 2021, President Biden directed the U.S. intelligence community to collect and analyze information and report back on the pandemic’s origins in 90 days. At the same time, he ordered the State Department to stop its independent investigation. According to published reports, the intelligence community would not answer the question.
However, as widely reported by outlets from across the ideological spectrum, key members of the Biden Administration team, including the Secretary of State and Director of the Office of National Intelligence, have very strong long standing commercial relationships with the Chinese Communist Party. Among other things, these officials were in the business of brokering deals between the CCP and U.S. – based corporations and universities. This raises obvious red flags, because Biden shut down an independent investigation and instead opted for a political process in which some of the same people who were selling China access and influence are now in charge of creating the “definitive narrative” regarding the pandemic’s origin.
The American people deserve to know why President Biden stopped an independent investigation into COVID-19’s origins. We intend to fight for the answers.
Statement From Former White House Chief Of Staff And America First Legal Board Member Mark Meadows:
“Once again, Joe Biden has sided with China at the expense of the American people. He wasted no time canceling the Trump administration’s independent investigation of COVID-19 origins, instead replacing it with a Biden-controlled investigation that did nothing and found nothing–by design–shielding China from any accountability,” Meadows said. “Thousands of Americans had their lives permanently altered because of a pandemic released out of Wuhan, and we intend to help those Americans get the answers they deserve, whether Joe Biden does his job or not.”
Read the full complaint here.
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