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.

Related Topics:#DailyCaller COVID-19OriginatedInLab COVID-19OriginCIA COVID-19Wuhan EmilyKopp

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Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich says her trial verdict now delayed to unknown date

Published on February 28, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich said she is “disappointed” in the Canadian “justice system” that her and convoy co-leader Chris Barber’s verdict for their mischief trial, which supposed to have been released in two weeks, has now been delayed to an unknown date.

In a X post late Thursday, Lich shared the news with her followers, noting, “We just received news that our March 12th verdict date is unfortunately being postponed.”

“At the end of our criminal (longest) mischief trial last August, when Her Honour set the verdict date, she let us know the court system assigned her a full trial schedule to help clear the backlog from the Covid years,” wrote Lich.

“This is the sad state of the justice system in Canada. While we are disappointed in yet another delay in our case, we know the importance of the upcoming decision not just for us, but for all Canadians.”

Lich said that as soon as she is told when the new verdict date will be, she will let everyone know.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich and Barber’s verdict was supposed to have been announced on March 12.

They both face a possible 10-year prison sentence. LifeSiteNews reported extensively on their trial.

Lich and Barber’s trial concluded back in September of 2024, more than a year after it began. It was only originally scheduled to last 16 days.

Last week, Lich shared a heartwarming letter she received from a child, who told her to “keep fighting” for everyone and that “God will protect” her from the “enemy.”

Lich was arrested on February 17, 2022, in Ottawa. Barber was arrested the same day.

In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government enacted the never-before-used Emergencies Act (EA) on February 14, 2022.

During the clear-out of protesters after the EA was put in place, one protester, an elderly lady, was trampled by a police horse, and one conservative female reporter was beaten by police and shot with a tear gas canister.

Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.

The EA controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.

COVID-19

RFK Jr. pauses $240 million contract for new ‘oral COVID vaccine’

Published on February 27, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

For his first major action since taking office just two weeks ago, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has issued a 90-day stop-work order to American biotech company Vaxart Inc., which had been contracted during the Biden administration to develop a new “oral COVID-19 vaccine.”

Kennedy’s order came just as 10,000 individuals were scheduled to begin clinical trials on Monday.

HHS will utilize the 90-day hiatus to review Vaxart’s initial findings to determine the future of the human trials and continued drug development.

Approximately $460 million had been allotted to Vaxart by HHS to develop its new COVID-19 “vaccine,” of which $240 million had been authorized for the preliminary study, according to a report by Fox News Digital, which broke the story.

“While it is crucial that the Department [of] Health and Human Services support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production, including Vaxart’s,” Kennedy told Fox News Digital.

“I look forward to working with Vaxart and medical experts to ensure this work produces safe, effective, and fiscal-minded vaccine technology,” added Kennedy.

“If anyone was worried that RFK would not address vaccine damage, this is proof he’s only getting started,” declared the producers of the 2022 Died Suddenly film, which questioned the motives behind the development and mandating of the first round of COVID-19 shots and the startling number of deaths attributed to them.

There appears to be plenty of justification for pausing and even terminating Vaxart’s continued development of its “oral COVID-19 vaccine”

According to a report by The Defender’s John-Michael Dumais and published by LifeSiteNews in June, “Vaxart’s pill, VXA-CoV2-1, uses an adenovirus vector to infect epithelial cells in the lower small intestine. The vaccine delivers the genetic material to create the spike protein. The company boasts that a special coating allows the oral pill to survive the low pH in the stomach.”

“Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) and AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccines also used adenovirus vectors,” noted Dumais, who explained:

The use of J&J’s vaccine was paused in April 2021 due to reports of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a severe blood clotting disorder. In July 2021, the FDA warned about the risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome with the J&J vaccine after approximately 100 cases were reported among 12.8 million vaccine recipients. With existing doses of the J&J vaccine having expired in May 2023, the vaccine is no longer in use.

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine also caused blood clots, resulting in temporary pauses in its use in several countries. With declining demand, it was also removed from the market in May 2023.

Vaxart’s oral COVID-19 development project is part of the Biden administration’s $4.7 billion Project NextGen initiative, launched in 2023 to accelerate the development of new COVID “vaccines.”

Vaxart’s “vaccine” was funded through a contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which falls under the umbrella of HHS’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.

The pausing of Vaxart’s COVID-19 “vaccine” development can be seen as Kennedy’s first important move to fulfill his stated mission as HHS secretary.

Shortly after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Establishing The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (MAHA EO) to investigate and address the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis.

Chaired by Kennedy, the commission has four main policy directives to reverse chronic disease: Empower Americans through transparency and open-source data and avoid conflicts of interest in all federally funded health research; prioritize gold-standard research on why Americans are getting sick in all health-related research funded by the federal government; work with farmers to ensure that U.S. food is the healthy, abundant, and affordable; and ensure expanded treatment options and health coverage flexibility for beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.

The MAHA EO came at a time when many Americans have lost trust in the nation’s healthcare system and are increasingly skeptical as to whether they are receiving honest answers about the causes of the country’s health crisis and how to improve it.