Jonathan Turley: The Covid Lab Leak Is a Scandal of Media and Government Censorship… Chinese Virologist Says CCP “Intentionally” Released COVID-19 Into World…Rand Paul Calls for Declassifying Documents…

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Below is my column in the New York Post on the Wall Street Journal revealing that the Department of Energy has concluded that Covid-19 likely originated from a Chinese lab. According to the report, American intelligence has found evidence to support the long-dismissed “lab theory.” This has led to another media “my bad” moment where news outlets are shrugging that the theory may not be a conspiracy or racist theory after all. As usual, there is little attention to the experts who were shredded for raising the theory or the reporters who insisted that this was a debunked conspiracy theory.

Here is the column:

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Energy Department has concluded that the COVID pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak.

The conclusion is reportedly based on a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. Many will be exploring why the scientific evidence of a lab leak was so slow to emerge from intelligence agencies.

However, for my part, the most alarming aspect was the censorship, not the science.

There will continue to be a debate over the origins of COVID-19, but now there will be a debate.

For years, the media and government allied to treat anyone raising a lab theory as one of three possibilities: conspiracy theorist or racists or racist conspiracy theorists.

Academics joined this chorus in marginalizing anyone raising the theory. One study cited the theory as an example of “anti-Chinese racism” and “toxic white masculinity.”

As late as May 2021, the New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory as “racist.”

She embodies the model of the new “advocacy journalism” at the Times. Reporters who remained wedded to the dated view of objective journalism were purged from the ranks of The Times long ago.

Mandavilli and others made clear that reporters covering the theory were COVID’s little Bull Connors. She tweeted wistfully “someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”

However, one former New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade chastised his former colleagues for ignoring the obvious evidence supporting a lab theory as well as Chinese efforts to arrest scientists and destroy evidence that could establish the origin.

Others in academia quickly joined the bandwagon to assure the public that there is no scientific basis for their theory, leaving only racist or politics as the motivation behind the theory. In early 2020, with little available evidence, two op-eds in The Lancet in February and Nature Medicine went all-in on the denial front.

The Lancet op-ed stated, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says the Biden administration should declassify classified documents showing that scientists at the Department of Energy believe COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.

“Classified documents leaked (they should be declassified!) showing scientists at DOE believe COVID leaked from Wuhan Lab,” Paul tweeted on Monday, circulating a Wall Street Journal story published over the weekend reporting the Energy Department has concluded the COVID-19 pandemic likely came from a lab leak.

The Journal reported the Energy Department concluded the pandemic arouse from a mishap at a Chinese lab based on new intelligence. It matches the FBI’s conclusion from a 2021 analysis that the pandemic originated from a lab leak. The Energy Department study reportedly offered the conclusion with low confidence.

The U.S. intelligence community is split on the conclusion that the deadly virus leaked from a Chinese lab. Four other federal agencies believe that it likely jumped to humans from an animal host outside a lab. Those findings are also reportedly made with low confidence.

A Chinese virologist who sounded the alarm in early 2020 about where the coronavirus came from said Monday the U.S. has reached a “milestone achievement” after a classified intelligence report from the Energy Department reportedly found the virus most likely originated in a Chinese lab.

Dr. Li Meng Yan told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in September 2020 that the Chinese government intentionally manufactured and released the COVID-19 virus, leading to nationwide shutdowns and deaths.

Host Tucker Carlson asked Yan on Monday if she still believes the virus was intentionally released nearly three years after the pandemic started.

“Of course, it was not an accident,” she responded.

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