Biden Admin Shut Down Covid Origin Investigation

Breaking news, the Biden administration shut down a State Department investigation into the origins of COVID-19, including how involved China and that Wuhan lab were.

They didn't like the initial results of the findings. We'll talk about that and more today on Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. We'll take your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. This is breaking news. It happened last night. It was reported, but you might not have seen this yet because of what's going on in California with that incident. There was an investigation opened by former Secretary of State, now Senior Counsel of Global Affairs at the ACLJ, Mike Pompeo at the State Department and their investigative team to look at the origins of COVID-19, the lab theory, and whether or not the Chinese military, how involved they were with the Wuhan lab. There is a connection there between their military and that lab. So again, looking at all options on the table about how this pandemic took over the world and shut down the world because there's still not a definitive answer.

There is not a definitive answer on the animal theory, on the wet market theory, on the lab-created theory, but there is now a renewed interest in the idea that this was lab-generated. And Dr. Fauci has shifted on this. The White House has shifted on this, but they are unwilling to investigate it on their own. So we had a U.S.-led investigation going on into the origins of COVID.

Understand when they terminated this. This is right from the CNN report. The decision to terminate the inquiry, which was run primarily out of the State Department's arms-controlled verification bureau, was made after Biden officials were briefed on the team's draft findings in February and March of this year. They didn't like the draft findings. They didn't like whatever that State Department investigative team found.

They didn't like that idea of putting that out. Yeah, and you can imagine what the State Department found. So the investigation is probably found at that point exactly what we're now learning, which is that this was not created in a wet market.

This was created by the lab in Wuhan, China, that it somehow, whether intentionally or weaponized, was leaked out or negligently leaked out, one of the three. And the Biden administration, now think about this for a moment, folks, shuts down the very investigation that was already ready to issue its final findings. And yet the administration comes in and says, don't issue those findings.

We're not satisfied with those findings, which means they didn't like what they were going to find. Exactly, and they didn't like what the initial draft findings were from this report. So you've got the shift now from, of course, the mainstream media, who was attacking Ted Cruz a year ago, May of 2020. This was Glenn Kessler, who's the head of their fact-checking unit, which is a joke, to put it mildly. Partisan hacks would be a better way to describe them. But they said, I fear Ted Cruz missed a scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for a virus to jump from the lab or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts and viewers can judge for themselves. So this is an attack on Ted Cruz, May of 2020.

Here we have yesterday, 2021. These are the fact-checkers at the Washington Post. They're liars, by the way, as we'll see what they do.

They make up news just like everyone else in that world. New fact-checker timeline, how the Wuhan lab leak theory suddenly became credible. Yeah, I mean, everybody has known from the beginning that this, the idea that it somehow just started a market at this strength, at this level. And I think what you have to look at is, could they have isolated a disease that they found? Yes. And made it much stronger in a lab? Yes. And that strong lab-created disease is the one that spreads. And that becomes, again, these are not out there theories.

They're realistic. I want to say congratulations to our very own Christy Stierhoff, who is an ACLJ lawyer, who is also the Virginia State Bar Young Lawyer of the Year. That is quite an accolade. We're very proud of her. I'm proud of her work here at the ACLJ. And congratulations to Christy for an award well earned.

Back with more in a moment. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms. That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work.

Become a member today. ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, Play on Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Rick Rinnell will be joining us in the next segment of the broadcast live to weigh in on all of this as well. We had Mike Pompeo on yesterday from our team. And this idea, again, that Mike Pompeo and the Trump administration began a State Department investigation into how COVID-19, the origins of it, how it spread, how it became a pandemic that has still paralyzed much of the world. While the U.S. is reopening and the U.S. is coming out of this, if you look at the rest of the world, it is not the case. I mean, Japan is supposed to host Olympics and their medical system has crumbled in just the past week. So different parts of the world are still dealing with this in a much more extreme way than maybe we are still here in the United States. But the Biden administration saw the initial fact-finding, saw the initial how this report was going, the draft findings of the report, didn't like those draft findings, shut down the U.S.-led investigation. Remember yesterday, Jen Psaki was pressed on that. Why is the U.S. not investigating it? We were. And the Biden administration shut it down.

