Politics

EXCLUSIVE: Rand Paul, Senate Republicans Demand CIA Explain Whistleblower’s COVID-19 Investigation Allegations

Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Henry Rodgers Chief National Correspondent
Font Size:

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and a group of Senate Republicans sent a letter Tuesday to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) regarding whistleblower allegations that the CIA offered to pay off analysts to change their positions on the COVID-19 lab leak theory.

The Daily Caller first obtained a copy of the letter, which refers to a senior-level CIA officer’s testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (Select Subcommittee) and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

In the testimony, the senior-level CIA officer said the agency assigned seven officers to a COVID Discovery Team and that at the end of their review, “six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” according to a letter from the Select Subcommittee to CIA Director William Burns.

The whistleblower also said those six members were given monetary incentives to change their positions. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Chip Roy To Introduce Legislation To Eliminate Fauci’s NIAID)

Here Is What The Lawmakers Call For In The Letter: 

  • “All documents and communications regarding the establishment of all iterations of the COVID Discovery Team(s);
  • All documents and communications between or among the members of all iterations of the COVID Discovery Team(s) regarding the origins of COVID-19;
  • All documents and communications between or among members of all iterations of the COVID Discovery Team(s) and other employees or contractors of the Agency regarding the origins of COVID-19;
  • All documents and communications between or among members of all iterations of the COVID Discovery Team(s) and employees or contractors of other federal government agencies, including but not limited to the U.S. Department of State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (to include the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), and the U.S. Department of Energy regarding the origins of COVID-19; and
  • All documents and communications regarding the pay history, to include the awarding of any type of financial or performance-based incentive/financial bonus to members of all iterations of the COVID Discovery Team(s).”

READ THE LETTER HERE: 

(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Florida Sen. Rick Scott joined Paul in signing the letter. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Paul Demands Information On NIH Employee Using Personal Email To Allegedly Conceal COVID-19 Origins)

The lawmakers called for answers to their questions no later than Sept. 25, 2023.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel