Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton argued in an op-ed Tuesday that “circumstantial” evidence “all points toward the Wuhan labs” as the source of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Cotton, who has been vocal about his theory that the virus could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, pointed to two labs in the area of the original outbreak that he said might have been responsible.
“Wuhan has two labs where we know bats and humans interacted. One is the Institute of Virology, eight miles from the wet market; the other is the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, barely 300 yards from the market,” Cotton wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
“Both labs collect live animals to study viruses. Their researchers travel to caves across China to capture bats for this purpose. Chinese state media released a minidocumentary in mid-December following a team of Wuhan CDC researchers collecting viruses from bats in caves. The researchers fretted openly about the risk of infection.”
Sen. Tom Cotton looks (Pete Marovich/Getty Images)
Cotton also pointed to China’s coverup of the virus in its early stages to argue that the country must have something to hide. (RELATED: Joe Biden Went To China And Said He ‘Fully’ Understood Its One-Child Policy)
“In early January, enforcers threatened doctors who warned their colleagues about the virus. Among them was Li Wenliang, who died of Covid-19 in February. Laboratories working to sequence the virus’s genetic code were ordered to destroy their samples. The laboratory that first published the virus’s genome was shut down, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported in February,” the senator wrote.
“This evidence is circumstantial, to be sure, but it all points toward the Wuhan labs. Thanks to the Chinese coverup, we may never have direct, conclusive evidence — intelligence rarely works that way — but Americans justifiably can use common sense to follow the inherent logic of events to their likely conclusion.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.