Peter Daszak testifies to House committee probing Covid lab leak

• Members of the subcommittee said EHA tried to conceal its work with China
• But EHA president Dr Peter Daszak said work was in line with federal guidelines
• READ MORE: Is this the smoking gun for the Covid lab leak?

Disgraced researcher Dr Peter Daszak revealed to a Congressional subcommittee that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is still in possession of 15,000 coronavirus samples that may belong to the US government through past taxpayer-funded research.

Dr Daszak told the subcommittee: ‘To the last of my knowledge, [samples] were in the freezers in Wuhan – over 15,000 of them.’

The revelation came Wednesday in his testimony given at the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

The president of EcoHealth Alliance also said the US government officials may have known of dangerous coronavirus experiments performed in the Wuhan lab where Covid-19 is believed to have originated years before the pandemic.

Despite this knowledge, the government continued to plug millions of taxpayer dollars into the experiments in China, a committee hearing has revealed.

Further, EHA, a New York-based research firm behind the research, is still receiving a staggering $16million a year in US taxpayer cash.

When asked if he knew whether the US intelligence services knew the Wuhan lab was being used to manufacture bioweapons, Dr Daszak responded: ‘Two agencies I think have low-to-moderate confidence that there was some activity.

He added: ‘The other agencies were unable to comment.’

President of the EcoHealth Alliance Dr Peter Daszak said the intelligence community ‘had low to moderate confidence that there was some activity [in manufacturing bioweapons]’

Rep Morgan Griffith accused Dr Daszak of lying in research progress reports in an effort to cover up the EHA’s potential liability in sparking a pandemic

The hearing comes as the subcommittee recommends Dr Daszak – who is British but lives in the US  – be criminally investigated and banned from receiving any future public funding, along with his company.

The zoologist has repeatedly tried to cover-up inquiries into the WIV’s role in the pandemic.

He and fellow infectious disease experts Ralph Baric and Linfa Wang circulated a statement that was later published in The Lancet in the early months of Covid in which 27 prominent scientists from nine countries strongly condemned ‘conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.’

In a leaked email from 2020, however, Dr Daszak appeared to express gratitude to Dr Anthony Fauci for downplaying the theory the virus was created in a lab.

Rep. Ronny Jackson, who sits on the subcommittee, told DailyMail.com in a statement: ‘His direct role in providing funding for the Wuhan Lab and his lies and personal involvement in the COVID cover up that followed were directly responsible for the public health and economic disaster that followed.’

The subcommittee members also accused Dr Daszak of trying to downplay his collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his organization’s gain-of-function research.

The chairman of the subcommittee Rep Brad Wenstrup gave a damning conclusion that the research firm was in fact performing dangerous research and declared the organization a ‘threat to national security.’

‘Dr Daszak has proven that he is not a responsible steward of the American people’s tax dollars,’ he continued.

He said in a press release accompanying a new report about the scandal: ‘Dr Daszak and his organization conducted dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology, willfully violated the terms of a multi-million-dollar NIH grant, and placed U.S. national security at risk.

‘This blatant contempt for the American people is reprehensible. It is imperative to establish higher standards of oversight at the NIH. The Select Subcommittee’s detailed and comprehensive report today holds Dr Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance accountable and sheds light on severe shortcomings in our public health systems.’

Dr Peter Daszak (pictured left alongside Dr Anthony Fauci) oversees EcoHealth Alliance

However, other members of the subcommittee noted the report did not prove Covid came from a lab leak or that EHA was involved in any research.

In his exchanges with Dr Daszak, Rep Wenstrup pressed him on why, in 2018, he ‘downplayed’ his relationship with China in an effort to secure a federal grant for a project entitled DEFUSE.

DEFUSE was meant be a collaboration between US scientists and the WIV and proposals show the project sought to create a novel virus with the same rare features seen in Covid.

The proposal was ultimately denied funding and there are no official records the experiments were actually carried out. Nonetheless, virology experts have called the records are a clear ‘blueprint’ to create Covid-19.

