US officials may have sent taxpayer money to fund risky research in a Chinese lab known to be carrying out bioweapon research.
Disgraced researcher Dr Peter Daszak suggested to a Congressional subcommittee that the intelligence community was aware of the coronavirus experiments carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology years before the pandemic – which many fear may have started the outbreak.
The government sent money to the Chinese facility despite concerns that the WIV was being by the Chinese government to manufacture bioweapons, according to Dr Daszak’s testimony.
Further, the researcher said the WIV is astonishingly still in possession of 15,000 samples of other coronaviruses that may belong to the US government through past taxpayer-funded research.
Dr Daszak told the subcommittee: ‘To the last of my knowledge, [samples] were in the freezers in Wuhan – over 15,000 of them.’
The revelation came Wednesday in his testimony given at the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Dr Daszack, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based research group which funneled US taxpayer money to the WIV, also admitted his company is still receiving a staggering $16million a year in US taxpayer cash.
When asked how aware the US intelligence agencies were of the risky coronavirus research going on at WIV, Dr Daszak hinted that this had been the case.
When asked if he knew whether the US intelligence services knew the Wuhan lab was being used to manufacture bioweapons, Dr Daszak responded: ‘Two agencies I think have low-to-moderate confidence that there was some activity.
He added: ‘The other agencies were unable to comment.’
The hearing comes as the subcommittee recommends Dr Daszak – who is British but lives in the US – be criminally investigated and banned from receiving any future public funding, along with his company.
The zoologist has repeatedly tried to cover-up inquiries into the WIV’s role in the pandemic.
He and fellow infectious disease experts Ralph Baric and Linfa Wang circulated a statement that was later published in The Lancet in the early months of Covid in which 27 prominent scientists from nine countries strongly condemned ‘conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.’
In a leaked email from 2020, however, Dr Daszak appeared to express gratitude to Dr Anthony Fauci for downplaying the theory the virus was created in a lab.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, who sits on the subcommittee, told DailyMail.com in a statement: ‘His direct role in providing funding for the Wuhan Lab and his lies and personal involvement in the COVID cover up that followed were directly responsible for the public health and economic disaster that followed.’
The subcommittee members also accused Dr Daszak of trying to downplay his collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his organization’s gain-of-function research.
The chairman of the subcommittee Rep Brad Wenstrup gave a damning conclusion that the research firm was in fact performing dangerous research and declared the organization a ‘threat to national security.’
‘Dr Daszak has proven that he is not a responsible steward of the American people’s tax dollars,’ he continued.
He said in a press release accompanying a new report about the scandal: ‘Dr Daszak and his organization conducted dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology, willfully violated the terms of a multi-million-dollar NIH grant, and placed U.S. national security at risk.
‘This blatant contempt for the American people is reprehensible. It is imperative to establish higher standards of oversight at the NIH. The Select Subcommittee’s detailed and comprehensive report today holds Dr Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance accountable and sheds light on severe shortcomings in our public health systems.’
However, other members of the subcommittee noted the report did not prove Covid came from a lab leak or that EHA was involved in any research.
In his exchanges with Dr Daszak, Rep Wenstrup pressed him on why, in 2018, he ‘downplayed’ his relationship with China in an effort to secure a federal grant for a project entitled DEFUSE.
DEFUSE was meant be a collaboration between US scientists and the WIV and proposals show the project sought to create a novel virus with the same rare features seen in Covid.
The proposal was ultimately denied funding and there are no official records the experiments were actually carried out. Nonetheless, virology experts have called the records are a clear ‘blueprint’ to create Covid-19.
Rep Wenstrup referenced documents that show how EcoHealth tried to mislead the Pentagon on how risky the experiments were to secure funding and to ‘stress the US side of the proposal’ despite intending to carry out experiments in China.
In a comment on the proposal, Rep Wenstrup highlighted that Dr Daszak wrote he was ‘trying to downplay the non-US focus’ of the project.
When Rep Wenstrup asked Dr Daszak why he sought to conceal China’s role in the research, Dr Daszak said EHA ‘didn’t want too much American taxpayer dollars going to China.’
And ranking member Rep Raul Ruiz also noted ‘internal documents and testimony do suggest that [EcoHealth] potentially misled the federal government on multiple occasions… raising serious questions about their overall commitment to the responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.’
Ultimately, Dr Daszak said the proposal, and his comments, were irrelevant because DEFUSE was not chosen for funding.
However, when asked if the WIV could have carried out the research without EHA’s knowledge, Dr Daszak said it was possible, but he had no knowledge such work was occurring.
Additionally, when later asked if any proposed or ongoing research conducted by or in collaboration with the EHA could be used as a bioweapon, Dr Daszak answered: ‘Of course.’
Later in the hearing, in a heated exchange with Rep Morgan Griffith of Virginia, the Congressman accused Dr Daszak of lying in research progress reports that EHA submitted to the federal government in an effort to cover up the organization’s potential liability in sparking a pandemic.
In an early progress report discussing coronavirus research and possible origins of Covid, EHA initially stated bat-to-human viral spillover was ‘very rare.’
However, approximately two years later, a new progress report – which was turned in late – changed that likelihood from rare to possibly millions.
Rep Griffith said: ‘You changed… the likelihood of bat coronavirus spillover into humans, from “very rare” in early 2020… to possibly over a million spillovers annually… by late 2021.
‘You don’t think this is a significant change?”
Dr Daszak said no, to which Rep Griffith responded: ‘Wow. You know what? I practiced in the criminal courts for many, many years. And I will just tell you – if you were my client, I would tell you that that dog won’t hunt, and the judge ain’t gonna believe that.’
The leader of EHA said he had an explanation as to why the change was made in the progress reports, but the subcommittee did not allow him time to respond.
The researcher and EcoHealth Alliance have been under fire for years for the possible role they played in Covid.
The organization works on virus research and is at the center of the Covid lab leak theory.
It has long been accused of running experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that boost the infectiousness of pathogens, paid for by the NIH.
EcoHealth Alliance was awarded $8million in government research grants between 2014 and 2021, which it subcontracted to research facilities. The Wuhan Institute was one of eight teams awarded grants at that time.
But a 2023 audit found there was a lack of oversight by the NIH and EHA at the Chinese facility.
Anthony Bellotti, president and founder, the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project, said in a statement to DailyMail.com: ‘We’re glad that Peter Daszak finally had to answer for lying, wasting taxpayers’ money, breaking the law, abusing animals, and threatening public health.
‘It’s high time EcoHealth and Daszak were held accountable because our investigations have documented how they’ve gotten off scot-free so far and raked in $60 million of new taxpayers’ cash just since the pandemic began.
‘Taxpayers have a right to know what really happened in Wuhan and shouldn’t be forced to fund any more of EcoHealth’s wasteful and dangerous virus hunting and animal experimentation.’
