Former Officials Claim State Department Leaders Were Told Not to Pursue COVID Origin

From the story: State Department leaders were warned not to pursue an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, former department officials confirmed to Fox News on Thursday, amid fears that it would bring attention to U.S. funding of research at the Wuhan Institute where the virus may have escaped (Fox News). 

And Hugh Hewitt cornered Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institute for Health, on how those U.S. taxpayer funds ended up at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Townhall Review). 

From Jim Geraghty: China just landed and deployed a rover on Mars, they’re the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon, they’re building their own space station, their own separate satellite navigation system, they’re building secret nuclear reactors that generate more weapons-grade plutonium, they just broke the record for manned exploration of the Mariana Trench at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and they claim they’ve developed a new way to build the most advanced quantum computers on earth. And this same government, with all of its awesome resources, unsurpassed manpower, and unlimited authoritarian powers… can’t find a single infected pangolin or other small mammal? (National Review). 

From Mark Hemingway: While we’re all admitting the lab leak censorship was a catastrophic failure of politically induced groupthink, anyone want to revisit the immediate censorship of the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story? How’s that decision looking in light of all the additional facts we now know? (Twitter). 

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said Democrats “put politics before the lives of American citizens. We have to know the truth to this. We have to know why it started. And why was the first action of President Biden to put money back into the World Health Organization with no penalties whatsoever? After they lied and were controlled by China, and he put it in his budget that he just give Congress (Fox News). 

Meanwhile, more trouble for Dr. Fauci as quality reporters dig into those emails (WSJ).