Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Newsmax on Tuesday that the World Health Organization's investigation into the origins of COVID-19 is "a good start," but said that Congress should have its own "parallel" probe.
When asked about the White House's recent call for China to provide information to support the WHO's inquiry, Marshall said: "I think that's a good start and we need to do a parallel investigation at the same time here in United States, specifically in one of the Senate committees, the Health committee I'm on would be a great opportunity to investigate it. I'm just surprised so far we haven't."
White House press secretary Jen Psaki recently said during a press briefing that although the U.S. wants China to support the investigation, "What we can't do, and what I would caution anyone doing, is leaping ahead of an actual international process. We don't have enough data and information to jump to a conclusion at this point in time."
She added, "I think the family members of the loved ones whose lives have been lost, deserve accurate information."
Marshall told Tuesday's "American Agenda," "I am very much excited to hear Dr. [Anthony] Fauci [Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] and the White House both calling on a full-throated investigation. And by the way, the World Health Assembly is meeting this week and they're the ones that give the marching orders to the World Health Organization, so this would be a great time for us to put some extra pressure on them."
The senator said, "I think the whole key is that there will be another epidemic someday, another pandemic, so we think we discovered the origin of the virus and whether it was made in a lab for naturally occurring is gonna help us develop vaccines. So, I think this is very important from a scientific standpoint, but mostly so we could be better prepared for the next virus that as an outbreak like this."
Marshall said that when it comes to what kind of price China should pay if they misled the United States during the pandemic, the senator said, "I've always been praying a lot and my message from God is about forgiveness. I don't care about the price that they should pay right now, I just want to get to the truth. We can better prepare ourselves, but certainly there are folks up here that were talking about, ‘is there a price that China should should pay for this?' But I'm really just more interested in getting to the bottom of the investigation, figure out where it came from and it was manipulated in a lab or not."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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