As U.S. lawmakers continue to seek answers about how the COVID-19 pandemic first began, former Republican staffers are releasing details from their own independent investigations, putting pressure on the Biden administration to declassify sensitive intelligence.
President Joe Biden signed a law in late March that requires the declassification of intelligence on the origins of COVID, but that intelligence has yet to be made public. The push for greater transparency around U.S. findings related to the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, comes as scientists and security experts have released conflicting reports based on publicly-available information and the White House separately grapples with one of the most damaging intelligence leaks in a decade.
Bloomberg News reviewed a new report of more than 300 pages, prepared at the request of former Republican Senator Richard Burr, which demands additional investigation into COVID’s origins and is likely to fuel interest in currently-classified intelligence. A team of Republican staffers on a health committee Burr previously served on spent 18 months investigating COVID’s origins and released an executive summary of their findings in November. However, their complete, 300-plus page report was never released before Burr left office.
