The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will question EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak in a public hearing scheduled for May 1, the committee announced Thursday.
Daszak will testify before the Subcommittee about his ties with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and work on gain-of-function research. In addition to its Thursday announcement, the committee said Daszak “appears to have lied to Congress” about about his work with the Wuhan lab and gain-of-function research. (RELATED: American Researchers In Bed With Wuhan Lab Misled Pentagon About Civilization-Threatening Virus Research}
“Lying to Congress is a federal crime. Dr. Daszak was reminded of this before his interview began. Still, he proceeded to directly contradict previously uncovered evidence about his relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology & his oversight of gain-of-function research,” the subcommittee said Thursday.
🚨BREAKING🚨
EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak will testify at a public hearing on May 1, 2024.
Dr. Daszak must answer questions about COVID-19 origins, dangerous gain-of-function research, and his relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. pic.twitter.com/CyTGoEBvDr
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) April 4, 2024
In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance helped funnel millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to the Wuhan lab for the purpose of conducting research on bat-based coronaviruses. The Wuhan lab is at the center of the lab-leak theory concerning the origins of the coronavirus. This theory suggests that the pandemic originated from a virus being held at the WIV, which was released via an accident into the outside world.
Proponents also claim crucial information was suppressed by former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials and their allies have suppressed investigations into the lab-leak theory since the pandemic began by limiting access to the WIV and destroying evidence.
The subcommittee accused Dr. Daszak of making false statements to Congress during a closed-door transcribed interview in November of 2023 about his business dealings with the Wuhan lab and his work on gain-of-function research in a letter addressed to Daszak.
Daszak has maintained the pandemic originated naturally and that his work only helped prevent pandemics, not cause them. However, proponents of dangerous gain-of-function research, which takes viruses and makes them more infectious and deadly through genetic tampering, have failed to produce a significant number of examples of the research having a positive real-world impact.
Email communications reveal that Daszak worked with Fauci and other scientists around the world to suppress the spread of the lab-leak theory in the early days of the pandemic by downplaying it in the media and ginning up support for the natural origin theory.