Congresswoman Claudia Tenney Calls on Pelosi and Biden to Hold China Accountable

Washington D.C. – Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (NY-22), member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released the following statement regarding the Committee GOP's additional findings on COVID-19’s origin.

“My Republican colleagues and I on the Foreign Affairs Committee released a report this week detailing COVID-19’s origin from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Communist Party’s extensive efforts to cover it up. With these facts now in hand, it’s time to act," said Congresswoman Claudia Tenney."Republicans in Congress have introduced several comprehensive bills to hold China accountable and deliver justice to the American people, but Speaker Pelosi refuses to bring them up for consideration. As Pelosi continues to stonewall in Congress, President Biden is not doing any better. He must take action to hold the CCP and institutions that were complicit in COVID’s spread like the World Health Organization accountable. If this happened once, it can happen again. Every day Speaker Pelosi and President Biden fail to act, the American people are at grave risk. Over 600,000 Americans died from COVID-19, including over 1,300 New Yorkers in my community. They deserve justice.”

Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Michael McCaul, released the Republican Addendum this week to the COVID Origins Report. The addendum makes clear that gain-of-function research was happening at the Wuhan Lab in unsafe conditions. It also makes clear that the Wuhan Lab had the ability to modify coronaviruses without leaving a trace as early as 2016. Based on this and other evidence, the Republican Addendum concludes that COVID-19 was accidentally released from the Wuhan Lab sometime prior to September 12, 2019. Read the full report here. 

Earlier this week when he announced the release of the addendum, Ranking Member McCaul made the following statement: "As we continue to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe it’s time to completely dismiss the wet market as the source of the outbreak. Instead, as this report lays out, a preponderance of the evidence proves that all roads lead to the WIV,” said Ranking Member Michael McCaul. “We know gain-of-function research was happening at the WIV and we know it was being done in unsafe conditions. We also now know the head of the Chinese CDC and the director of the WIV’s BSL-4 lab publicly expressed concerns about safety at PRC labs in the summer of 2019. It is our belief the virus leaked sometime in late August or early September 2019. When they realized what happened, Chinese Communist Party officials and scientists at the WIV began frantically covering up the leak, including taking their virus database offline in the middle of the night and requesting more than $1 million for additional security."

McCaul added: "Now is the time to use all of the tools the U.S. government has to continue to root out the full truth of how this virus came to be. This was the greatest coverup of all time and has caused the deaths of more than four million people around the world, and people must be held responsible.”

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