Congress Demands Answers From Scientist With Close Ties to China, Fauci

This article originally appeared on The Epoch Times and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Zachary Stieber

A scientist with close ties to the Chinese laboratory located in the same city in which the first cases of COVID-19 appeared will be appearing before Congress to answer questions, top Republicans announced on April 4.

Peter Daszak, president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, is scheduled to answer questions in a public hearing on May 1. EcoHealth Alliance confirmed in a statement that Mr. Daszak is planning to testify.

The questioning will focus in part on a divergence between Mr. Daszak’s previous testimony to Congress and messages from him and colleagues unearthed late last year, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and other members said.

Mr. Daszak told members on Nov. 14, 2023, that risky experiments on coronaviruses proposed by EcoHealth were planned to be conducted at the University of North Carolina (UNC).

However, in comments on a draft of the proposal, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit U.S. Right to Know, Mr. Daszak wrote that “once we get the funds, we can then allocate who does what exact work, and I believe that a lot of these assays can be done in Wuhan as well.”

Mr. Daszak’s group has previously funneled millions of dollars from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was headed at the time by Dr. Anthony Fauci, to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Chinese lab is situated in the same city that recorded the first cases of COVID-19, and some experts say available evidence indicates COVID-19 came from the lab.

In the unearthed materials, Mr. Daszak wrote that he was “trying to downplay the non-US focus of this proposal so that DARPA doesn’t see this as a negative.” The proposal was submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which rejected it.

Members said Mr. Daszak’s comment “appears to be materially inconsistent with your testimony assuring the committees that the proposed work was planned to be done exclusively at UNC.”

They also said that Mr. Daszak testified behind closed doors that the scientists in Wuhan were using the same biosafety levels as those used in the United States. 

Read the full story in The Epoch Times.