Suspicions have arisen that the U.S. government may have paid tens of millions of dollars in superfluous payments to labs in Wuhan, China.
The payments were ostensibly made through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), CBS News reports.
“What I’ve found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research,” former federal investigator Diane Cutler, who examined 50,000 documents including U.S. government grants for high risk research in China.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), who hired Cutler to investigate, wants to crerate a 9/11 type commission to ascertain what actually happened. “I think there’s 1.1 million reasons that American taxpayers should care,” he said. “You’ll have a plane [crash]. 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.”
Robert Redfield, the former director of the CDC, recently testified that the NIH, the State Department, USAID and the Defense Department funded high-risk virus research in Wuhan.
Redfiled was asked by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) about Dr. Anthony Fauci testifying in 2021 that there was no U.S. funding for gain-of-function research (gain-of-function is a process whereby a disease is is exacerbated in order to study its response) in China.
“Do you think that Dr. Fauci intentionally lied under oath to Sen. Paul when he vehemently denied NIH’s funding of gain-of-function research?” Malliotakis asked
“I think there is no doubt NIH was funding gain-of-function research,” Redfield answered.
“Is it likely American tax dollars funded the gain-of-function research that created this virus?” Malliotakis asked.
“I think it did, not only from the NIH but the State Department, from USAID, and from DOD,” Redfield replied.
In January, a report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated, “NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address” compliance problems involving the EcoHealth Alliance, which received a grant from the NIH and sent some of those funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
NIH granted nearly $600,000 to EcoHealth Alliance that then went to WIV. OIG recommended that WIV be stopped from receiving NIH funding in the future.