I want to ask Dan Bennett, our Director of Governmental Affairs, this question because Senator Graham was addressing some of this just moments ago. Let me ask you the kind of, though, the sense people have to feel betrayed here. I mean, they were mocking President Trump. They were mocking Mike Pompeo.

They were mocking anybody that said this could have been an intentional act or it could have been a leak, a virus transmission right out of the lab, that they were working on this virus, now known as COVID-19. And yet a year later, all evidence points to that that's exactly what happened. And the Biden administration, and this is what people need to really understand, the Biden administration shuts down the very investigation that already had come to its draft conclusions. Yeah, Jay, anyone from the very beginning that brought up this theory was labeled a crackpot, and there were a number of them. I mean, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, a number of others, Marco Rubio. A lot of senators from the very beginning, Jay, said that this is something that has to be looked at.

And look, let's just zoom out just a little bit. I mean, if people really think about this, when a coronavirus that's found in bats and it leads to a worldwide pandemic and the first known cases are in the neighborhood of a lab that studies coronaviruses in bats, where would any reasonable person start that investigation? Of course they would start it in the lab. It's anything but a crackpot theory.

In fact, while we don't know for sure, Jay, of course it's the most obvious place where that virus originated. But yet, any senator, any member of the House who had that theory, who asked those questions, they were labeled a crackpot, they were labeled a fool, they were labeled a conspiracy theorist. And now, Jay, it's very interesting to note, it does look like the administration was on the verge of saying this is the most likely scenario. And I would tell you this, the American people deserve to know that because of how China handled the response to that. They need to know and the rest of the world needs to know how to respond to China. You know, the justification for this by the White House is that this was an ineffective use of resources. I mean, really, finding out how this virus originated and then was propagated out to the rest of the world was an ineffective use of resources.

I'll give you a list of ineffective uses of resources, but this would not be one of them. Now, we don't just talk about it here, so while we've been on the air, our team in FAN's office in Washington, D.C. has been working on a Freedom of Information Act request. It's only in draft form right now. We're reviewing it now and our team of lawyers will be reviewing this. Of course, Ben Sistney's working on this, but our special counsels will be working on it. Our senior counsels, like Mike Pompeo and special counsel Rick Grenell, they'll all be looking at it.

But we're asking for all records, communications, and briefings created, generated, forwarded, transmitted, sent, shared, saved, received, or reviewed by DOS, Department of the State, International Institute for Health, official referencing, connected to, or regarding in any way the termination or closing of the investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 investigation that was described in the background section of our demand or our Freedom of Information Act letter. And what you need to understand is this is phase one, then if they don't respond, which they won't, it will then go or they'll claim privilege. We then have to go to court to do that, as we've done in so many cases. But this is not just talking about it, folks. This is taking affirmative action.

Yeah, exactly right. And that is, again, what we do at the American Center for Law and Justice. It's not just to theorize or to comment on the broadcast about the news, but it's to take action.

So before we even were on the air today, this was already being worked on and being in the draft form. And so just coming out last night, I think that this, you know, what we're learning, and this is because the mainstream media has taken a turn on this. So the Biden administration is probably under the most pressure they have been yet because they're friends and allies of the mainstream media that were posted 100 days.

They're starting to look for controversy stories to write about. You know, this is a pretty quiet President when it comes to him personally. So you look at then what is going on in the administration. It's a big deal to say, hey, State Department bureaucrats were tasked with investigating this. These were people who remained at the State Department.

It didn't matter who won or lost the election or who was there. They continued to do their work. They presented those findings to the new administration in February and March. The administration didn't like the idea of these initial findings, whatever those were.

But I think we can assume what they wouldn't like is anything that would tie them to China. But take a listen, because they keep getting pressed, this idea of why won't the U.S. back its own investigation? And now we know the U.S. had its own investigation.

