President Joe Biden is scrambling to launch another investigation into the origins of the Chinese coronavirus after it was confirmed this week that he shut down a similar Trump State Department probe.
Biden announced on Wednesday that he has asked the intelligence community to send him a report on the likely origins of COVID-19 within the next three months.
“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.
The news followed a report by CNN this week that Biden’s team deliberately shut down an investigation by former president Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its unsafe and unsecured lab conditions.
Biden officials were briefed on Pompeo’s findings in February and March of this year, CNN reported, but they dismissed them as inconclusive and the investigation itself as an ineffective use of resources.
Now, however, Biden is being forced to restart that investigation as more and more evidence emerges in support of the theory that COVID-19 escaped from the WIV.
Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, was forced to admit last week that he is not confident that COVID-19 emerged naturally, even though he was one of the first health experts to dismiss the lab leak theory early last year as a baseless conspiracy theory.
When asked if he still believes natural emergence is the only credible origins theory, Fauci said: “No actually. I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.”
Several leftists have admitted they downplayed the lab leak theory because Trump supported it.
Biden officials were also reportedly concerned that Trump’s State Department investigation would appear “partisan,” but State Department officials involved in the investigation insisted to Biden that their probe was objective and based off of scientific research and information from the U.S. intelligence community.
Biden’s State Department denied that it shut down the Trump-era inquiry, but several sources familiar with the probe said there was a lot of work left to complete.
Conservatives have pointed out that the Biden administration has been quick to downplay China’s role in the coronavirus pandemic, which could be why it tried to dismiss the lab leak theory.
One of Biden’s coronavirus advisers, Zeke Emanuel, even claimed on Thursday that the U.S. shouldn’t worry about investigating China at all.
Biden Covid adviser @ZekeEmanuel dismisses the importance of investigating China’s role in unleashing the virus: “The real issue is not how did this happen, the real issue is how do we protect ourselves from the next pandemic” pic.twitter.com/26w4kVPv9U
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 27, 2021
Trump responded to Biden’s sudden flip-flop and argued it is clear he is in full damage control mode.
“I said it right at the beginning, and that’s where it came from,” Trump said on Tuesday. “I think it was obvious to smart people. That’s where it came from. I have no doubt about it. I had no doubt about it. I was criticized by the press.”
“‘People didn’t want to say China. Usually they blame it on Russia,” he continued. “I said right at the beginning it came out of Wuhan. To me it was very obvious. I said it very strongly and I was criticized and now people are agreeing with me, so that’s okay.”
