Biden shut down Pompeo-led effort to prove theory COVID originated from Wuhan lab over concerns about quality of evidence: Trump says it was obvious that's where virus came from

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Joe Biden's team shut down a State Department investigation into the Wuhan laboratory as a source of the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a new report on Tuesday night.

Last fall, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lead an investigation to answer whether China's biological weapons program may have played a role in the pandemic, sources told CNN on Tuesday.

But the probe was met with internal opposition by those concerned it was part of political effort by the Trump administration to blame China for the virus.

And when Biden's team was briefed on the investigation's findings in February and March, they decided to shut it down amid concerns about the legitimacy of the evidence, sources say.  

'The way they did their work was suspicious as hell,' said one former State Department official of the probe. 

The revelations will lead to uncomfortable allegations for Biden that his team politicized the public health effort, and harmed the nation by shutting down a useful inquiry begun by his predecessor.

The theory of the virus coming from a Wuhan lab had been promoted heavily by Donald Trump, who blamed China for unleashing COVID-19 on the world. Critics said that Trump was blaming China to distract from his own mishandling of the pandemic.

Yet now the idea that the virus came from a Chinese lab is gaining mainstream support, with leading scientists who previously expressed skepticism - such as Anthony Fauci - now saying it is plausible. 

Trump on Tuesday night told Newsmax he's always believed the virus stemmed from a Wuhan research facility - and felt vindicated that scientific opinion and the mainstream media was finally coming round to his point of view. 

A team working for Joe Biden, (right, on the White House lawn on Tuesday) shut down the inquiry after being briefed about it in February and March. U.S. former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (left in April with members of the Republican Study Committee) began the investigation in fall

Donald Trump, speaking to Newsmax on Tuesday night, said he was vindicated

Trump on Tuesday night said he stood by the Wuhan theory, and still felt it was most likely

'I said it right at the beginning, and that's where it came from,' he said. 

'I think it was obvious to smart people. That's where it came from. I have no doubt about it. I had no doubt about it. I was criticized by the press.' 

Trump said that he remained confident his theory about the origins of the virus was correct.

'People didn't want to say China. Usually they blame it on Russia,' he told Newsmax.

'I said right at the beginning it came out of Wuhan. And that's where all the deaths were also, by the way, when we first heard about this, there were body bags, dead people laying all over Wuhan province, and that's where it happened to be located.  

'To me it was very obvious. I said it very strongly and I was criticized and now people are agreeing with me, so that's okay.' 

He said he felt the media was at long last beginning to come round to his point of view. 

'Now the shameful corporate media is starting to come around to recognize that perhaps that is the origin, in fact, of the China virus,' he said.

Biden talks to the media before taking off in Marine One on the Ellipse at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 25 May

Biden was flying to Delaware Tuesday night to attend the wake of a longtime staff member Norma Long, who worked on Biden’s campaigns and in his U.S. Senate office, and died May 17 from complications related to leukemia aged 75

Biden returned back to Washington DC a few hours later following the service.

After deboarding Marine One, Biden walks on the ellipse at the White House in Washington, DC

'When it comes to China, the more we learn about their malfeasance regarding the virus and what they knew very early on - and lied to the world about it - is important for the United States.'

He said China should be punished for their lack of transparency, and for failing to cooperate with international organizations like the World Health Organizations - whose investigators were not given full access.

Trump urged Biden to take a tough line on China. 

'We have to be stronger than what we are right now,' he said. 

'What's going on is just very unfortunate.' 

In May 2020, Pompeo, following Trump's lead, said there was 'enormous evidence' and a 'significant amount of evidence' to support the claim that the virus escaped from a lab.

His allies convened an independent panel of scientists to probe the theory and in January they held a three hour meeting to discuss the data.

They found that there were significant flaws with the research, and were concerned about methodology. 

'Our scientific consulting process involved dissenting perspectives on purpose,' said one source involved in the project. 

'It was a meeting with deliberative disagreement.' 

