Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said that the intelligence community did not admit that COVID-19 came from a lab in China because it did not want to side with Donald Trump.
Ratcliffe, testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Tuesday morning, said that he didn’t feel that intelligence agencies were being fully truthful when it came to the origins of the virus.
The Trump-era DNI pushed for those within the intelligence community (IC) to ‘put politics aside’ and ‘speak the truth about what happened’ that led to the COVID-19 outbreak.
‘The challenges that I and other senior Trump administration officials encountered while in office included legitimate concerns about our closely held sources and methods of intelligence, as well as illegitimate roadblocks that related to professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics,’ Ratcliffe said during his opening statement to the panel on Tuesday.
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe (pictured testifying before the COVID-19 origins panel Tuesday) said Biden and the intelligence community don’t want to assess that COVID-19 originated from a Chinese lab because it would have ‘enormous geopolitical implications’ and confirm that Donald Trump was right
He said that there is overwhelming proof that COVID-19 was created and leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China
He added that the confusion was furthered ‘when a lab leak assessment was initially labeled falsely and falsely reported with near unanimity as a conspiracy theory by conflicted science, scientists and by mainstream press, while also being censored as disinformation by social media giants.’
Ratcliffe said that the IC and Biden administration doesn’t want to release proof that the virus originated in China both because it would confirm Trump’s claims and because it could have ‘enormous geopolitical implications’ with the Chinese Communist Party.
The testimony comes the day after yet another congressional report on the origins of the virus was published on Monday.
The 300-page report from a subcommittee of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee concluded that the pandemic was likely caused by at least two lab leaks from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
Panel member Sen. Roger Marshall, ranking member of the Primary Health and Retirement Security Subcommittee published the bombshell report, which notes there are no known naturally-occurring incidents of COVID-19.
Marshall, a doctor by trade, said the report is crucial in ‘exposing the deception of those that sought to conceal how this pandemic started.’
The report says the theory claiming COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans can no longer hold the ‘presumption of accuracy.’
Ratcliffe appeared at the hearing alongside Trump-era State Department official David Feith, who was deputy assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Dr. Mark Lowenthal, who served as assistant director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production.
Trump was accused by Democrats during the hearing of stoking racial hatred by calling the virus the ‘China virus’ and ‘Kung Flu’ while asserting his claims that the COVID-19 virus was created as a bioweapon in the Wuhan lab
Despite years of trying to assert that the virus came from another means other than a lab leak from Wuhan, China, Ratcliffe notes that three-and-a-half years into the pandemic, the only conclusion that can be made is that it originated in the lab.
‘Internally, national and electoral politics were also influencing the analysis of our intelligence on China within the IC as reflected in the January 6, 2021 report by the intelligence community’s analytic Ombudsman,’ Ratcliffe noted. ‘As a career non political official, the Ombudsman found, quote, analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the Trump administration’s policies, saying in effect, ‘I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,’ end quote.’
But Ratcliffe says the CIA does have a conclusion, but just refuses to release it because it would confirm claims Trump and conservatives were making all along.
‘To this day, the CIA, which I believe is unquestionably the world’s premier spy agency with an unrivaled capacity to acquire information, has continued to state that it does not have enough information to make any formal assessment,’ Ratcliffe said.
‘Put it bluntly, I think this is unjustifiable and a reflection – not that the agency can’t make an assessment with any competence – but that it won’t.’
He continued: ‘Some three and a half years later, the only plausible assessment the agency could make with any level of confidence is that a virus which killed over a million Americans originated in a Chinese lab, whose research included work for the Chinese military – and such an assessment would obviously have enormous geopolitical implications that I believe the current administration does not want to face head on.’
Democrats on the COVID-19 origins panel said during the hearing Tuesday that Trump tried to stoke racial division by calling coronavirus the ‘China Virus’ and ‘Kung Flu’, something that GOP panel member Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene vehemently contended.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk