COVID-19
Another Government Agency Now Says COVID Likely Leaked From Lab: REPORT

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Emily Kopp
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) now believes that the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab in China, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Five years after Chinese authorities first confirmed a novel coronavirus was spreading in Wuhan, China, the CIA has made the determination with “low confidence” that the pandemic began at one of the city’s research labs, The New York Times reported. Three intelligence community elements now assess the pandemic began with a lab accident, a hypothesis once deemed a conspiracy theory by some and subject to censorship on social media. The CIA joins the Department of Energy, which determined the pandemic had a lab origin with low confidence, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which assessed a lab origin with moderate confidence.
The National Intelligence Council and four intelligence community elements determined the pandemic had a natural origin, while one other remaining intelligence community element remains undecided.
The news follows the Senate confirmation of CIA Director John Ratcliffe Thursday. Ratcliffe, who served as the Director of National Intelligence from 2020-2021, has long stated publicly that the classified intelligence implicates Wuhan’s labs. Ratcliffe has also claimed the CIA has dithered in its public assessment due to political concerns.
“My informed assessment, as a person with as much or more access than anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the virus outbreak and pandemic onset, has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense,” Ratcliffe testified to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2023. “In fact, were this a trial, the preponderance of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilt to an accusation that the coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for spawning a global pandemic.”
According to The New York Times report, the new conclusion is informed by a second look at the conditions of the labs in Wuhan. However, no new materials are available for public inspection.
The revelation follows news that outgoing National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tasked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with assembling a panel to take a renewed look at the pandemic’s origins. The 11th hour move was reminiscent of when a cadre of experts within the State Department released a fact sheet with declassified intelligence surrounding the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the waning days of the first Trump administration despite internal resistance to their investigation.
Ratcliffe has expressed concern about politicization within the intelligence community regarding China and COVID-19, particularly within the CIA.
“When we pushed to declassify intelligence exposing some of what the U.S. government knew about the virus’s origins and the Communist Party’s initial coverup, we faced constant opposition, particularly from Langley,” Ratcliffe wrote in a 2023 op-ed. “When preparing the President’s Daily Brief, it wasn’t unusual to ask why the CIA’s China assessments seemed at odds with intelligence from the other 17 U.S. spy agencies.”
It remains to be seen whether Ratcliffe will continue to push for the declassification of this intelligence in his new role.
Others have expressed concerns about the impartiality and rigor of the intelligence community’s assessments, including the worry that virologists with undisclosed biases have shaped the intelligence community’s view.
In a November 2024 letter, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas raised the alarm that a close collaborator of the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have shaped the intelligence community’s understanding of the issue. The ODNI consults with the Biological Sciences Experts Group, a group of nongovernmental scientists which advises on biosecurity issues. University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric — who worked on coronavirus engineering projects with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — is affiliated with the group, according to the letter.
Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by U.S. Right to Know in 2023 showed Scripps Institute virologist Kristian Andersen, who communicated with National Institutes of Health leaders in the early pandemic about a prominent scientific article that would dismiss the lab leak theory, briefed State Department analysts in March 2020.
The Defense Intelligence Agency Office of the Inspector General has opened an inquiry into whether an assessment by scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence was improperly excluded from the president’s brief, according to a December Wall Street Journal report.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic sent letters to the CIA in September 2023 revealing whistleblower testimony alleging the CIA analysts who assessed the pandemic’s origin were compelled to change their conclusion from a lab origin to undecided through a “monetary incentive.” But the committee’s final report did not include any further information about this line of inquiry.
COVID-19
Trump’s new NIH head fires top Fauci allies and COVID shot promoters, including Fauci’s wife

