COVID-19 Mastermind and Lab Leak Denier Dr. Peter Daszak to Testify Before Congress on May 1

Set your calendars! Dr. Peter Daszak, the scientist RedState's Scott Hounsell described as "a real-life Bond villain" for his work weaponizing coronaviruses, is set to publicly testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on May 1. Daszak is the president and CEO of EcoHealth Alliance and worked with Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology on the very research many believe led to the development of the COVID-19 virus, and is largely responsible for the dismissal of the lab leak theory and censorship of those discussing it (including RedState).

READ: A Real-Life Bond Villain? Coronavirus Researcher Peter Daszak Is the Golden Thread Weaving Through Lab Leak Theory Dismissals

A brief synopsis of Daszak's involvement in the pandemic, from Scott's article linked above:

Dr. Peter Daszak funneled tens of millions of dollars in grants from the US government – including the Department of Defense – to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through his non-profit, EcoHealth Alliance.
Daszak performed gain-of-function research on SARS coronaviruses at WIV with Dr. Shi Zhengli, including on two strains nearly identical to COVID-19.
Daszak spearheaded the drafting and submission of a 2/19/20 letter in the Lancet from 27 scientists declaring that COVID-19 arose naturally, without declaring his conflict.
Many of the signatories of that letter had received emails from Daszak soliciting their signature and reminding them of all the research funding they’d received from EcoHealth Alliance.
Facebook’s COVID-19 fact-checker, Science Feedback, used Daszak as one of their “experts” to shut down lab leak theory discussion.
Daszak emailed Dr. Fauci in the early days of the pandemic, thanking him for shutting down the lab leak theory.
Daszak influenced numerous other letters and statements in scientific journals that declared a lab leak was impossible.
Daszak was selected to be a member of the WHO study team that declared it “highly unlikely” that the pandemic originated in a lab – without doing an actual investigation or seeing original documentation.

In January 2022 it was reported by Project Veritas that, according to a DARPA memo dated August 2021, "SARS-CoV-2 was created by an EcoHealth Alliance program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as suggested by the reporting surrounding the lab leak hypothesis. The details of this program have been concealed since the pandemic began. These details can be found in the EcoHealth Alliance proposal response to the DARPA PREEMPT program Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) HR00118S0017, dated March 2018 – a document not yet publicly disclosed." That proposal can now be found here.

RedState's Full Original Coverage of COVID-19 Origins

U.S. Right to Know obtained drafts of that proposal and emails with notes and discussions among the researchers that "reveal fresh details about the intended research." In summary, they learned:

Daszak appeared for a transcribed interview with the committee in 2023, but the committee says that newly-released emails call the veracity of those statements into question. As a result they asked him to appear at a public hearing on May 1 and to comply with requests to produce a large number of documents beforehand. From the Committee's press release:

EcoHealth—a U.S.-based non-profit whose mission is to prevent pandemics—used taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
During his closed-door transcribed interview with the Committees on November 14, 2023, Dr. Daszak made multiple statements inconsistent with documents and evidence reviewed by the Committees. This raises serious questions about the veracity of EcoHealth’s public statements, including its insistence that the research it funded at the WIV could not have caused the pandemic.
The Chairs are calling on Dr. Daszak to address the discrepancies in his testimony and publicly explain EcoHealth’s relationship with the WIV.

EcoHealth Alliance claims that the Committee's announcement is inaccurate:

The Energy & Commerce Committee’s announcement about this hearing continues to misrepresent the work of EcoHealth Alliance and makes several inaccurate allegations about Dr. Daszak’s previous public statements. Dr. Daszak looks forward to answering the Committee’s questions, clarifying the areas of misunderstanding, and informing them about the vital research that EcoHealth Alliance conducts globally.

However, Rutgers professor Dr. Richard Ebright, who's an expert in infectious diseases, biosafety, and pathology security, disagrees.

Contrary to the EcoHealth's "Statement," these are not "speculation" or "areas of misunderstanding." They are facts, and they warrant debarment from US-government funding and additional civil and criminal penalties.
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) April 5, 2024