Senate Intelligence Committee member Tom Cotton says evidence points to laboratories in China as the source of the coronavirus pandemic.
“While the Chinese government denies the possibility of a lab leak, its actions tell a different story,” the Arkansas Republican wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “The Chinese military posted its top epidemiologist to the Institute of Virology in January. In February Chairman Xi Jinping urged swift implementation of new biosafety rules to govern pathogens in laboratory settings. Academic papers about the virus’s origins are now subject to prior restraint by the government.”
American intelligence officials are investigating whether the coronavirus pandemic first leaked out of a Chinese government lab, Cotton wrote.
“The U.S. government is investigating whether the Covid-19 virus came from a government laboratory in Wuhan, China,” Cotton wrote.
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Cotton, one of the first U.S. lawmakers to warn that the novel coronavirus could develop into a dangerous pandemic, has suggested such an origin since January. His latest offering marshals a litany of Chinese government actions, along with misgivings about the coronavirus research underway at the lab that predated the crisis, to suggest that Chinese officials are still lying about the origins of the contagion.
His argument underscores the possibility that the pandemic occurred because of poor safety procedures and incompetence at the lab rather than any organic process.
“This evidence is circumstantial, to be sure, but it all points toward the Wuhan labs,” he wrote in the Tuesday op-ed. “Thanks to the Chinese coverup, we may never have direct, conclusive evidence — intelligence rarely works that way — but Americans justifiably can use common sense to follow the inherent logic of events to their likely conclusion.”
