A top House Republican is not satisfied with the Biden administration’s investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 virus that spread from Wuhan, China, to the rest of the world and killed more than 4.5 million people.
Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Wednesday asking for reports, meeting notes, emails, and raw intelligence that the intelligence community used to develop its assessment.
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The crux of the investigation is whether the virus originated naturally in an animal or in the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory that studied coronaviruses.
President Joe Biden ordered a 90-day intelligence community study on the origin of the COVID-19 virus in May. A brief, unclassified summary of the intelligence community’s findings released last month said that the agencies do not believe that the virus was developed as a biological weapon. While most agencies assessed with “low confidence” that the virus was probably not genetically engineered, “two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way.”
Either natural exposure to an infected animal or a laboratory-associated incident is plausible, it said, stating cooperation from China would be needed to reach a “conclusive assessment” of the origins.
“Unfortunately, the Assessment on COVID-19 Origins only served to provide more confusion providing the American public with a vague, two-page unclassified summary,” Comer said in the letter. “This is an unacceptable response that gives the American people little confidence our country is prepared for the next pandemic.”
“Therefore, to assist the Committee with its oversight, we request all raw intelligence reports, meeting notes, and emails relied upon by the IC to develop the Assessment,” Comer said, giving a deadline of Sept. 29.
The request itself cannot legally compel the intelligence community to turn over the documents. While the committee has subpoena power, Democrats in the majority have power over subpoena decisions.
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House Republicans independently held hearings to investigate COVID-19 origins this summer, with Democrats declining to join while they waited for the results from the intelligence community report.
In August, before the intelligence community report, House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans released a report that said “the preponderance of evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to September 12, 2019,” and “the virus, or the viral sequence that was genetically manipulated, was likely collected in a cave in China’s Yunnan province, PRC, between 2012 and 2015.”
