The House and the Senate unanimously asked for information on the pandemic’s origins to be released. Why hasn’t Biden signed the bill?

By Jennifer Graham

In a recent clip featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci, CNN described the theory that COVID-19 emerged because of work in a lab as a “minority view.”

But, in fact, more than two-thirds of Americans say it is “definitely” or “probably true” that the virus originated in a lab, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, and that includes majorities of both Democrats (53%) and Republicans (85%).

While the poll did not distinguish between people who believe the virus was intentionally created or “naturally mutated” within a lab, this theory of the origins of COVID-19, once dismissed as an idea held by conspiracy theorists, has become a rare area of agreement across party lines. Both the U.S. House and Senate voted unanimously to require the Biden administration to declassify intelligence gathered on the matter.

The administration has yet to comply, and President Joe Biden has not said whether he will veto the bill, even though administration officials considered a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology plausible as far back as the summer of 2021 and both the Energy Department and the FBI believe the virus emerged from the Wuhan lab.

So why the delay?

On one hand, it’s understandable why Biden is hesitant to let these particular bats out of the belfry.

The president is encircled with a constellation of problems involving China, to include the spy balloon he ordered shot down last month, the impending meeting of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, rising tension over Taiwan, and now, reports that Biden family members and associates received $3 million from a Chinese company. Whatever is contained in that intelligence is sure to add another geopolitical headache. The assessment of Utah Rep. Chris Stewart increasingly seems right: that the U.S. is “afraid of confronting China.”

But the controversy isn’t going away, despite the administration’s best efforts to ignore it, or to direct attention to a new report that tries to vindicate bats and implicate illegally sold raccoon dogs. Nor should it.

https://www.deseret.com/2023/3/17/23639837/lab-leak-covid-19-china-joe-biden-chris-stewart-anthony-fauci