Rep. McCaul: Covid origin 'worst cover-up in human history'

Maya Parthasarathy
·2 min read

Texas Rep. Mike McCaul on Sunday said it was "more likely than not" that the coronavirus originated from a lab accident, calling it the "worst cover-up in human history."

Bipartisan support has grown for a congressional probe into whether the virus originated in a Chinese lab following a Wall Street Journal report that three scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been hospitalized in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with the virus.

President Joe Biden last week ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day investigation into the claims, which were once considered a fringe conspiracy theory.

McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Biden's investigation "long overdue," on CNN's "State of the Union," but cautioned that it could be inconclusive because "they have destroyed everything at the lab."

Citing repeated examples of China's efforts to block information about Covid-19 as a reason to punish it, McCaul said the U.S. must stop buying certain crucial products from China.

"My response to this whole thing is supply chain," McCaul said. "We need to pull our supply chain out of the region, that being medical supply, rare earth mineral supply."

McCaul, along with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), proposed a bill, the CHIPS for America Act, that would support U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

"If we can pull these chains out of China, it will hurt them economically," McCaul said. "And that would be very punitive in nature."

Biden administration officials had previously said investigations into Covid-19's origins should be spearheaded by an independent group like the World Health Organization, but WHO's first effort was hindered because China would not share key lab records and data.

The Senate also unanimously adopted a measure from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) that would prohibit U.S. funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser under President Donald Trump, said it was essential to get answers about the origins of the pandemic.

"It could have emerged from a laboratory. It could have emerged from nature," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Both of those are valid, neither of them is supported by concrete evidence, but there's, there's a growing amount of circumstantial evidence, in particular, supporting the idea that this may have leaked from the laboratory."