Take a listen by nine. Does President Biden think these theories we hear more about now that COVID-19 may have been manmade and escaped from a lab in China are a wacky conspiracy theory? Or based on what he has heard and been briefed on, does he think that's possible?

Well, we went through this journey together yesterday, so let's do it again. So the President believes there needs to be an independent investigation, one that's run by the international community. It's an international pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Jordan, he believes there should be an international investigation.

Let me tell you what I think. I think we should have an American-led investigation. Yes, the pandemic affected the entire world, and there's no doubt about that. But we have an obligation, the President has an obligation, to make sure we know what happened here. And what I cannot understand for the life of me, except I do know the answer to this, is that he was deferring this because he doesn't want these findings to come out of what actually happened here.

Yeah, him and his administration, this idea... The entire narrative. The entire narrative that China didn't intentionally create this, that the Chinese could be trusted to be some kind of world player, that they wouldn't unleash a pandemic on the world intentionally or unintentionally.

It's two narratives. If the lab theory is correct, either they're incompetent, the Chinese, and we should be even more careful because they are parading around the world with their military, that maybe they're more like North Korea than they like to portray themselves. Because if something like this unintentionally did get out of a lab that has caused this pandemic—and by the way, they would be responsible under any kind of legal theories for that, even if it was unintentional.

And then you go to the bigger theory. Well, a country that's committing a recognized genocide against its own people is not a country that you write off unleashing a pandemic on the world. It's the same kind of behavior.

If you could turn on your own people and carry out a genocide, you would also be able to unleash a pandemic on the world. And I think, honestly, if it was intentional, they wished it was worse. They wished it was more than a year. Yeah, but here's the problem that they have, and it's a legal problem and it's a political problem. The legal problem is you had an investigation that was ongoing that already had come to a draft conclusion, and then the political problem is, Fan, they stop it before it's released. It's a political problem.

It's also a very big substantive problem. And I would just tell you, Jay, this is my opinion, but why would you stop an investigation like this? It's because if information comes out that shows China is more culpable than you have suggested they are, then they're going to have to be held to account. And that is an accounting that this administration is not interested in having.

And look, let me just pull on the thread that Jordan started here just a little bit more. Even if a leak from a lab was accidental, let's just stipulate for that for a minute, if it's accidental, there is still a responsibility and maybe even then especially a responsibility on the part of the Chinese government to warn the rest of the world about what they know. Jay, they didn't do that. They didn't stop travel, even though they stopped it domestically. I suspect that inside this investigation, some of those questions are answered, and those are the ones that this administration doesn't want to have to deal with.

Jordan, let me ask you this, though. They know this is going to all come out. So what is the calculation? I think the calculation is as long as possible.

You get further and further away from it. You know what, if there is no actual investigation, we won't ever have an answer. So it may come out that they've shut down an investigation because they like the initial findings, but it wasn't done.

None of these get to completion. The World Health Organization, they don't agree with their initial findings, but they're going to go in with another team. The further you get away from the beginning of this pandemic, the harder it is going to be to pinpoint how this pandemic started. I'll tell you what, folks. This is why supporting the work of the American Center for Law and Justice is so critical. We've already got a team on this. So we've brought it to your attention.

Our phone lines are jammed at 800-684-3110. Our Senior Advisor Rick Crennell, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ambassador Jeremy, a team member of the ACLJ, is joining us next. All of this is happening because of your support of the ACLJ. That FOIA request is going out soon, being edited now by our team.

I did some editing while I've been on air. So support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. And we have an exceptional track record of success.

But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.

That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today.

ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Secula. We are joined now by our senior counselor for foreign policy, national security, Rick Grenell. And this is, again, this new report, which has been confirmed by CNN and other outlets, it's coming in the same, within the same 24 hours of everything shifting, and this idea that, hey, maybe this was created in a lab by China. And that's not a conspiracy theory, that's a theory that we need to investigate. Well, the State Department was investigating it, and the investigation was shut down. It was shut down, Rick, right before they were about to issue their report. What did, you know, you were the acting director of national intelligence, you were the ambassador to Germany.

