A federal probe has discovered tens of millions of dollars in potentially fraudulent payments made by the United States to virus research facilities in Wuhan, China. The new report suggests that the U.S. may have paid twice for research grants pertaining to “risky research” of “dangerous pathogens.” Among the facilities bankrolled was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research is now suspected of playing a role in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to records reviewed by CBS News, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Agency for International Development paid for medical supplies, equipment, and travel to the Wuhan research labs. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-KY, discovered the potentially fraudulent payments after hiring a private inspector. This led to an internal probe by Health and Human Services inspector general Diane Cutler.
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Cutler reviewed over 50,000 documents related to the payments and concluded that there “is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds.”
“It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research.”
CBS News also cited anonymous sources that “did not dispute” Cutler’s report and said that “tens of millions of dollars could be involved.”
Sen. Marshall is now calling for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the potential fraud. He said in an interview with CBS,
“Americans deserve the truth, especially if our government had a hand in funding the creation of the coronavirus. I am demanding transparency and accountability for the misuse of taxpayer funds. This probe is a step in the right direction. We must follow the money.”
He added that “there’s 1.1 million reasons that American taxpayers should care” about the funding.
“You’ll have a plane crashes. We want to find out why the plane crashes. We go to any lengths to do that. And the hope is we don’t have another plane crash for the same reason.”
The New York Post also cited an unnamed source in Marshall’s office, who alleged that the fraud likely exceeded $40 million in payments but that the health agencies’ redaction had obscured the actual total.
The new report from the HHS inspector general follows another FBI and Department of Energy bombshell that concluded the COVID-19 virus likely originated from a research lab in Wuhan, China.
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Former Trump CDC Director Robert Redfield also stepped forward recently to allege that he and other health officials were “sidelined” by former NIAID director Anthony Fauci for suggesting that COVID-19 may have come from a lab. Fauci has adamantly denied theories of a lab leak, insisting that the pandemic was started by “natural occurrence.” The NIAID director also previously testified to Congress that the U.S. was not funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“It’s really unfortunate that in a public setting, like the hearing, that Dr. Redfield made that absolutely incorrect statement,” Fauci told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto in an interview last week.
On Friday, the U.S. House unanimously passed a bill to declassify all intelligence reports on the virus’s origins. It has received the full support of the Senate but has not yet received President Biden’s signature.
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