Former President Donald Trump floated the idea that coronavirus had actually escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, in a press statement slamming Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx.
“Fauci spent U.S. money on the Wuhan lab in China-and we now know how that worked out, ” Trump said in part of his statement calling Fauci the “king of ‘flip-flops’ and moving the goalposts,” in his statement.
The non-profit scientific research group EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) received a $3.7 million grant from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 2014 to help with research into bat-based coronaviruses in China.
EHA routed $600,000 in taxpayer funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in the form of National Institutes of Health subgrants between 2014 and 2019 to help with their research into coronaviruses.
While the WIV is authorized to receive funding until 2024, the grant issued for the funding was ended by the NIH over criticisms regarding EHA’s ties to the WIV. The NIH explained that the EHA’s work in China was not in line with “program goals and agency priorities.”
The NIH told the EHA that they would reinstate the grant under certain terms, one of which was that an outside team be allowed to do an investigation as to whether the WIV had the coronavirus in their possession before the first cases were reported in December 2019.
Former President Trump issues statement regarding Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci: pic.twitter.com/jsm4nPyRLO
— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 29, 2021
Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recently announced in an interview that he believes that the coronavirus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. (RELATED: ‘Bat Lady’ Denial Of Chinese Military Involvement In Wuhan Lab Has Put China On Collision Course With US Intelligence)
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also hinted that he believes there is evidence that the coronavirus had originated from a lab in Wuhan.
The World Health Organization (WHO) opened an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus in January. The WHO released their findings in early February, which stated that it was “unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab,” and that it was more plausible “to have jumped to humans from an animal.”
The former director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe expressed his disagreement with the WHO’s findings during an interview on Fox News, stating that “the Chinese military ordered scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to experiment with coronaviruses starting as far back as 2017.”
“Some of those viruses were 96.2% genetically similar to the current COVID-19 virus, and further, some of those scientists working on the similar coronaviruses became sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall 0f 2019,” Ratcliffe added.