The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released declassified intelligence on the Wuhan lab and its likely links to the origins of COVID-19 on Friday night.
The release comes almost a week after after President Joe Biden missed the congressionally-mandated Sunday deadlinedeadline for making the information public.
The Friday night news dump comes days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping.
U.S. BLIND SPOT COULD LEAD TO CHINESE VICTORY IN TAIWAN
The House and Senate unanimously passed the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 in March, giving 90 days to declassify and release intelligence on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its connections to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.
The law instructed Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to “declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin” of COVID-19, including intelligence on the “activities performed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with or on behalf of the People's Liberation Army” and “coronavirus research or other related activities performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak” of SARS-CoV-2.
The legislation also told the Biden administration to hand over any information on “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in autumn 2019.”
In March, Biden said in his signing statement that his administration “will continue to review all classified information relating to COVID–19’s origins, including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology” and that his team “will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security.”
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has long been suspected by some as the source of the global pandemic that contributed to the deaths of more than one million Americans. The close relationship between the Wuhan lab and the Chinese military has been a focal point for congressional investigators.
FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed earlier this year the bureau has long believed with “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 originated at a Chinese government lab. It was also revealed earlier this year the Energy Department believes with “low confidence” that the virus started at a Wuhan lab.
Haines promised in March to share the Energy Department’s assessment with the House Intelligence Committee.
ODNI released an assessment in August 2021 stating that four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believed with "low confidence" that COVID-19 most likely had a natural origin.
ODNI's further declassified October 2021 report also included a section titled “The Case for the Laboratory-Associated Incident Hypothesis,” apparently a summary of the FBI’s argument.
Former DNI John Ratcliffe, who has long insisted that the intelligence is strong that COVID-19 originated at a Wuhan lab, called it “utter nonsense” in March to claim the CIA doesn’t have enough information to reach a conclusion on natural origin versus lab leak.
The State Department made it clear earlier this week that getting to the bottom of COVID's origins was not a key reason for Blinken’s China visit.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Blinken’s only mentions of coronavirus came in relation to the pandemic’s effect on the economy and the Biden administration’s desire for China to do well economically.