COVID-19 origins to be unsealed under House declassification bill once ignored by Pelosi
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The House is scheduled to vote on a bill to declassify “any and all information” related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, which passed the Senate by voice vote last week.
The vote is set for Friday, according to the office of Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), and the process will begin with House Intelligence Committee and House Rules Committee hearings on Tuesday.
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Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) authored the legislation that also passed unanimously in the Senate in 2021 but failed to get a vote in House when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was in charge.
Hawley’s bill, which was co-sponsored by Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN), Mike Lee (R-UT), Roger Marshall (R-KS), and Rick Scott (R-FL), will make the intelligence agencies declassify any “potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the origins of the Covid pandemic.”
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), a member of the House Intelligence Committee and chairman of the new select committee investigating China, is leading the charge in the House.
“It’s been three years since COVID-19 upended our lives and we’re still asking basic questions about the origins of this virus. That’s unacceptable,” Gallagher said in a statement. “The question of how this pandemic began is the most important question in the world, and we should not continue to waste precious time waiting for the Chinese Communist Party to suddenly cooperate with U.S. officials and open up access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It’s time for Congress to act and force the administration to declassify the relevant intelligence surrounding the pandemic.”
The bill requires that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines release all information about the links between the Wuhan lab and coronavirus to Congress in a declassified report within 90 days of enactment. The bill specifically requests information about lab work done at the request of the Chinese government and the names, roles, and symptoms of researchers who fell sick in the fall of 2019.
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Other House sponsors include Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Chris Stewart (R-UT), John Rutherford (R-FL), Michael Cloud (R-TX), Mark Green (R-TN), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), August Pfluger (R-TX), and Daniel Webster (R-FL).
The Department of Energy concluded last month that the virus most likely originated in a lab, becoming the second federal agency after the FBI to reach this conclusion. Four other agencies and the National Intelligence Council are more confident that the virus had a natural origin, while the CIA and another unknown agency are undecided on the virus’s origins, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
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Tags: Coronavirus, China, Mike Gallagher, Josh Hawley, House GOP, News
Original Author: Virginia Aabram
Original Location: COVID-19 origins to be unsealed under House declassification bill once ignored by Pelosi