Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are formally demanding that President Joe Biden end the “stonewalling” of the investigation of the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID-19 has now claimed the lives of nearly 700,000 Americans since its emergence in Wuhan, China, in 2019, while the Chinese government remains uncooperative and deceptive about the virus’s origins,” the 10 Republicans wrote in a letter to Biden, which was dated Friday.
They called the intelligence community’s handling of its investigation into COVID-19’s origins “appalling.”
“The Committee has reviewed the resulting IC report and received a briefing from Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) personnel. Based on the IC’s appalling lack of transparency and the ODNI staff’s hostile response to simple questions, we have little confidence in the DNI’s report,” the letter stated.
In a Twitter post Tuesday, GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a member of the committee, put it bluntly:
“Why is the Biden Administration stonewalling the investigation into COVID origins?” she wrote.
“The American people deserve ANSWERS – not more lies!” the congresswoman added.
Why is the Biden Administration stonewalling the investigation into COVID origins?
The American people deserve ANSWERS – not more lies!https://t.co/VPjsGQyiZl
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) September 28, 2021
The letter also addressed the Biden administration’s ongoing “stonewalling” of the investigation.
“Outside doctors and scientists who were consulted for their technical analyses of COVID’s potential origins are not clandestine sources or spies,” the letter said.
“They are consultants and there is no basis for stonewalling the Committee about their identities. Without this information, we cannot find the IC’s report remotely credible,” it added.
The letter concluded with a call to immediately disclose a list of the outside doctors and scientists involved in the investigation.
Following the initial release of the investigation’s results, Stefanik addressed the issue in a Fox News interview as well as in a commentary piece with Virginia Republican Rep. Rob Wittman that was published by Fox.
Heroes One Day, Fired the Next: Over 40k Health Care Workers Face Termination as New York Rolls Out Mandate
“The world deserves to know the truth,” the GOP House members wrote.
“Right now, it is nearly impossible to have all the facts because the Chinese Communist Party has blocked critical information and failed to cooperate with the global community. It leaves all of us asking: ‘What is China hiding?’” they added.
They called on the president to take action on the report.
“It is time for President Biden to move past empty threats and commit to decisive action necessary to uncover the pandemic’s origins,” they wrote.
“We are urging him to lend his support to our bill. Until then, China will continue to keep the world in the dark, even as time to discover the truth begins to run out.”