David Feith, a former senior State Department official who was briefed on the efforts, said Pompeo's was the only investigation taking the theory seriously.

'People in the US government were working on the question of where COVID-19 came from, but there was no other effort that we knew of that took the lab leak possibility seriously enough to focus on digging into certain aspects, questions and uncertainties,' he said.

Donald Trump was spotted at Trump Tower in New York City on Tuesday after he spent one day at his NY residence flanked by a mass of Secret Service and NYPD

Trump and his cavalcade appears to have returned to his New Jersey Bedminster home

Others were more critical of the efforts.

The former State Department official who was familiar with the investigation was suspicious of its secrecy.

'They basically conducted it in secret, cutting out the State Department's technical experts and the Intelligence Community, and then trying to brief certain senior officials in the interagency on their 'tentative conclusions' even before they'd let the department leaders they worked for know an investigation was underway at all.

'It smelled like they were just fishing to justify pre-determined conclusions and cut out experts who could critique their 'science'. 

'The reason for all this became clear when real scientists finally got a chance to see their analysis, and [the inquiry's] 'statistical' case fell apart.'

Senior officials in the State Department did not know of the existence of the inquiry until it was well advanced. 

After the January session, Chris Ford, who was at the time Assistant Secretary, sent a memo to a handful of department officials, including top leadership, urging caution about the group's findings.

Ford called aspects of the analysis 'gravely flawed' and urged officials 'against suggesting that there is anything inherently suspicious - and suggestive of biological warfare activity - about People's Liberation Army involvement at WIV on classified projects.'

Eventually, the probe was shut down after Biden officials were briefed on the findings earlier this year.  

A source told CNN that the investigation was shut down because the Biden team had doubts about the 'legitimacy of the findings'.

Those involved told CNN the questioning of their evidence was unfair and unwarranted, and insisted they had been objective.

A State Department spokesperson confirmed work on the inquiry had stopped, saying: 'Even though this discrete project has concluded, the State Department continues to work with the interagency to look into the COVID origins issue.'  

Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory? 

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been collecting numerous coronaviruses from bats ever since the SARS outbreak in 2002. They have also published papers describing how these bat viruses have interacted with human cells.

US Embassy staff visited the lab in 2018 and 'had grave safety concerns' over the protocols which were being observed at the facility.

The lab is just a few miles from the Huanan wet market which is where the first cluster of infections erupted in Wuhan.

The market is just a few hundred yards from another lab called the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (WHCDC). The WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in its labs, including some 605 bats.

Those who support the theory argue that Covid-19 could have leaked from either or both of these facilities and spread to the wet market. Most argue that this would have been a virus they were studying rather than one which was engineered.

Researchers work in a lab of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province in 2017 

Last year a bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology recounted how bats once attacked a researcher at the WHCDC and 'blood of bat was on his skin.' 

The report says: 'Genome sequences from patients were 96% or 89% identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus originally found in Rhinolophus affinis (intermediate horseshoe bat).'

It describes how the only native bats are found around 600 miles away from the Wuhan seafood market and that the probability of bats flying from Yunnan and Zhejiang provinces was minimal.

In addition there is little to suggest the local populace eat the bats as evidenced by testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors.

Instead the authors point to research being carried out within 300 yards at the WHCDC.

One of the researchers at the WHCDC described quarantining himself for two weeks after a bat's blood got on his skin, according to the report. That same man also quarantined himself after a bat urinated on him.

And he also mentions discovering a live tick from a bat - parasites known for their ability to pass infections through a host animal's blood.

'The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic,' the report says.

'It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.'  

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US liberal media's COVID U-turn: A year after TRASHING theory that COVID originated from a Wuhan lab because Trump supported the suggestion - America's woke mainstream news outlets suddenly start asking if it's true!

The liberal media have finally conceded that COVID-19 may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory - after a year spent ridiculing the suggestion.

The first fatality from COVID-19 was reported by Chinese state media on January 11, 2020, when a 61-year-old man who was a regular customer at a market in Wuhan died. The first confirmed case in the United States was 10 days later, when a man returned to Washington state from Wuhan.

Within a week, on January 26, 2020, the first article blaming the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the outbreak was published, in The Washington Times. Yet most mainstream media disputed the claims, dismissing them outright or even decrying them as racist.

When Donald Trump, on May 1, 2020, said he had 'a high degree of confidence' that the virus came from Wuhan, the New York Times, CNN, and NPR were quick to mock his comments.  

CNN, which by the end of the Trump administration was brazen in its hostility to the president and his advisors, was almost gleeful in its mockery of the idea that the virus could have come from a laboratory. 

The Washington Post, New York Times, and NPR were equally dismissive of suggestions that the virus could have come from a laboratory.

The Washington Post published a fact checker piece on May 25 saying the theory had 'suddenly' become credible after it was repeatedly brought up. It came after a year of naysaying from the liberal media who never accepted that it might be true 

There is outrage over the fact that for the last year, the theory has been widely discredited by the media in America when it may explain the entire pandemic 

Some outlets, such as the Huffington Post, even branded any suggestion the virus could have stemmed from a lab as a 'toxic conspiracy theory.'

Few were able to suggest that COVID-19 could have stemmed from a research facility without backlash but that didn't stop some media, including the Daily Mail, from questioning the narrative.

Fox News' Tucker Carlson was also clear in demanding an investigation into whether it could have escaped from the lab.

Finally, in the past few months, came the first signs that opinion was beginning to change.

In January, a World Health Organization (WHO) report only served to raise more questions after Beijing strictly controlled an on-site visit and who the researchers compiling the report spoke to. The WHO team was only allowed three hours inside the Wuhan lab and was unable to examine any of the Wuhan institute's safety logs or records of testing on its staff.

China's actions led to Biden's White House calling for greater transparency.

Even Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said that the visit was inconclusive, adding that 'all hypotheses are open' and warranted future study.

By May 11, the leading public health expert in the United States, Dr Anthony Fauci, had accepted that the idea of the virus escaping from a lab had been too quickly dismissed.

Asked whether the virus originated naturally, Fauci replied that he wants to look closer into the matter.

'I am not convinced about that,' he said. 'I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.

'Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that's the reason why I said I'm perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.'

Fauci's revelation came as a shock to many on the left who have accepted China's narrative that coronavirus spread from a wet market since the virus first emerged. 

Of course, China continues to insist that COVID-19 did not originate in the Wuhan lab.

'The U.S. keeps concocting inconsistent claims and clamoring to investigate labs in Wuhan,' China's foreign ministry said in a written statement on May 24. This fully shows that some people in the U.S. don't care about facts and truth.' 

CNN 

On May 1, 2020, CNN reported that Trump had 'contradicted' the intel community by claiming to have seen evidence the virus came from a lab. 

'President Donald Trump contradicted a rare on-the-record statement from his own intelligence community by claiming Thursday that he has seen evidence that gives him a "high degree of confidence" the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but declined to provide details to back up his assertion.

'The comments undercut a public statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued just hours earlier which stated no such assessment has been made and continues to "rigorously examine" whether the outbreak "began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."

"Yes, I have," Trump said when asked whether he's seen evidence that would suggest the virus originated in the lab. Later, asked why he was confident in that assessment, Trump demurred.

"I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed to tell you that," the report read. 

Then on May 5, 2020, their editor-at-large Chris Cillizza wrote a scathing attack on the suggestion, entitled: Anthony Fauci just crushed Donald Trump's theory on the origins of the coronavirus.

MAY 1 2020: On May 1, 2020, CNN reported that Trump had 'contradicted' the intel community by claiming to have seen evidence the virus came from a lab. They pointed to how rare it was for the intelligence community to make a statement

MAY 5 2020: Chris Cillizza wrote an opinion piece saying Fauci had 'crushed Trump's theory' about the origins of the virus

OCTOBER 2020: CNN published another report about how the theory came from a 'shoddy' paper that was backed by Bannon. It claimed there was no proof whatsoever behind the theory 

'Before we play the game of 'he said, he said' remember this: Only one of these two people is a world-renowned infectious disease expert. And it's not Donald Trump,' Cillizza wrote.

