WASHINGTON — Americans are one step closer to knowing what the US government knows about the origins of COVID-19 — if President Biden will let them.
The House on Friday unanimously passed its version of a Senate-approved bill that would force the White House to declassify intelligence reports about the origins of the global pandemic and its ties to a Chinese lab.
The 419-0 vote sends the bill to Biden’s desk completely unopposed in Congress after the Senate approved the measure by unanimous consent last week.
However, Biden himself did not say whether he would sign the legislation, telling reporters as he left the White House for his Delaware home: “I haven’t made that decision yet.”
“We’re taking a look at the bill,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during her regular briefing earlier in the day. “We have continued to share information, as I’ve mentioned many times before, with members of Congress … We will continue to use every tool to figure out what happened here while also protecting classified information. Again, we’re gonna take a look at the bill, I just don’t have any information to share on how we’re going to move forward at this time.”
The House on Friday passed its version of a Senate-approved bill to force the White House to declassify intelligence reports about the origins of COVID-19. Getty Images“Why would President Biden not sign something that literally got no opposition in Congress?” asked Associated Press reporter Seung Min Kim.
“I totally understand,” Jean-Pierre responded. “It is the right of the president of the United States to look at the legislation that is going to be coming before him, and we’ll have more to share.”
The proposal requires Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify “any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology” and COVID-19, as well as “make available to the public as much information as possible” regarding the virus’s origin.
The report will also force the White House to declassify reports about COVID-19 and its ties to a Chinese lab. REUTERS
Dr. Anthony Fauci and other government officials insisted that evidence pointed to the global pandemic originating with bats in a wet market. APSen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who introduced the bill in the Senate, repeatedly tweeted Friday that Biden should sign it without delay.
“Now the American people will be able to see what their government knows about COVID origins – and those who lied about it can be held accountable,” wrote Hawley, who tweeted in response to Jean-Pierre’s statement: “Sign it! Let the American people see for themselves.”
“For years, Communist China lied about the origins of COVID-19 & Dems refused to investigate,” tweeted Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.). “That’s why @HouseGOP just passed a bill requiring the Biden admin to declassify all info on the Wuhan lab leak. Americans are finally going to get the answers we deserve.”
The 419-0 vote sends the bill to President Biden’s desk completely unopposed in Congress. APThe information should help Americans understand “why the FBI director has indicated that a COVID-19 lab leak is not just a possibility, but approaches the idea that is likely,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said during a hearing Tuesday.
“[The information provides] a unique insight as to what was happening at biosafety level laboratory in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and early 2020,” Turner added. “The laboratory and who was working there might be the key to unraveling the truth.”
The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), said the reports should be released so that “the American people can consider the best available information we have, as opposed to marinating in conjecture and speculation and conspiracy theories.”
The bill requires Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify “any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology” and the coronavirus. ECOHEALTH ALLIANCEThe overwhelming support in Congress for making the information public comes days after reports emerged that the Energy Department had assessed with “low confidence” that the virus likely leaked from a Chinese lab.
The Energy Department joined the FBI in backing the so-called “lab leak theory” while four other intelligence community agencies have reportedly assessed with “low confidence” that the virus naturally spread from animals to humans and two other agencies are undecided.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” bureau Director Christopher Wray told Fox News Feb. 28.
“The Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing and that’s unfortunate for everybody.”
