EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak will testify publicly before the House regarding the origins of Covid-19 and gain-of-function research on May 1, several congressional committees announced Thursday.
House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic chairman Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio) will lead the hearing and ask Daszak numerous questions about his nonprofit’s relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. EcoHealth is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization that used funding from the National Institutes of Health to perform gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab, where the pandemic plausibly originated.
During a closed-door transcribed interview on Capitol Hill in November, Daszak said EcoHealth planned to conduct such research at the University of North Carolina if the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency approved its research proposal called DEFUSE. DARPA ultimately rejected the funding request.
However, a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request uncovered document drafts and notes suggesting that EcoHealth intended to mislead DARPA and move forward with conducting gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab instead.
“I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable with our team. Once we get the funds, we can then allocate who does what exact work, and I believe that a lot of these assays can be done in Wuhan as well,” Daszak wrote to two researchers working on DEFUSE.
The House Coronavirus Subcommittee wants clarification as to whether EcoHealth intentionally misled DARPA to conduct research at the Wuhan lab, which has weaker biosafety measures in contrast to U.S. labs — like the one at UNC. EcoHealth needed to meet the higher biosafety standards in the U.S. before DARPA could approve the grant request.
“These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview. The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview. We invite you to correct the record,” five GOP chairmen wrote in a twelve-page letter sent to Daszak.
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.), House Energy and Commerce Committee chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations chairman Morgan Griffith (R., Va.), and House Subcommittee on Health chairman Brett Guthrie (R., Ky.) will join Wenstrup in asking questions of Daszak at the hearing next month.
Under the Trump administration, the NIH cut funding to EcoHealth over its controversial coronavirus-research program until that funding was restored by the Biden-era NIH last year. In 2021, the NIH strongly stated that EcoHealth’s research did not lead to the pandemic outbreak.
“Dr. Daszak’s closed door testimony raised serious concerns about EcoHealth Alliance’s relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Wenstrup said in a statement provided to National Review. “Even after the Select Subcommittee reminded Dr. Daszak that he could be subject to criminal prosecution if he lied to the Committees, Dr. Daszak made numerous claims that seemed to be inconsistent with outside evidence and previous revelations.”
“We are looking forward to an honest forum where the American people can hear directly from the President of EcoHealth Alliance and finally receive the answers about the origins of COVID-19 that they deserve,” he added.
Daszak must provide an extensive list of documents and communications — as they pertain to Covid-19 origins, gain-of-function research in Wuhan, and the “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” grant, among other records — to the committees over the course of April.
“It appears that Dr. Daszak wasn’t telling the full story to us,” Griffith said. “I would urge him to be more forthcoming about precisely where and when his organization was planning to conduct research, since it is a federal crime to lie to Congress.”