Rep Wenstrup referenced documents that show how EcoHealth tried to mislead the Pentagon on how risky the experiments were to secure funding and to ‘stress the US side of the proposal’ despite intending to carry out experiments in China.

In a comment on the proposal, Rep Wenstrup highlighted that Dr Daszak wrote he was ‘trying to downplay the non-US focus’ of the project.

When Rep Wenstrup asked Dr Daszak why he sought to conceal China’s role in the research, Dr Daszak said EHA ‘didn’t want too much American taxpayer dollars going to China.’

And ranking member Rep Raul Ruiz also noted ‘internal documents and testimony do suggest that [EcoHealth] potentially misled the federal government on multiple occasions… raising serious questions about their overall commitment to the responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.’

The above is an email from Peter Daszak to researchers included in the 2018 proposal talking about work to be done by scientists as part of the DEFUSE project

The above is an email from Peter Daszak to researchers included in the 2018 DEFUSE proposal

The above is an excerpt of an email from the March 2018 DEFUSE proposal

Ultimately, Dr Daszak said the proposal, and his comments, were irrelevant because DEFUSE was not chosen for funding.

However, when asked if the WIV could have carried out the research without EHA’s knowledge, Dr Daszak said it was possible, but he had no knowledge such work was occurring.

Additionally, when later asked if any proposed or ongoing research conducted by or in collaboration with the EHA could be used as a bioweapon, Dr Daszak answered: ‘Of course.’

Later in the hearing, in a heated exchange with Rep Morgan Griffith of Virginia, the Congressman accused Dr Daszak of lying in research progress reports that EHA submitted to the federal government in an effort to cover up the organization’s potential liability in sparking a pandemic.

In an early progress report discussing coronavirus research and possible origins of Covid, EHA initially stated bat-to-human viral spillover was ‘very rare.’

However, approximately two years later, a new progress report – which was turned in late – changed that likelihood from rare to possibly millions.

Rep Griffith said: ‘You changed… the likelihood of bat coronavirus spillover into humans, from “very rare” in early 2020… to possibly over a million spillovers annually… by late 2021.

‘You don’t think this is a significant change?”

EXCLUSIVE: America’s frightening new bat lab: $12m taxpayer-funded NIH research facility in Colorado will import bats from Asia and infect them with deadly diseases – in project with China-linked scientists

A new taxpayer-funded lab is being built in Colorado that will import bats from around the world and experiment on dangerous diseases, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Dr Daszak said no, to which Rep Griffith responded: ‘Wow. You know what? I practiced in the criminal courts for many, many years. And I will just tell you – if you were my client, I would tell you that that dog won’t hunt, and the judge ain’t gonna believe that.’

The leader of EHA said he had an explanation as to why the change was made in the progress reports, but the subcommittee did not allow him time to respond.

The researcher and EcoHealth Alliance have been under fire for years for the possible role they played in Covid.

The organization works on virus research and is at the center of the Covid lab leak theory.

It has long been accused of running experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that boost the infectiousness of pathogens, paid for by the NIH.

EcoHealth Alliance was awarded $8million in government research grants between 2014 and 2021, which it subcontracted to research facilities. The Wuhan Institute was one of eight teams awarded grants at that time.

But a 2023 audit found there was a lack of oversight by the NIH and EHA at the Chinese facility.

Anthony Bellotti, president and founder, the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project, said in a statement to DailyMail.com: ‘We’re glad that Peter Daszak finally had to answer for lying, wasting taxpayers’ money, breaking the law, abusing animals, and threatening public health.

‘It’s high time EcoHealth and Daszak were held accountable because our investigations have documented how they’ve gotten off scot-free so far and raked in $60 million of new taxpayers’ cash just since the pandemic began.

‘Taxpayers have a right to know what really happened in Wuhan and shouldn’t be forced to fund any more of EcoHealth’s wasteful and dangerous virus hunting and animal experimentation.’

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