'In short, Fauci's view on the origins of the disease matters a whole lot more than Trump's opinion about where it came from.

'Especially because, outside of Trump and his immediate inner circle, most people in a position to know are very, very skeptical of the Trump narrative that the virus came out of a lab - whether accidentally or on purpose.'

Cillizza's article followed on from one four days earlier, headlined: 'Trump contradicts US intel community by claiming he's seen evidence coronavirus originated in Chinese lab'.

Yet fast forward almost a year, and the tone had greatly changed.

Dr Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, spoke on March 26 this year to Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC).

Redfield said that he had concluded the virus escaped from a lab.

MARCH 2021: The former CDC head, Dr Robert Redfield, on CNN in March 2021, saying he believes the virus came from a lab. He told the reporter: 'I am of the point of view, I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, escaped. Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine, science will eventually figure it out. It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker.' CNN called it 'controversial' 

MAY 2021: On May 24, a new report was which said US intelligence had found there was some evidence the virus came from a Wuhan lab 

'I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,' he said.

'Now, other people don't believe that, that's fine. Science will eventually figure it out.

'It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in the laboratory to infect the laboratory worker.'

On May 23, The Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers from Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report

The following day the paper reported on a mysterious mine around 80 miles outside Wuhan where, in April 2012, six miners here fell sick after entering the mine to clear bat guano. Three of them died.

Chinese scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were called in to investigate and, after taking samples from bats in the mine, identified several new coronaviruses. Yet they were not forthcoming with their information.

On May 24, CNN admitted that there may be more to the Wuhan lab than initially believed. They published an update: New information on Wuhan researchers' illness furthers debate on pandemic origins

But Cilizza is still standing by his earlier claims it isn't. 

He wrote an opinion piece on why Dr. Fauci was 'hedging' on the subject, and said just because Fauci said he was no longer 'convinced' of the origins, it didn't mean he thought it came from a lab.  

New York Times

When any Trump-supporting lawmakers said that the Wuhan lab theory merited further exploration, the New York Times was quick to dismiss their claim.

In the first month of the pandemic they seized on questions raised by Tom Cotton, the Republican senator for Arkansas.

'We don't have evidence that this disease originated there,' Cotton said.

'But because of China's duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.'

His words, on February 17, 2020, would prove prescient - yet the New York Times headlined its coverage: Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins.

By April 30, 2020, the paper was describing the efforts from the Trump administration to get to the bottom of the virus' origins as a political witch hunt.

'Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials,' the paper reported.

FEBRUARY 2020: The New York Times was initially adamant (left) that the Wuhan lab leak theory was a nonsense invented by Trump, but by 2021 was accepting that opinions varied (right)

APRIL 2020: Another NYT report which said Trump officials had been pushing spies to find evidence behind the theory 

'The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic.'

The story was headlined: Trump Officials Are Said to Press Spies to Link Virus and Wuhan Labs

Yet this month two former science reporters at the paper - Nicholas Wade, who retired in 2012, and Donald McNeil, who left earlier this year amid a row about his language while guiding a tour of Peru - both said they now felt it was possible, indeed perhaps likely, that the virus came from a lab.

'In early spring 2020, I reported an article for The New York Times on which I put the tentative headline: 'New Coronavirus Is 'Clearly Not a Lab Leak,' Scientists Say,'' McNeil wrote on Medium.

'It never ran.'

He said that the paper was sharply divided over whether to believe the Trump officials saying it was a lab leak, or the scientists saying it wasn't. 

'We still do not know the source of this awful pandemic. We may never know,' he wrote.

'But the argument that it could have leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology or a sister lab in Wuhan has become considerably stronger than it was a year ago, when the screaming was so loud that it drowned out serious discussion.