What's going on here? Well, first of all, let's just remind everybody that last summer, the intelligence agencies, IC-wide, agreed on a statement which has never been updated since. And the media and the public need to understand that this statement is the last intelligence community-wide statement, which says that this virus, COVID-19, started in China, and that it either started in a lab or in the wet markets, but the language that we settled on instead of calling it the wet markets is animal to human transmission.

It gets a little bit detailed on why we had to call it that, but it basically is either the wet markets or the lab. That information has not been updated, but I can tell you that the IC constantly is looking to figure out what was the exact origin, where did it start, and why did it start. We haven't had an IC statement, IC-wide statement, since last summer, and I think that what the media and the Washington types need to focus on is what do our intelligence agencies know, how come they haven't updated us on this, where is the information that we know to be true. That is going to answer a lot of questions, and part and parcel to this is that the State Department was investigating, other intelligence agencies were also investigating, why aren't they coming forth, April Haynes, the Director of National Intelligence, needs to come forward and give us an update, she needs to tell us.

This information in the media right now is information we knew last year, but nobody wanted to talk about it because we had an election and they didn't want to help Donald Trump. I'm reading, Rick, directly from the CNN article, but this just piqued my interest because it said the decision to terminate the State Department inquiry was made after the Biden officials were briefed on the draft findings. I mean that makes you wonder right away that they didn't like where this was going, they didn't like where the investigation was leading, where the facts, where the intelligence was taking the investigators, who were part of, again, they were put in place by Mike Pompeo, but these weren't political appointees, they were still just carrying out their job at the State Department, putting forward the information to the Biden team, and it just sounds like the Biden team didn't like what the findings were. But this is why that I'm trying to put the onus on the intelligence community because, let's be honest, the State Department is not going to be able to come up with the greatest and the latest information when it comes to the Wuhan lab. We're going to find this information out from other agencies, not the State Department. But this is very suspect because if the State Department was looking and deciding that they were on to something, why were they shut down? Now the answer very well could be that others in the intelligence community had better opportunities to find the truth and were looking and able to find the truth and that they wanted to tilt away from the State Department.

But that only creates more of an argument for Avril Haines and the IC to come forward and tell us what they know. If you're going to shut down the State Department operation, well, who is investigating and what do we know? Well, you know, it's interesting to me, though, that they say their reason for shutting down this investigation, though, was because they had questions about the legitimacy of the findings and an ineffective use of resources.

Now, to me, as someone who's been practicing law for 40 years, I look at that and say, no, wait a minute. Are you really saying that you don't like the findings and we're not going to let this continue because the findings are going to cut totally against the narrative that they had in play here? That very well could be the case, but it also could be that they knew something else through better sourcing and they didn't want the State Department to take the lead. They wanted it to be more legitimate.

Look, there's a whole bunch of questions here, and that's why we got to go back to the fact that the IC through Avril Haines needs to come forward and answer some questions. The role of Congress is big here. We need to have our congressional leaders asking these questions. Why shut down one investigation?

The only answer that's acceptable is that we have better information and another angle. Now, I can tell you that the IC does have better information than what the State Department can provide, so let's come forward and get that information. Let's give transparency a chance here, and the Biden team from the beginning has been playing politics with the IC, with the intelligence community. You look at what they did on the Khashoggi Report, that was outrageously political.

You look at what they're doing now in recruitment, outrageously political. All of these propagandists in Washington, D.C. constantly talk about politicizing intelligence. I don't see any of them talking about the politicization right now of the Biden administration's intelligence community and what they're doing to find the truth and the right information. Rick, I would ask this, because you point to the intelligence community needs to be investigating this, but we have been told at least publicly, at least that's the line from the White House, is that they aren't investigating it unilaterally. The U.S. is not going to investigate this. Based off those statements from Jen Psaki that it has to be international, it has to be the World Health Organization, do you think that the intelligence community in the U.S. at this point, do you think all these investigations have been shut down?

