The House unanimously passed a bill that would force the Biden administration to declassify all information it has gathered on the origins of COVID-19 as lawmakers question whether the virus originated in nature or as a result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
The legislation's passage marks a striking departure from the early days of the pandemic when the lab leak hypothesis was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Since then, the nation's 18 intelligence agencies have said both theories are plausible, yet the debate continues to divide the intelligence and scientific communities.
HAWLEY LAUGHS OFF CHINESE LETTER IMPLORING SENATOR TO SCRAP COVID-19 ORIGIN ACT
The COVID Origins Act passed the House in a 419-0 vote on Friday after the Senate unanimously passed it on March 1. The bill now heads to Joe Biden’s desk for his signature. The president has not yet indicated whether he would veto the legislation.
The measure requires the director of national intelligence to declassify all information it has gathered on the possible links between the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Wuhan Institute of Virology to ensure lawmakers can avoid a similar incident in the future.
Although the bill was able to garner overwhelming support on the House floor, Democrats and Republicans engaged in a drawn-out debate before casting their votes on Friday. Several Republicans in their speeches sought to blame not only the Chinese government but also some U.S. officials, namely Dr. Anthony Fauci.
"Big government bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci abused their positions of power to disguise and distort the facts and a further tyrannical approach to our country," said Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) of the former director of the National Institutes of Health. "Fauci knew as early as March of 2020 that coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. He spent the next three years dodging, misleading, mischaracterizing the possibility and even using American taxpayer dollars to pay for studies to discredit that very thing."
Several Democrats pushed back on that allegation, warning GOP lawmakers not to promote theories "rooted in uncertainty."
"We shouldn't be so certain ... that we're willing to impugn the character and motives of other Americans, especially if those Americans are in positions of responsibility that need to be trusted in the next pandemic," said Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT). "We just don't know. And we're entitled to speculate, we're entitled to have a theory, but I would just urge caution about impugning people's motives, impugning their character, based on those theories."
The bill was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) earlier this month, reviving his previous efforts to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic. The legislation stoked tensions with Chinese officials, who implored the Missouri Republican this week to withdraw it from consideration.
Li Xiang, a counselor with the Chinese Embassy in the United States, sent a letter to Hawley’s office on Wednesday to demand he retract the bill, accusing the lawmaker of politicizing COVID-19 and placing blame for the pandemic solely on the Chinese government. Li specifically targeted Hawley’s bill for stating a “reason to believe” the pandemic originated inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology, rejecting that theory as being “extremely unlikely.”
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Hawley’s bill builds on previous efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Missouri Republican introducing a similar bill in the last Congress. That bill passed the Senate unanimously but failed to make it to the House floor for consideration.
Hawley reintroduced the bill in early March after a report from the Department of Energy concluded that the coronavirus likely originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, prompting an uproar from several conservatives who voiced similar theories early on in the pandemic.