From LifeSiteNews
“During the pandemic Fauci’s bioethicist wife, Christine Grady, offered nurses a choice: Get vaccinated, or lose your job,” noted The COVID-19 History Project on X. “Yesterday, she was offered a choice: Transfer to an office in Alaska, or lose your job. What’s fair is fair. Everyone deserves a choice,” explained the COVID watchdog account.
On day one of his new job as head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya removed four powerful agency heads, including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, and others associated with the questionable handling of the COVID-19 shots.
Grady, who had served as chief of the agency’s Department of Bioethics, and other longtime Fauci allies in top posts at the NIH involved in the development and distribution of the untested COVID shots produced by Big Pharma were offered jobs in Alaska and other remote locales far away from the NIH’s sprawling Bethesda, Maryland, complex just outside Washington, D.C.
The purge came amid massive layoffs in health-related agencies under the umbrella of Health and Human Services (HHS), now headed by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement’s founder, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long questioned vaccine safety and American medicine’s focus on treating disease rather than preventing it.
A total of about 20,000 personnel – mostly bureaucrats – or about 25 percent of the HHS workforce have been or will be handed pink slips amid Kennedy’s realignment of the agency.
MAHA critics were quick to call Tuesday’s axing of Fauci confederates as “one of the darkest days in modern scientific history” fueled by Kennedy’s desire to exact revenge on Fauci’s former trusted associates who represent the antithesis of the MAHA movement.
However, the revamping of the federal government’s side of the health industry is no more harsh than the treatment meted out by those formerly in control who, at best, suppressed, and worst, punished those who questioned their iron grip on health-industry regulations and standards.
For years, Kennedy’s critics have dismissed his quest to revamp healthcare and his questioning of the efficacy of the COVID-19 mRNA jabs as anti-science, labeling him as an “anti-vaxxer” in order to suppress his messaging.
Dr. Francis Collins – whom Bhattacharya replaced as head of NIH – in an October 2020 email to Fauci condemned Bhattacharya as a “fringe epidemiologist” because he had co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized harmful COVID lockdown policies.
“During the pandemic Fauci’s bioethicist wife, Christine Grady, offered nurses a choice: Get vaccinated, or lose your job,” noted The COVID-19 History Project on X.
“Yesterday, she was offered a choice: Transfer to an office in Alaska, or lose your job. What’s fair is fair. Everyone deserves a choice,” explained the COVID watchdog account.
“We spend 4X more than Italy on healthcare — and live 7 years less. Dead last in cancer rates. This isn’t science — it’s a system profiting off sick kids,” explained Calley Means, RFK Jr. HHS advisor during an interview with Laura Ingraham following the NIH firings.
“Firing the people who oversaw this? That’s step one,” declared Means.
Other NIH officials who were offered reassignments were Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who succeeded Fauci as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Clifford Lane, a close Fauci ally who served as deputy director for clinical research at NIAID, and Dr. Emily Erbelding, NIAID’s microbiology and infectious diseases director.
Freedom Convoy
Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich, Chris Barber found guilty of mischief

From LifeSiteNews
Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters, an action a federal judge has since said was “not justified.”
Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have been found guilty of mischief for their roles as leaders of the 2022 protest and as social media influencers, a Canadian federal judge has ruled.
“The Crown has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Lich and Barber have committed mischief,” said Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, the federal judge overseeing the pair’s mischief trial, during the verdict hearing Thursday.
The Democracy Fund, who has been helping the defense in the case, also noted on X, “Mischief is proven beyond a reasonable doubt here. Both Lich and Barber are guilty of mischief.”
“When freedom of expression collides with the need to uphold public order is when the line is crossed,” the judge said during court.
Perkins-McVey seemed to agree with the Crown’s case that Lich and Barber’s influence on the Freedom Convoy constituted public mischief but did dismiss the Crown’s Carter Application accusing Lich and Barber of conspiracy outright.
The government’s “Carter Application” asked that the judge consider “Barber’s statements and actions to establish the guilt of Lich, and vice versa.”
A “Carter Application” requires that the government prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that there was a “conspiracy or plan in place and that Lich was a party to it based on direct evidence.”
Lawyer Eva Chipiuk noted that Perkins-McVey “acknowledged that there was disruption on Ottawa and said its citizens and that downtown was jammed, loud and busy.”
Court will reconvene later today for additional information to be revealed.
Lich and Barber both face a possible 10-year prison sentence. LifeSiteNews reported extensively on their trial.
The Lich and Barber trial concluded in September of 2024, more than a year after it began. It was only originally scheduled to last 16 days.
Lich and Barber were arrested on February 17, 2022, in Ottawa for their roles in leading the popular Freedom Convoy protest against COVID mandates. During COVID, Canadians were subjected to vaccine mandates, mask mandates, extensive lockdowns and even the closure of churches.
Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters, an action a federal judge has since said was “not justified.” During the clear-out, an elderly lady was trampled by a police horse and many who donated to the cause had their bank accounts frozen.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich recently spelled out how much the Canadian government has spent prosecuting her and Barber for their role in the protests. She said at least $5 million in “taxpayer dollars” has been spent thus far, with her and Barber’s legal costs being above $750,000.
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