WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers are not simple federal documents from administration officials that could shed light on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic that swept the world in 2020 and killed millions.
At a hearing Tuesday, Senate Republicans expressed frustration that the National Institutes of Health has been slow to provide key documents similar to the outbreak amid recent revelations that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab.
Concerns about the origin of COVID stem from the fact that the Department of Energy found that there is “low confidence” in believing that the virus leaked from a lab in China. Senators pushed for the documents at the time of Colleen Shogan’s nomination hearing, President Joe Biden’s choice to be America’s next archivist.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the most sensible Republican on the Senate Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee, said he sent more than a dozen letters to NIH officials requesting documents similar to the origins of COVID-19, and won none.
“This is vital because we are still struggling to get data from the NIH,” he said. “You wouldn’t think a clinical organization would release documents, but it does. “
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Republicans pressed Shogan on how he would act nonpartisanly to hold the NIH accountable and download documents similar to COVID origins.
The hearing was the moment when Shogan gave the impression before the committee that she was considered as an archivist for the federal firm that has records for the executive branch. Republicans had said in the past that she was too partisan to hold office and did not vote for it. Verification.
The National Archives serves primarily as a repository for the Federal Archives. Shogan said it is the agencies themselves that are to blame for sorting and declassifying records, though he promised Paul that, if confirmed, he would work to speed up the declassification of “old records. “”
“It would not be the direct duty of the American archivist,” he said. “But nevertheless, at the National Archives, the main price is transparency, so I will respond to any request I may have respecting the law. “. “
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Paul stated that NIH is not cooperating to provide information and records similar to the COVID outbreak to the Senate and considers records management to be the independent company that will need to protect records.
“We want in a nonpartisan position to say, ‘We want to make sure they don’t destroy the records there (NIH),'” he said.
Because many are designated secret or heavily redacted, it makes surveillance difficult, he said.
“I think the biggest problem is that everything is classified,” Paul said. “We classify everything. The White House menu is meant to be ranked, so I mean we have too much rating. “
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Committee member Ron Johnson, R-Wis. , asked whether Shogan, as an archivist, would act on records requests from minority lawmakers (in this case, Republicans).
Shogan said he would respond to all requests in accordance with the law.
“The National Archives has the archives of the United States for other Americans,” he said. “But the other Americans, those are your files. And I look forward to sharing them with as many Americans as possible while respecting the law. “. “
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The Department of Energy discovered this week that it is conceivable that the COVID-19 pandemic began after an unintentional leak at a lab in China, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
There have been theories about how the virus spread, from jumping from animals to humans to fleeing a lab where scientists were studying coronavirus.
The branch of power found with “low confidence” that the pandemic peak likely began after researchers studied the coronaviruses in a clinical lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and possibly became inflamed. USA TODAY also cannot independently verify reports.