McNeil, who left The New York Times earlier this year, said that China's 'lack of candor' was 'disturbing'. McNeil was fired by the Times after it emerged he'd used the N-word during a conversation with students on a NYT-run trip. He published an article on May 17 about the subject. He said he'd been told 'overwhelmingly' by scientists that it did not come from a lab

MAY 2021: Now the Times is repeating scientists' calls for an open mind on the theory 

'And China's lack of candor is disturbing.'

Wade came to the same conclusion.

'Neither the natural emergence nor the lab escape hypothesis can yet be ruled out. There is still no direct evidence for either. So no definitive conclusion can be reached,' he wrote.

'That said, the available evidence leans more strongly in one direction than the other. Readers will form their own opinion. 

'But it seems to me that proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence.'

Washington Post

Reporters for an article published on April 30, 2020, provided a nuanced and in-depth analysis of the Wuhan laboratory's work, and emphasized the risks involved.

Yet their headline read: Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release.

The following day, the dismissive tone continued: Was the new coronavirus accidentally released from a Wuhan lab? It's doubtful.

In May 2020 The Washington Post said it was 'doubtful' that the virus came from a lab in a story from its Fact Checker section 

By May 24 this year, the paper was very close to admitting that they had been blinkered.

'Given everything we know about how Trump handled such things, caution and skepticism were invited,' wrote Aaron Blake, a senior political reporter at the paper.

'That (very much warranted) caution and skepticism spilled over into some oversimplification, particularly when it came to summarizing the often more circumspect reporting.'

He admitted: 'We might never truly know the truth.'

Now the Washington Post is urging WHO to carry out an investigation into what happened to determine if it did come from a lab

MAY 2021: Journalist Aaron Blake wrote that it is 'vexing' as a subject. He said: 'It has become evident that some corners of the mainstream media overcorrected when it came to one particular theory from Trump and his allies: that the coronavirus emanated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, rather than naturally. It’s also true that many criticisms of the coverage are overwrought and that Trump’s and his allies’ claims invited and deserved skepticism.' 

Huffington Post

As concern was mounting about the virus in the spring of 2020, The Huffington Post was rapidly ridiculing all question of its origins.

'A Toxic 'Infodemic': The Viral Spread Of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories,' they headlined a story on April 7, 2020.

Yet a little over a year later, on May 24 of this year, the site followed up on the Wall Street Journal's report into the hospitalization of the Wuhan lab workers in 2019, and the issues that this raised.

'Wuhan Researchers Were Hospitalized With COVID-19 Symptoms Pre-Pandemic: Reports,' they wrote.

APRIL 2020: The Huffington Post was initially skeptical (left) about alternative ideas surrounding COVID and called it an 'infodemic' 

MAY 2021: Now, like every other outlet, Huff Po is broadening its reporting on the theory 

NPR

On April 23, 2020, NPR stated: 'Virus researchers say there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else.'

The radio news network was determined to prove that there was no credibility to the Wuhan lab leak theory, and produced a series of 'explainers' insisting that COVID-19 was transmitted from animals to humans.

'Where Did This Coronavirus Originate? Virus Hunters Find Genetic Clues In Bats,' they reported on April 15, 2020.

APRIL 2020: NPR was initially dismissive of suggestions that the virus leaked from a lab (left), but by May 2021 was covering the increasing speculation 

MARCH 2021: After a WHO report said the theory was gathering more steam, the headlines became more open minded 

Yet a little over a year later, NPR was following the WHO's report - and its worrying conclusions - with interest.

'Theory That COVID Came From A Chinese Lab Takes On New Life In Wake Of WHO Report,' they concluded.

On March 31, they reported: Calls For An Open Investigation Into The Possibility COVID-19 Leaked From A Lab. 

Among those watching the evolving news lines was Mike Pompeo, Trump's secretary of state.

'Over a year ago, I told @MarthaRaddatz that the Wuhan Virus most likely came from a lab leak,' he tweeted on May 20.

'She stopped just short of offering me a tin hat. The CCP said I was an enemy of mankind,' he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

'And now? Well, now, the Left wing media is scrambling to get on the side of the truth.'