Do you think we're just learning about this one and then we're going to learn that they've all been shut down? No, look, I think we're focusing on the word investigation and some sort of formal process. If you read the last DNI statement, which is an IC-wide statement from last summer, at the very end it says, we, the intelligence community, will continue looking at this information to figure out where COVID came from, how it came from, because it's a national security issue and that's what we do. The intelligence community is constantly doing this. Whether the Biden White House wants to do an investigation or not, we employ a whole bunch of people at intelligence agencies who are looking and who know a lot more information than what we have from last summer. Last summer was the public statement, but we have a disinterested media group in Washington to figure out what's been updated since then.

Either they're asking the questions and they're finding really bad answers and they want to cover up for the ruling party or they're not asking the questions. Lastly, let me just say, it's a total joke to think that somehow the UN, the World Health Organization, is going to do the investigation. The Chinese control the WHO. We know this, the intelligence community knows this, the Germans know this, the Europeans know this. This is a joke to think that the WHO is going to lead any type of investigation leading to transactions.

Yeah, when I saw that Joe Biden and Jen Psaki said we want an international community-led investigation, not one led by the United States, that's immediately what I thought of. Rick, thanks for being with us, as always, and thanks for your insight. We'll be sending you a couple documents to look at this afternoon, folks, as part of our team. Look, what Rick said is absolutely correct. This is serious stuff, and we have to get to the source, and that the ACLJ, we're doing just that.

For your request, going out this, I don't know if we'll go out this afternoon, but we'll go out by tomorrow once we get Rick and others' comments. Thank you much, Rick, and again, support the work of the ACLJ, ACLJ.org. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights, in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today. ACLJ.org. Live from Washington, D.C., Sekulow Live. And now, your host, Jordan Sekulow. Take your calls at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. So we have discussed, and we continue to take your phone calls on it, this idea that in the last really 24, 48 hours, a complete shift in the country about the ideas of the origins of the coronavirus. But yet, we're also finding out the Biden administration is shutting down investigations into those origins, that they only want the international community to take the lead on it. They don't want to do an American-led investigation into how this originated. And we're not getting answers. And the further away you get from all of this, of course, the more difficult it becomes. And I think what the Biden administration hopes is that America comes out of this and everybody forgets that you don't want to actually get to the bottom of it. You just want to move on.

And as a country, while you understand that urge, I think you can reopen and at the same time try to figure out who should be held accountable here. Because take a listen to this. This animal theory. Fauci is up on Capitol Hill today in the U.S. Senate. He's being questioned.

He's questioned by Senator Lindsey Graham here because they're all going back to this idea of, you know, you were called out as a conspiracy theorist if you said it was potentially lab-created. But if it wasn't lab-created, you have to have an animal host. An animal has to be able to get COVID-19. And we now have been living along with COVID-19 to know now, have we seen any animals that have been diagnosed with COVID-19?

Let's just have a take a listen. Have we found any animals that carry COVID-19 that could have been the source of the transmission to humans thus far? Thus far not. The intermediate host, if there is one, has not yet been found. And we've been looking for that intermediate host. Is that fair to say?

That is fair to say, sir. So their investigation on their animal theory has turned up zero evidence. No evidence to support what was the theory that was being operated on by Dr. Fauci and these other health officials and the WHO since the very beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. Now, now the information comes out that it may well have, it looks like it did in fact originate in the lab, which means it was intentionally created. We don't know if it was intentionally put out, if it was weaponized, or if it was an accident or negligence. But we do know that now the Senate is overseeing this thing.

What does that end up looking like? Well, honestly, Jay, it plays very closely into why we're issuing this FOIA. And look, by way of example, today another hearing in the Senate is taking another look at the Planned Parenthood Paycheck Protection Program that we initiated a FOIA on. And Jay, they're going to be using information that we discovered in that FOIA to press the administrator fully.

Why do I bring that up? It's because the questions that we ask in our FOIA very well may point the way for how the Senate proceeds on this. Yes, we want to know why the investigation was stopped. Jay, we also want to know a couple other things. We want to know which officials on both sides, which officials actually came to these draft finding conclusions, and should the Senate be asking them questions about what they found?

