Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., said Americans deserve answers about how the coronavirus crisis started and how to prevent something like this from ever happening again.
Barr made his comments in a column for Fox News posted Friday. He renewed his call, made Wednesday on Newsmax TV, for an investigation into China’s role in sparking the pandemic.
“So this month, I introduced House Concurrent Resolution 97, legislation that would establish a bipartisan, joint select committee to investigate the origins of and China handling of the COVID-19 outbreak,” he said in the column.
“The committee would be comprised of 20 members of Congress, 10 from the House and 10 from the Senate, led by two co-chairs, one appointed by the speaker of the House and one appointed by the Senate majority leader.”
He maintained that the focus on China is “well-founded.”
“Just over two years ago, diplomats from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a bioresearch laboratory in the Hubei Province,” he said. “The American officials were so alarmed by what they saw, they sent a series of sensitive but unclassified cables to the State Department, warning their superiors that Chinese scientists were performing highly risky research into “SARS-like coronaviruses in bats” using deficient safety procedures.”
He noted the U.S. intelligence community is “looking into this laboratory and Congress should as well.”
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.