Congress
Sen. Paul subpoenas 14 agencies over Covid origin
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee subpoenaed 14 agencies in mid-January about the origin of Covid-19 and risky research conducted at a lab in China with U.S. funding, its chair, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), announced Monday.
The list of agencies includes the National Institutes of Health, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI and the CIA, among others.
The subpoenas were issued in the last days of the Biden administration and before the CIA announced it had decided that it was more likely a lab leak that caused the pandemic than an infected animal that spread the virus to people. Previously, the CIA had said it couldn’t conclude with certainty how the pandemic started.
Paul said he still needs answers about who at NIH allowed U.S. funds to be spent at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese research facility in the city where Covid first emerged, in the wake of former President Joe Biden giving a preemptive pardon to Anthony Fauci, the long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
NIAID, part of NIH, funded research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute.
Paul also said he wanted to know why that grant, to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, wasn’t scrutinized by a committee in charge of assessing risky research, which involves making certain pathogens deadlier or more transmissible. EcoHealth collaborated with the Wuhan Institute on coronavirus research. HHS this month banned EcoHealth and its former president, Peter Daszak, from receiving U.S. funding for the next five years.
“The goal of the investigation will be to critique the process that allowed this dangerous research, that may have led to the pandemic, to occur in a foreign country under unsafe protocols and to ensure that there is sufficient oversight and review going forward, making sure a mistake of this magnitude never happens again,” Paul said in a statement.
Fauci and other NIH officials have testified in congressional hearings that the research in Wuhan did not meet the criteria of risky research known as “gain-of-function” that the panel Paul referred to, the P3CO committee, reviews.
Fauci and the officials have also said the research conducted in Wuhan couldn’t have sparked the pandemic because the virus Chinese researchers were experimenting with was far different than the one that causes Covid.
Why it matters: Paul’s announcement is part of a wider effort by congressional Republicans to investigate whether the pandemic started due to a lab leak, as many of them believe.
His requests for information are likely to get a more welcome reception from the agencies now that President Donald Trump is in charge of them.
Three U.S. intelligence agencies — the CIA, the FBI and the Department of Energy — lean toward the lab leak theory, albeit with low or moderate confidence, while other intelligence agencies back the natural origin theory or can’t come to a conclusion.
There’s no conclusive proof for either theory.
Nonetheless, Paul wants to better regulate risky research funded by the U.S. government.
The Homeland Security Committee approved his Risky Research Review Act, with near unanimous support during the last congressional term.
Paul told Blue Light News last week that he plans to reintroduce it in committee and that he is working with counterparts in the House to have a companion bill introduced there.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley rescheduled a planned vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general late Friday in a preemptive move as negotiations between the Trump administration and GOP holdouts continue.
The vote, now set for Tuesday after a scheduled Thursday vote was postponed, isn’t an indication that a deal allowing for Blanche’s confirmation is near, so much as it is a nod to Judiciary Committee rules that require three days of notice for a panel meeting.
There is no sign that President Donald Trump is about to acquiesce to the unflinching demands of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wants a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS substantially pared back.
Cornyn, who lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed candidate, wants the Justice Department to nullify a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and limit the scope of a tax audit immunity component of the pact.
Trump told reporters earlier Friday the fund is “dead” but added “I wish it weren’t.”
“I’d like to see them compensated,” he added, referring to people he considers victims of government abuse, including participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
To advance Tuesday, Blanche needs to pick up Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another senator on the panel with similar concerns. He can’t lose any GOP votes if he wants to be reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee.
“Chairman Grassley wants Todd Blanche’s nomination to be successful,” said a Judiciary Committee spokesperson, who declined to be named. “Noticing the markup gives more time for the White House to secure the votes for the President’s nominee. Grassley would like to see Blanche confirmed before the August recess as he has an excellent record restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is zeroing in on one of House Republicans’ biggest contests — a purple district in Nebraska — when he starts his recess campaign sprint.
Scalise will travel to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District in the Omaha area for an event with Republican Brinker Harding in the coming days, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter granted anonymity to share plans not yet made public. Republicans are digging in to defend the seat, which Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential race and is among Democrats’ best pick up opportunities this fall as they seek to flip the House.
Harding is running against Democratic consultant Denise Powell to replace retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon. Bacon, a moderate-leaning Republican, flipped the Omaha district red in 2016.
After Nebraska, Scalise is planning to travel across the country throughout August, including to defend GOP incumbents Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ and Zach Nunn’s key battleground seats in Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts and Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District.
He’ll boost candidates working to flip blue districts like Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, Derek Merrin in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District and Mike LiPetri in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
Scalise also plans to travel to Michigan, Colorado, South Carolina and Texas for campaign events over the August recess.
President Donald Trump goaded John Cornyn on social media Friday morning, accusing the Texas senator of withholding his vote on Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination in retaliation for Trump’s central role in his political demise.
Cornyn, who lost his May primary to Texas’ scandal-ridden attorney general, the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton, has threatened to block Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee until the White House promises to permanently shelve its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” in writing — something Trump appears unwilling to do.
“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called “Fund,” which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Several Republicans bristled at the fund, which could have been deployed to compensate Americans who faced charges after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and which gives the president and his family audit immunity over taxes. At his July confirmation hearing, Blanche said that the fund, part of a settlement the president reached with the IRS, was defunct. But the administration has been “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement, Cornyn told reporters Thursday.
Trump signaled his continued support for the Jan 6 rioters on Friday.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” he wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”
On Thursday, the president suggested that he could punt a Senate vote on Blanche until after Cornyn — and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — leaves the chamber at the end of the year. Cornyn, however, suggested on social media that there are other Republican senators with concerns about the fund.
“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” Cornyn told reporters.
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