Here's the other thing, Jay. I'm quite confident that the bureaucracies are going to fight us in court. They're not going to want to turn those draft findings over to us, but you know who we can work with to get access to it?

The United States Senate. The United States Senate, Jay, ought to be able to look at those draft findings and then decide what to do with them. You have to get the draft findings, because obviously there was a conclusion reached by the State Department based on evidence. Now, what Rick Grenell said is right. There may be additional evidence or more concrete evidence that animates all this.

That's very possible. But the idea that they shut it down saying it's a waste of resources tells me that what they're really doing here is playing politics, because now the media. I mean, what Jordan read earlier, where you had a fact checker for the Washington Post mocking Ted Cruz, saying Ted Cruz doesn't listen to science. He's not being scientific. He's not following the scientific evidence because he believes that this may have been intentionally created in the lab in Wuhan, China. Then, a year later, that same fact checker says, yeah, the evidence seems to be looking like it may well have been created in Wuhan, China in the lab.

No apology to Ted Cruz, by the way, in the process. And we have more for the hearing today. We'll place that for you as well.

1-800-684-3110. If you want to weigh in on this, that's 1-800-684-3110, because this is, again, it's a huge shift, this idea now that it's becoming normal to accept the idea that the Chinese created this in a lab. The second question that is, did it get out intentionally or unintentionally, which has huge ramifications for the world. We'll be right back. And we have an exceptional track record of success.

But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.

That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life changing work.

Become a member today. ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. We'll show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases. How we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists. The ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later. Play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry. And what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Music This back and forth knowledge. Did you know about it? Did you know it was happening? Because he's pivoted in the last 48 hours. So did he see some findings of that State Department investigation that changed his mind?

Yes. Why has he changed from saying, you know, and being part of that media-led, mocking anyone who thought this could be created in a lab, that it had to be an animal, even though you can't find any animals and you can even transmit COVID-19 or carry COVID-19. But take a listen to this exchange with Senator Kennedy. Why did you guys spike, not guys and ladies, why did y'all spike the prior administration's investigation into the origins of the coronavirus and whether it could have come out of the Wuhan lab? Sir, we did not spike anything in the prior administration.

I'm not sure what you mean by spike, but we have no influence. The State Department spiked the prior administration's study. But that has nothing to do with the National Institutes of Health. So they didn't consult with y'all?

They did not. Did they consult with you, Dr. Collins? I read about it in the press this morning. Here's the thing, though.

Dr. Fauci himself initially said that this theory that it was, we thought it was animal-to-human transmission from the wet market in China. Instead, just two days ago, he comes out and does a complete 180, turns it around completely and says, no, I think it's looking like it may have been intentionally created in the lab, which, by the way, the United States gives taxpayer dollars to. Now, the question, and this is all breaking as we're on the air here, Ben, what do you expect to happen in Washington on this? Because, like you said, we're going to file the FOIA.

They can then use that as a guide for documents. What do you expect? Well, I'll tell you a couple things. Everyone ought to want to know the truth here either way. I mean, this can't be a political agenda. Dr. Fauci has switched positions on this now. I suspect he has seen maybe some of these draft findings. I would tell you this, though, first, Jay, we're going to find out whether or not the NIH, whether or not Dr. Fauci and others had access to information, and maybe that's why their position was changing. But in the United States Senate, Jay, I would say two things.

One, this will fade away unless people like the ACLJ keep it front and center. That's why we're engaging in this FOIA, because the news cycle will pass it by unless we get the information and we push them on it. The other thing I would tell you, Jay, in that clip you played, you talked about U.S. funding for this lab.

It's about $600,000 over the last five years. Just last night in the United States Senate, there was an amendment passed by unanimous consent to stop that type of research being funded by the United States. It's a small step, Jay. It doesn't get to the origin question, but it's absolutely the right move, and it wouldn't be coming to light unless people like us were talking about it. Again, at least we're not funding it now. I mean, we stopped the funding. We funded this. Again, not for this intent, obviously, but we were funding this. Now, the interesting part of this, and this is what I think you have to understand the geopolitical aspect of this, the thing that concerns me the most is not just the conclusion. It's also that the President of the United States, through his press spokesman, Shin Saki, says specifically he wants an internationally led investigation.

