On her last day in office, Tulsi Gabbard releases ‘never-before-seen’ Covid-19 docs on China’s Wuhan lab

On her last day in office, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced the release of "never-before-seen" files related to the origins of Covid-19.

In a video posted on X on Friday, Gabbard claimed the documents showed that Dr Anthony Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief Medical Adviser to White House, provided millions of dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) for gain-of-function (GoF) research and then worked with politicised elements within the intelligence community to conceal the truth about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

Gabbard claimed Fauci's funding of GoF research was linked to big pharmaceutical companies and the pursuit of universal vaccines — the GoF research refers to the risky research involving modifying pathogens to give them features they did not originally have, such as increased transmissibility.

Gabbard also alleged that the documents showed Fauci lied to Congress under oath.

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Although Gabbard said the files were being released as part of President Donald Trump's commitment to maximum transparency, a review of the documents showed they were heavily redacted and comprised a large number of internal emails from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the wider intelligence community in which officials discussed Fauci's activities in the context of the pandemic.

While Gabbard has described the files as never before seen, US funding of the Wuhan lab has been documented for years — as Firstpost has previously reported.

Fauci's role in shaping the understanding of the virus' origin towards a natural source rather than a lab leak is also well known and already in the public domain. It has also been long documented that all hard evidence points to the Wuhan lab as the source of an accidental leak that caused the pandemic.

As Firstpost's Madhur Sharma previously reported, a US non-profit that frequently collaborated with the WIV, had submitted a proposal dubbed 'DEFUSE' for a grant with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which was eventually rejected. The proposal outlined research that, experts have said, provide a blueprint for creating Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 disease.

"The entire genome of Sars-CoV-2 aligns with what was outlined in DEFUSE. Almost every feature of the virus, from the spike protein to the furin cleavage site (FCS) and the insertion of restriction sites, matches with what was outlined in the DEFUSE proposal,” Prasenjit Ray, the whistleblower who uncovered Chinese cover-up of the Wuhan outbreak, previously told Sharma.

Ray further pointed that out that even the timeline of the outbreak in Wuhan and the filing of the DEFUSE proposal aligned perfectly. He said that “any viruses developed under DEFUSE protocols would have been ready by the time Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan, which also helps explain the timing of the outbreak”.

Fauci pursued a 3-step campaign to mislead world on Covid-19:  Gabbard

In her statement, Gabbard accused Fauci of running a three-step campaign to deceive the world about the pandemic.

Firstly, Fauci funded GoF research, according to Gabbard.

Second, Gabbard alleged that Fauci worked behind the scenes with hand-picked experts to push the intelligence community towards endorsing a natural animal origin for Covid-19 in order to conceal his involvement in funding GoF research in Wuhan.

Thirdly, Gabbard said Fauci projected himself as the leading American expert on the pandemic and "publicly pushed lies, disinformation, and censorship using every platform available now".

Moreover, Gabbard claimed that the ODNI received testimony from multiple intelligence community whistleblowers who reported retaliation for challenging the alleged manipulation of intelligence concerning the virus's origins. She said the testimonies revealed "a clear pattern of suppressing dissent, silencing critics, and burying the truth".