The idea that bioweapons research caused Covid was debunked, people say. But it wasn't. New documents show scientists sought to insert a furin cleavage site right where it exists on SARS-CoV-2, and they'd been funded in the past by Anthony Fauci, who oversaw bioweapons research.
US And Chinese Scientists Made Plans To Engineer Coronaviruses Like SARS-CoV-2, New Documents Show
Was EcoHealth Alliance’s 2018 DEFUSE proposal a blueprint for bioweapons-related experiments that led to the Covid-19 lab leak?
Shi Zhengli, “the bat woman of China,” who oversaw Wuhan Institute of Virology’s coronavirus research and engineering; Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, arriving at the U.S Capitol for the first of two days of interviews before of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on January 8, 2024 ; Dr. Ralph Baric, University of North Carolina (Getty Images)
Last year Public and Racket reported that sources in the US government were “100%” confident that Covid-19’s patients zero worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and conducted risky gain-of-function experiments there. This lab received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based nonprofit. In 2018, EcoHealth Alliance applied for a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called “DEFUSE” that would involve Shi Zhengli’s lab group at WIV and Ralph Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC).
Now, US Right to Know has obtained a full cache of notes and drafts from the DEFUSE grant proposal through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. These documents reveal that the features of SARS-CoV-2 closely resemble the work described in EcoHealth Alliance’s proposal. SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site primed the virus for easy transmissibility among humans and is absent from the closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2.
The DEFUSE records show that UNC and WIV scientists wanted to insert a furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. What’s more, a 2022 preprint analysis determined that SARS-CoV-2 was assembled in six fragments with the restriction enzyme BsmBI. The new documents show that the DEFUSE team planned to use six segments to make synthetic viruses and ordered BSmBI from New England Biolabs.
In response to the release, Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, wrote that his group “had the misfortune of predicting” that a SARS-like virus with features of SARS-CoV-2 “had the potential to emerge in China & become pandemic. It did. Rather than taking these prescient ideas seriously, we’ve had 4 [years] of attacks.”
Image from DEFUSE grant proposal.
It’s true that the UNC-WIV collaboration was “predicting” the emergence of a virus in their proposal, and it’s true that the proposal is not an explicit plan to engineer SARS-CoV-2.
But the purpose of the DEFUSE group’s work was to create chimeric viruses, which are viruses with genetic material from two or more different viruses, with the same “predicted” features in order to develop protections against its “predictions.” A specific proposal of the DEFUSE grant was to use its engineering research to make an inoculating aerosol that could be sprayed into bat caves in China.
Proponents of the natural origin theory have argued that the DEFUSE grant is irrelevant to the origins debate because DARPA did not approve it, but it is often the case that scientists apply for grants to fund work they are already doing or projects that resemble experiments they have already started.
And the DEFUSE documents reveal specific work that one would expect, if not properly contained, could result in a biological accident. The group wanted to find receptor-binding domains (RBD) with the potential to infect human cells. Baric was going to engineer five full-length SARS-related viruses and 20 chimeric SARS-related viral spike proteins per year and test their ability to infect human cells.
Notes suggest that Baric had already covertly engineered SARS-related spike proteins and chimeras, but this work is not published in scientific journals. Baric, the notes say, “has already generated SARS-like chimeras w/ RBD from group of bat viruses called 293 (for S1) which is 20% different than epidemic strains.”
The scientists knew this work was risky. As US Right to Know reported in December after releasing a limited set of DEFUSE documents, Baric left a comment on the grant proposal stating, “In the US, these recombinant SARS-CoV are studied under BSL3 [Biosafety Level 3], not BSL2 [Biosafety Level 2], especially important for those that are able to bind and replicate in primary human cells.” In China, he wrote, these experiments could be done under BSL2, but “US researchers will likely freak out.” Indeed, some of Shi’s NIH-funded work engineering viruses was carried out under BSL-2 conditions in Wuhan.
Despite this risk, the DARPA project manager reviewing the proposal was not initially concerned about the group’s work in China and indicated that DARPA did not view the research as too risky.
Although many virologists insist that this gain-of-function research is not connected to Covid-19, there is good reason to be skeptical of their claims. Last year Public and Racket released a trove of documents showing that a group of scientists who publicly promoted the natural origin theory of Covid-19 privately believed that a lab leak was the virus’ probable origin. These scientists wrote a highly influential paper in March 2020, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which purported to debunk the lab leak hypothesis, and they briefed intelligence agencies about their paper.
Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), held financial power over some of these scientists, and private communications show that Fauci and other “higher ups” in government pressured the papers’ authors. A whistleblower has alleged that Fauci influenced the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s origins investigation, and that CIA officials changed their own analysts’ conclusions to favor natural origin.
Why were Baric and Shi conducting risky experiments to engineer virus features that could infect humans? What was the purpose of this research? And why would federal government agencies potentially want to fund it?
In parts 2 and 3 of this major new piece by @galexybrane learn how:
— Bioweapons research, including for ethnic targeting, has been a focus of intense interest by the US and Chinese militaries for decades;
— Fauci quietly oversaw bioweapons research since 2003;
— Research to make viruses more contagious continues today with grossly insufficient regulation and outsized arrogance by scientists.
"This historical evidence, as well as the scientific record, suggests that individuals involved in biodefense and pandemic preparedness may have been responsible for engineering the SARS-CoV-2 virus," writes @galexybrane.
"The defense and preparedness push that gained funding and momentum after 9/11 appears to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In attempting to stop pathogens from transmitting to humans, scientists appear to have achieved the opposite."