Now, Jordan, we've been involved in those. They're a joke. Right. I mean, especially the world cannot – most countries in the world don't have the ability to hold the Chinese accountable. They don't have the economic ability. They don't have the wherewithal. They're not strong enough to do that. The United States could.

The United States can. They have a significant interest in their relationship with the United States, and while they're obviously competitors with the United States, they need the United States and China. The idea, again, that we're just now getting from the White House officials and the Biden team that, well, China hasn't been completely transparent throughout this process.

This is what Rick was talking about. None of this is new. It wasn't new that China wasn't being transparent. It wasn't new that they weren't lending the World Health Organization investigation, looking to really get all the information about. They're playing it the same way Iran would play a nuclear inspection.

It's the same way. They're giving you the info. They're fine having you report, but they're not going to let you inside. They're not going to ever let you get unfettered access.

If you don't have unfettered access, you'd have to use intelligence to get in there and get the information because a public investigation that you send over to China that is accepted by China is not going to find anything. So, on the one hand, China can't create the bat. They can't create the animal host because science can test that.

But what they can't do is shut off any kind of access to this lab. And, you know, this idea that we could have had a country that will commit genocide on its own people would also release a virus on the world. Just understand that.

I mean, same kind of mindset because the people aren't important if it furthers the interest of the state. Well, listen to what... Is this a new bite from Jen Psaki? Yeah, I want you to play this. I want you to play that this is, again, this international is globalizing this investigation.

Take a listen. We've pressed with our international partners for the WHO to support an expert-driven evaluation of the pandemic's origins. We would certainly participate in that with all of our resources from the United States.

But given it was an international pandemic, yes, it's killed, as you said, more than 500,000 people here in the United States, killed hundreds of thousands more around the world. We're going to do that in coordination with our international partners, continue to press the Chinese to release that data and information and play a constructive role in the second phase of the investigation. You know, that's all very interesting. But then you got Dr. Fauci, I think, was asked about consulting with the Chinese doctors.

Did they have much of a consultation with the doctors from China? And I don't know if we have that sound, but it was something that not basically, you know, there hadn't been a lot of... There has not been a lot... This was Fauci to the House, so he said, we've had modest... This is what he says, modest collaboration with respect... Listen to this. I mean, it's their own words.

Number 19. So we had a modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who are world experts on coronavirus. And we did that through a sub-grant from a larger grant to EcoHealth.

The sub-grant was about $600,000 over a period of five years. So it was a modest amount. And the purpose of it was to study the animal-human interface to do surveillance and to determine if these bat viruses were even capable of transiting infection to humans. Which it appears, evidently, they weren't. But then here's what I want to ask. Why are we having only mild, modest collaboration with the Chinese scientists when it originated in China? Well, let me first translate what Dr. Fauci said. He said, we funded this lab.

That's what he just said. He said, we, the United States, funded this lab for that. He can call it modest all he wants, but Jay, that modest funding now has to mean that China is held to account for what they did with our dollars. And let me just say, if we defer to world consensus on this, if we defer to the World Health Organization, Jay, I can already tell you what that conclusion will be. It will be that China is not accountable, that this was an accidental event, and that there's nothing that can be done about it. The United States has to come up with an independent conclusion. Otherwise, Jay, we have no conclusion at all.

All right. I mean, this is very important, this idea, again, that if we don't, as a country, commit the resources now to doing this investigation and put the pressure on the Biden administration, I think the pressure point is there because the media has turned. They can't just blame this on animals and how people buy and sell food and markets. So this idea that now that it's a reasonable theory that this was created in a lab, could it have been, did the coronavirus, could it have existed as a weaker virus that was then brought into a lab, strengthened, tested on, unintentionally? I mean, all those theories are possible, but it's taken us a year just to accept the idea in this mainstream world of thought and in the Democrat Party that it could potentially have been created by the Chinese. They hate giving any credence on anything to the prior administration. The fact, if Ted Cruz or Donald Trump or Rick Grenell or Mike Pompeo said it, their answer is it has to be wrong.

