Biden Administration Stonewalls COVID-19 Investigations

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned Samantha Power, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on the agency’s inability to turn over information requested by Republican Senators on the origins of COVID-19.

“In September of last year, I wrote Ms. Power or USAID a request asking for records from the PREDICT program. These are not classified. These are simply records of scientific research. And we want to read the grants to find out what they were doing and whether the research was dangerous or not. The response I got from your agency was USAID will not be providing any documents at this time.

“They’re just unwilling to give documents on scientific grant proposals. We’re paying for it. They’re asking for $745 million more in money, and we get no response.

“20 million people died around the world. You’re supposed to be an agency that cares about the death of people around the world. We, you know, talk about starvation and famine and 20 million people died from a virus. And you won’t give us the basic information about what grants you’re funding around the world and who you’re funding.”

“The American people think this, that because you won’t respond because you respond with a non-response, that you have something to hide. I don’t know if you have anything to hide or not. I want to see every grant proposal that had to do with coronaviruses that went to China from the U.S. government, from all facets of the U.S. government and every bit of the Biden administration is stonewalling us and will not give us the information…You are not being honest.”

Background:

While Dr. Paul had the opportunity to question Administrator Power today, this isn’t just a USAID problem of concealing information, this is a Biden administration-wide problem in which there is a concerted effort to withhold critical information from Congress on the origins of COVID-19.

Recently, Dr. Paul and more than 20 Republican Senators sent five separate letters to various members of the Biden administration requesting previous outstanding requests for agency records relating to federally funded work involving dangerous pathogens, including grant awards to EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and other entities in China.

The letters were sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of the Department of Human Health Services Xavier Becerra, Secretary of the Department of Defense Lloyd Austin, Acting Director of the National Institutes of Health Lawrence Tabak, and Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development Samantha Power.

The requested information in the letters were due back to the Senators by April 10, 2023. To date, none of the agencies have provided the Senators with the requested materials.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Paul has sent dozens of letters to federal agencies requesting documents relating to the origins of COVID-19, gain-of-function research, and the U.S. governments culpability in funding risky virus enhancing research that likely caused COVID-19. The American people deserve transparency, and Dr. Paul will continue to leave no stone unturned in search of accountability.