America's First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit today against the U.S. State Department seeking an order demanding the Biden administration release records explaining to the public how, why, and when President Biden issued an order to halt an independent investigation, initially launched by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After seeking information concerning the president's actions and being snubbed by the Biden State Department for months, AFL filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with the department on May 28, 2021. Noting Biden's canceling of an independent investigation put in place by President Trump—reportedly aborted over concerns about the quality of its work—while also announcing that his administration had asked the Intelligence Community to "redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days" AFL's Stephen Miller stated at the time:
"The Biden Administration's decision to cancel the State Department's ongoing investigation into COVID's true origins is deeply disturbing and alarming. It is also a massive gift to the Chinese Communist Party. China's lies, deceptions, and coverups from the beginning of the pandemic have cost the world countless lives. There must be answers—and there must be accountability for the suffering inflicted on the world. Asking for a perfunctory report from the intel community in 90 days is not a search for the truth—it's a hollow, empty gesture designed to distract from this Administration's weakness and complacency on China.
Top experts in the best position to know—including former CDC Director Bob Redfield and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—all believe the medical, scientific and circumstantial evidence demonstrates this virus came from a Chinese lab: the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If that is the case, as many increasingly are convinced, then China is responsible for one of the single greatest medical disasters in human history. This makes the Soviet Union's Chernobyl debacle look minor by comparison. We need to know everything that happened in China and why—and we need to know why the Biden Administration apparently doesn't want those answers to be uncovered."
The lawsuit filed Wednesday points out that as early as November 2019, U.S. intelligence was highly suspicious that SARS-CoV-2 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. Then, once the "scope and scale" of the pandemic was clear, around April 2020, the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advised on separate probes into U.S. taxpayer funding—commanded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci—and "support from U.S.- based institutions of higher education, respectively, for the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the dangerous activities carried on there." An August 2021 House Foreign Affairs Committee Report reveals:
"The preponderance of evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to September 12, 2019. The virus, or the viral sequence that was genetically manipulated, was likely collected in a cave in Yunnan province, PRC, between 2012 and 2015. Researchers at the WIV, officials within the CCP, and potentially American citizens directly engaged in efforts to obfuscate information related to the origins of the virus and to suppress public debate of a possible lab leak."
In May 2020, Pompeo announced that the Trump administration investigation had uncovered "enormous evidence" the coronavirus outbreak originated in a Chinese lab. From its onset, Democratic Party leaders, including members of Congress and the Biden administration, consistently derided Trump for suggesting the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was used to serve the CCP. Biden's cancellation of the independent State Department investigation while turning to the Intelligence Community for a quick, 90-day review left the intelligence community not answering questions. As reported yesterday by Jeff Bezos' Washington Post:
"President Biden on Tuesday received a classified report from the intelligence community that was inconclusive about the origins of the novel coronavirus, including whether the pathogen jumped from an animal to a human as part of a natural process, or escaped from a lab in central China, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter."
However, as detailed in today's announcement from AFL, outlets from across the ideological spectrum have consistently reported that significant members of the Biden administration team, including SoS Blinken and Director of the Office of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, have influential, long-standing commercial relationships with the Chinese Communist Party. And, as reiterated by over one hundred retired U.S. admirals and generals, China is the biggest threat facing America. AFL's announcement added:
"Among other things, these officials were in the business of brokering deals between the CCP and U.S.–based corporations and universities. This raises obvious red flags, because Biden shut down an independent investigation and instead opted for a political process in which some of the same people who were selling China access and influence are now in charge of creating the "definitive narrative" regarding the pandemic's origin."
Almost two years into the pandemic, AFL believes the citizens of the United States of American deserve to know why President Biden stopped an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19. A determined Mark Meadows, former White House Chief of Staff for President Trump and America First Legal Board Member, declared:
"Once again, Joe Biden has sided with China at the expense of the American people. He wasted no time canceling the Trump administration's independent investigation of COVID-19 origins, instead replacing it with a Biden-controlled investigation that did nothing and found nothing–by design–shielding China from any accountability," Meadows said. "Thousands of Americans had their lives permanently altered because of a pandemic released out of Wuhan, and we intend to help those Americans get the answers they deserve, whether Joe Biden does his job or not."
