(TrueTrendNews.com) – Republicans in a House subcommittee have called for a criminal probe into Dr. Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance.
The nonprofit—whose mission is to keep infectious diseases away from people, animals, and the environment—is being scrutinized for its research related to COVID-19 and its origins. On Wednesday May 1, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic questioned Daszak at a hearing and subsequently “recommends” that he be investigated.
Amid the probe into the origins of the pandemic that shook the globe and sparked tremendous controversy and accusations of corruption in the United States, the subcommittee publicized a lengthy report—including transcripts of interviews featuring National Institute of Health (NIH) employees connected to research conducted by EcoHealth.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a Republican from Ohio who serves as the subcommittee’s chairman, found in his probe that the nonprofit was awarded millions of dollars from federal grants, enabling it to fund research throughout the world. Part of this funding was a designated $4 million for a project with the NIH that looked into the “risk of bat coronavirus emergence.”
Both parties in the legislature agreed that Daszak’s testimony was conflicting. Wenstrup emphasized this during the recent hearing, saying that EcoHealth delayed its “routine progress report” by almost two years, did not report the “potentially dangerous experiment” from the notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology, and participated in “risky” gain-of-function research with taxpayer dollars.
Additionally, the subcommittee found that Daszak “omitted” facts about what access he had to “unanalyzed virus samples” from the Wuhan lab in order to have the NIH “reinstate” his research grant. The EcoHealth president was also described as “less-than-cooperative” when engaging with the subcommittee.
A May 1 press release from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability stated “recommendations” from the subcommittee, including Daszak being “formally debarred” and investigated as well as improving “biosafety and biosecurity” in research and accountability for “grant compliance” among scientists.
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