Then when it happens to show that it was correct, they try to spin it by saying, well, we think this may be a problem too, even though their prior statements are already out there. The political game of this is so incredible that it's unreal. You know, the next segment of the broadcast I want to talk about, we've got some urgent work going on at the United Nations that we're going to get to on human trafficking, folks. We've got an email out on it today, and your American Center for Law and Justice, and actually our European Center for Law and Justice has filed, it looks like, I've got it in my hand right here if you're watching on TV, looks like seven or eight different reports that we have filed with the United Nations.

We're going to get into that in the last segment of the broadcast. We'll also take your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. At the same time, we are working on a draft Freedom of Information Act letter to go to various government agencies on what happened to this report.

So that is in process as well. All of this because of your support for the American Center for Law and Justice. We're coming up to the end of the month. Although this is not a matching challenge month, it's an important month, and your support of the ACLJ is so critical to everything we're doing here in the United States, and as you're about to find out in the next segment, around the globe. So you support the work of the ACLJ. Jordan's going to let me know how to do it, and connect with us on all of our social media applications and forums. Great way to stay engaged.

Yeah, that's right. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Donate today. Again, support our work.

It's critical. We're already getting the FOIA ready before we're even on air today. ACLJ.org.

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Welcome back to Sekulow. The final segment of the broadcast today, talking about some of the work of the ACLJ too, which I think is important to point out. It's online at ACLJ.org, and we've got a new piece up. It's called ACLJ Urges Immediate Action at the UN to Stop Global Scourge of Human Trafficking.

You can again read about this at ACLJ.org. It's part of what we do at the UN through our European Center for Law and Justice, is these universal periodic reviews of countries that come up, and then they are reviewed by outside group, by inside groups as well at the UN. And one thing we're focusing it on is the idea of human trafficking. I mean, right now, think about this, there's an estimated about 40 million people living in modern slavery today.

That is throughout the world where, you know, you've got unbelievable access to the world now and to different cultures, and you can get this information. Forty million people, it's estimated, living in slavery. The idea of trafficking too, people go right to sex trafficking and they think about the trafficking of women, trafficking of minors, but there's also a huge effort in the trafficking of these slaves for employment. So human trafficking, again going specific to the idea that this is still a serious problem around the world.

Every country deals with it, including the United States. It becomes worse when you have, like, what's happened at our southern border. And those kind of movements of people, when you have those mass movements of people that are very tough to track, those are perfect situations for these traffickers. It's also a situation Europe is dealing with, where the EU was created and the borders came down and there's not the security in between country to country. You also have, again, you give a green light to traffickers. Let me read something in a report that we sent to the UN that has made, I think it's already having an impact. And here's what we said, we stated this in our report, it's on the human trafficking issue. And this is what we said, we said human trafficking in all its forms, and Jordan just gave you that it's not just sex trafficking, it's slavery, it's a whole host of issues, including sex trafficking, but literally human slavery. In all its forms is an issue that plagues every country to some degree.

By the way, including it's in the United States, we know that. The sex trafficking issue here is significant. While each country has different factors that contribute to human trafficking, one thing remains constant. Traffickers rely on the desperation of their victims to exploit them with false promises of higher paying jobs and a better life. Now, for far too long, when it came to sex trafficking, the law focused on the woman engaged in the sex trafficking and charged that woman with engaging in prostitution. Rather than focusing on the persons that got them here and had them in that activity.

Now, when you're faced with starvation and someone will feed you, even if it's in an unbelievably horrible working environment, and I'm not talking about sex trafficking here now, just human trafficking and slavery. This is a risk that the world needs to tackle and we've now gone in to the UN and THAN is our designated representative to the United Nations. To eight different countries we've issued these reports and we'll intervene in these oral presentations in the days ahead because this is a really significant human problem. Humanity is involved in this. Fundamental rights are involved in this. This should not be controversial anywhere.

THAN. I'm really glad you started with that passage in the report, