COVID-19 Origins and Political Ramifications

Tonight we're getting a look at newly released internal federal records

about the origins of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Turns out many of the experts who publicly insisted the coronavirus came from bats

might have known better.

That's a debate that has had political ramifications obviously on Capitol Hill.

Here's chief congressional correspondent Chad Pergram.

The nation's top scientist touted a March 2020 article downplaying theories that

COVID 19 came from

a lab in China, but documents obtained by Senator Rand Paul and the White

House say the report's authors.

Weren't certain they were saying things like, oh,

those are conspiracy theory people,

or though the idea that it came from lab is implausible, and yet privately

they're saying the opposite.

Co author Christian Anderson told colleagues via Slack there was only a 30 chance

that COVID sprang from a lab.

Anderson later conceded,

quote, we really don't have any hard evidence one way or another.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm Anderson testified in 2023 that he didn't tout

the nature theory to

protect what Doctor Anthony Fauci said about how COVID started?

The claim that Doctor Fauci prompted

the drafting of proximal origin to

disprove the lab leak is not true.

Lawmakers who probe pandemic origins are still baffled.

I think the scientific community has been split on this.

I don't know that we will ever know definitively.

Other messages obtained by Paul say the FBI blocked customs and Border Patrol

from interviewing Peter Dajik when he

flew back to the US from China in 2021.

There were questions about the type of

research that Dajik conducted in Wuhan.

One key lawmaker believes the Biden administration tried to

promote the theory that COVID came from a bat suppressed the lab leak idea.

It's no surprise that they would use, you know,

the law enforcement enterprise to to achieve that and support the narrative.

Now the intelligence community is torn about COVID origins, and the FBI has moderate

confidence about the lab theory.

The CIA low confidence Fauci goes before polls committee under subpoena next week.