Sens. Hawley and Braun press Biden Admin for additional COVID origins information after evasive reply.
Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Mark Braun (R-Ind.) are demanding that President Joe Biden’s administration provide more details about the origins of COVID-19 after releasing a 10-page report describing potential links between the origins of the virus and work at a Chinese virology laboratory in 2019.
In March, Congress passed, and Biden signed a law known as the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 that required the Biden administration to release “any and all information” relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China, and the origin of COVID-19. The law set a June 18 deadline to declassify and “make available to the public as much information as possible.”
Hawley and Braun sent a reminder letter to Biden on June 14, but his administration still missed the June 18 deadline to declassify and publicly release the COVID-19 origins documents. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) instead published a 10-page document (pdf) five days late on the evening of June 23.
The 10-page document included a one-page coversheet, a one-page table of contents, and a three-page appendix of terms used throughout the report. The five remaining pages of the report stated that the WIV worked “with several viruses, including coronaviruses, but no known viruses that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.”
The report also described how several WIV researchers fell ill in the fall of 2019 and said these researchers possessed some symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and some symptoms considered “not consistent” with COVID-19.
“The COVID-19 Origin Act calls for a full declassification, not Cliffs Notes to cover for [Dr. Anthony Fauci] and protect China,” Braun wrote in a Monday press statement.
“The report released today by the DNI is totally insufficient. The bill Senator Hawley and I passed was to ‘declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of COVID-19’ including several specific requests related to researchers’ names and their activities at the Wuhan lab. Our bill was passed unanimously by a Democrat Senate and a Republican House and signed by President Biden.
“This 9 page DNI report is 5 pages of titles and dictionary definitions, with only 4 pages of actual information, most of which is vague or already reported. The report contains no actual documents. The American people deserve the facts, not more half truths and politics,” Braun added.
Security personnel stand outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Failed to Comply’
Braun and Hawley reiterated their disappointment in a letter to Avril Haines, who is Biden’s director of national intelligence.
“[The COVID-19 Origins Act] required the Director of National Intelligence to ‘declassify any and all information’ relating to links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of COVID-19,” the senators wrote in a letter they first shared with Fox News.
“You failed to comply with both requirements. The deadline was June 18, 2023. Well past the statutory deadline, your office published a declassified report after business hours on June 23.”
Braun and Hawley concluded that ODNI “obviously” has more information about the origins of COVID-19 and the WIV than the five-page summary would suggest. They al
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