Biden State Department quietly ended team’s work probing COVID origin

The Biden State Department ended an inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic that was investigating whether the virus stemmed from a leak out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Fox News has confirmed.

The Biden administration terminated the inquiry – which was being led out of the State Department’s arms control and verification bureau and initially launched at the request of former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – after being briefed on the team’s initial findings in February and March.

State Department spokesman Ned Price on Tuesday denied shutting down the inquiry: “There has been incorrect reporting that the Biden-Harris administration shut down an investigation by the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control and Verification (AVC) into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.” He said the team’s work ended after delivering a report in February and March, adding that “all relevant parts of the Department continue to work with the interagency on this matter.” …

Fox News has learned that David Asher was the contractor leading the investigation. Asher has a history of investigative work tracking money for the AQ Khan network, North Korea’s nuclear program, and top Al Qaeda leaders, but has fallen under scrutiny from former State Department officials. …

“We don’t know for certain what happened in Wuhan but we had every reason to investigate and ask questions,” Asher continued. “As the State Department’s Jan. 15 statement said – and as additional disclosures and expert analyses of the last few months have underscored – there is probable cause for deep suspicion.”

Asher, who left the State Department at the end of the Trump administration, had been hired as a contractor, but had helped to put together the Jan. 15 memo released by Pompeo, using declassified intelligence. CNN first reported the shutdown of the probe.

That memo said the Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborated on “secret projects” with China’s military, and claims that “despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects within China’s military” since “at least 2017.”

Asher told Fox News that “certainly the Chinese Communist Party engaged in a huge coverup over the stealth ability of COVID to transmit human-to-human.”