Former State Department investigator David Asher said Friday that he would like to see a 9/11-style commission dig into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Asher told Fox News host Martha MacCallum there were a number of concerns regarding what the Chinese government knew and when they knew it — but it was also concerning to him that there were a number of experts like White House senior medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci who did not initially seem interested in putting pressure on China to get real answers. (RELATED: Wuhan Lab Researcher’s Wife Died Of COVID-Like Illness In December 2019, Former Lead US Investigator Says)
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Asher began by noting that Fauci was among those who appeared to be caught by surprise by the news that the Chinese government had discovered another bat coronavirus in 2012 reports that three workers at a Wuhan laboratory had been hospitalized in November of 2019 with COVID-19 symptoms.
“As far as I know that publication is on NIH’s website and in Nature Medicine or one of the top medical publications, which we at state don’t normally read but I assume NIH does,” Asher said.
“You know, when you boil this down, right? It’s about a known adversary, about China, the work that they were doing in the lab that was near the place where we started to see these cases emerge. And there’s this willful desire to ignore that whole line of questioning from someone that is our known adversary,” MacCallum pointed out, going on to say that Fauci had seemed more concerned with whether or not questioning would come off as antagonistic.
“It’s obviously in China’s interest to find out exactly what it is. You want openness and cooperation. One of the ways you can get it is don’t be accusatory,” Fauci said.
“It’s not really in the Chinese interest if they’re covering up mistakes to be open about it, is it? I just say, you know, at this stage, we need to have this type of commission on the Hill like the 9/11 Commission get to the bottom of this. We really need to get ahead of it,” Asher continued. “The Chinese need to feel the pain economically whether they tell us the truth or not. They need consequences. We need to stop and deter this from happening again.”
“It’s an enormous national security question,” MacCallum agreed.