Tom Cotton says Biden administration ‘doesn’t want’ to hold China accountable for pandemic

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) accused the Biden administration of avoiding accountability for China’s role in the spread of COVID-19. The administration is hesitant to sign a bill that requests the declassification of intelligence concerning the pandemic.

Cotton asserted that “The Biden administration simply doesn’t want to align itself with that view” with regard to the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab. He added, “They want to continue to stress the uncertainty or the lack of direct evidence, which we may never have because China has covered it up because they don’t want to be forced to take action to hold China accountable for unleashing this plague on the world.”

The White House is hesitant about signing the bill that declassifies intel on COVID-19 origins

Last month, the Department of Energy declared that the lab leak hypothesis is the most probable explanation for the pandemic, which caused shutdowns throughout the United States in 2020; the FBI also shares this theory. Four other government agencies believe that the virus has a natural origin, and two others, including the CIA, have not reached any conclusions.

The COVID Origins Act passed unanimously in the House with a vote of 419-0, and the Senate unanimously passed the bill on March 1. If signed, the bill mandates that the director of national intelligence declassify all information it has regarding the possible connection between the COVID-19 pandemic and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to prevent a similar occurrence from happening again in the future.

On Friday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated, “We will continue using every tool to figure out what happened here while also protecting classified information. We’re going to take a look at the bill. I just don’t have anything to share on how we’re going to move forward at this time.”

The legislation’s passage diverges from the early days of the pandemic when the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis was deemed a conspiracy theory by some.

Tom Cotton believes the virus is from a lab leak based on common sense and observable facts

Cotton, who was one of the Republicans that initially accused the Chinese lab of the coronavirus pandemic, stated that his assertions were not based on classified intelligence but “common sense and the facts in front of our faces.” He added, “I think any farmer or trucker in Arkansas with an ounce of common sense will tell you this virus almost certainly came from those labs.”