US lawmakers vote to declassify all documents on Covid origins including lab leak theory
US lawmakers have voted unanimously to declassify all documents on the origins of the coronavirus including on the lab leak theory.
The House voted 419-0 on Friday to approve a bill requiring Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify ‘any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology’ and Covid-19.
It also requires the director to ‘make available to the public as much information as possible’ on the origins of the virus.
The bill now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
It passed two weeks after the Department of Energy concluded that an accidental lab leak in China most likely was the cause of the pandemic.
‘The American public deserves answers to every aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic,’ said the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican chairman Michael Turner.
Turner noted that includes ‘how this virus was created and, specifically, whether it was a natural occurrence or was the result of a lab-related event’.
On March 1, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the agency believes Covid-19 most likely originated from a laboratory accident.
Declassifying all documents should help Americans have a better understanding of ‘why the FBI director has indicated that a Covid-19 lab leak is not just a possibility, but approaches the idea that is likely’, Turner said during a Tuesday hearing.
Dr Anthony Fauci, Biden’s top health advisor who retired from government last year, said he still believes Covid-19 emerged naturally, while saying he has kept an open mind on other theories. Earlier this week, Fauci was accused of trying to shut down professionals who think the lab leak hypothesis is how coronavirus started.
Fauci denied those allegations in a Fox News interview on Thursday.
Biden will ‘look’ at the bill, said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. However, she did not comment on if he would sign it.
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