Biden opens door to release of intelligence report on COVID-19 origin

By | May 28, 2021

President Joe Biden signaled that he is prepared to make public the intelligence report he commissioned into whether COVID-19 originated naturally or was the result of a Chinese laboratory leak.

“Yes, unless there’s something I’m unaware of,” Biden told reporters Thursday of his plan before boarding Air Force One.

Biden directed the intelligence community this week to “redouble their efforts” in looking at whether the coronavirus emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a lab accident at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. He asked them to work with other federal agencies and deliver their findings to him within 90 days.

REPUBLICANS SPOTLIGHT DISCORD BETWEEN BIDEN AND ALLIES AS INFRASTRUCTURE TALKS HIT CRITICAL JUNCTURE

“The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence,” he wrote in a statement.

Biden reiterated criticism from both his administration and that of former President Donald Trump that the Chinese government has not been transparent about its experience with COVID-19 and that the country thwarted an independent examination into the virus’s origins. The World Health Organization’s report concluded that a zoonotic explanation was the most likely.

In his statement, Biden revealed that he received an initial intelligence report earlier this month. As part of those findings, he said two spy agencies of the intelligence community are leaning toward the human-to-animal scenario while another is inching toward the lab incident, “each with low or moderate confidence.”

Read More:  5 Ways to Release Tension In Your Shoulders

“The majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,” he said of the 18 spy networks that comprise the intelligence community.

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not commit to releasing the second report Tuesday during her maiden appearance behind the briefing room lectern. She also declined to comment on what punitive actions the U.S. would take if China were implicated in the emergence of COVID-19.

“We have to go through the 90-day review,” she said. “I’m just not going to prejudge. I’m not going to make a statement until we know what happens on this 90-day review.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Almost 600,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 since the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.

Healthcare