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Bravo to the Supreme Court for upholding the right of the accused under Alien Enemies Act to due process. "For all the rhetoric... today’s order & per curiam confirm... detainees... are entitled to... an opportunity to challenge their removal. The only question is which court..."
The Court adds, "Although judicial review under the AEA is limited, we have held that an individual subject to detention and removal under that statute is entitled to ‘judicial review’ ... as well as whether he or she 'is in fact an alien enemy fourteen years of age or older.'"
Kavanagh: "...all nine Members of the Court agree that judicial review is available. The only question is where that judicial review should occur."
Trump is losing support from Republican “financiers”, say the media. First, did it ever cross their mind that Wall Street may not represent the American interest? Of course not. Second, @FT irresponsibly omitted the small detail that Ken Langone’s @HomeDepot is long Vietnam.
Perhaps the most entertaining part of the Trump tariffs is how they have brought together financiers and @BernieSanders , thus exposing just how full of baloney his whole “oligarchy” shtick is.
@BernieSanders Why are we taxpayers funding this dishonest partisan garbage?
Not a single mainstream media outlet has acknowledged that Bernie is with the oligarchs. And that’s fine but don’t make pay to just repeat their propaganda.
One FBI employee involved in the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop was Bradley Benavides (ctr-intel div). Weeks earlier he played key role in an apparent FBI scheme to smear @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley — who were investigating Hunter — as tools of Putin. Sinister.
According to @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley , Benavides and a colleague on August 6, 2020 provided "an unnecessary briefing on behalf of the FBI and Intelligence Community on matters purportedly related to the senators’ investigation into Hunter Biden."
The FBI said it didn't interfere in the 2020 election, but it did. It tricked Twitter & Facebook into censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. Now, newly released chat messages show the FBI issued a "gag order" after an employee accidentally confirmed the laptop's authenticity.
This is a CatherineHerridgeReports @C__Herridge / Public Investigation
In 2024, an FBI official admitted to House investigators that an FBI employee had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Twitter on a conference call the morning of October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published a story about it.
“I recall that when the question came up, an intelligence analyst assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, the laptop is real’,” testified the then-Russia Unit Chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in a closed door transcribed interview.
“I believe it was an (Office of General Counsel) attorney assigned to the (Foreign Influence Task Force) stepped in and said, ‘We will not comment further on this topic.’”
For the first time, and with a change of administration, the FBI has now turned over to GOP House investigators the internal chat messages that show Bureau leadership actively silenced its employees.
The FBI, which had a special task force to counter foreign election interference, could have set the record straight by confirming the laptop was real and the subject of an ongoing criminal probe. Instead, FBI leadership allowed the false narrative about the laptop to gain momentum.
The FBI provided the chat messages to congressional investigators with heavy redactions.
Some of the redactions on the chats are marked “OGC AGC,” which appears to mean that they were made by the FBI’s Office of General Counsel and Associate General Counsel.
An individual whose name is blacked out, tells Elvis M. Chan, the San Francisco-based FBI special agent tasked with interacting with social media companies, there was a “gag order” on discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In a separate exchange, Chan is told “official response no commen(t).”
In the chat, the FBI officials showed awareness that the laptop may have contained evidence of criminal activity.
Asked Chan, “actually what kind of case is the laptop thing? corruption? campaign financing?”
Another FBI employee responds, “CLOSE HOLD —” after which the response is redacted.
To which Chan responds, “oh crap” appearing to underscore the serious nature of the probe, which included felony tax charges. Chan adds, “ok. It ends here”.
In the same conversation, Chan is asked if “Anyone discussing that NYPost article on the Biden’s?” Chan responds, “yes we are. c d confirmed an active investigation. No further comment.” “C D” is likely shorthand for the FBI’s Criminal Division.
Said another FBI employee, whose name was redacted by the Bureau, “please do not discuss biden matter.”
We asked for a response from the bureau and the FBI employees identified in the chat messages. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.
According to the IRS whistleblowers, DOJ prosecutors blocked standard investigative protocols that might have led to Joe Biden ahead of the presidential campaign.
“There were a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election,” said Joseph Ziegler, the IRS case agent on the Hunter Biden probe.. “And it related to the president's son. So not even the candidate.”
The FBI chat is cryptic and the heavy redactions make it difficult to discern context. For example, an employee says to Chan that “[redacted] has a gag order from [redacted]... got checked by [redacted] had to backtrack - sorry!”
Another cryptic exchange came from Laura Dehmlow, the FBI employee who told House investigators that an FBI employee had accidentally confirmed that the laptop was real. “WTF(redacted) No COMMENT.”
An employee whose name is also withheld wrote, “nope, just a domestic hit job, yay” to which Dehmlow responded, “Yup.”
The exchange may be referring to the FBI’s knowledge that the laptop was authentic and not a foreign “hack and leak” or “Russian information operation,” as 51 former senior intelligence officials alleged at the time.
The IRS whistleblowers said there was no basis for the statement from the former intelligence officials....
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The Twitter Files revealed that the FBI ran a sophisticated info operation aimed at convincing journalists and social media companies that the Hunter Biden laptop, which it had possessed since 2019, was the result of a Russian "hack and leak" operation.
The Right is a threat to democracy, the media says. But it isn’t. It’s winning elections and respecting constituitons. It’s the Left that is undermining democracy. It tried to jail Trump, is about to jail Bolsonaro, and just sentenced Le Pen to prison. This is a five alarm fire.
And when the Left can’t incarcerate a presidential candidate, it simply prevents them from running, for no good reason, and in flagrant violation of the law, as the totalitarian creeps just did in Romania.
The reason the court convicted @MLP_officielis because she is 10 points ahead of her nearest rival in the presidential race.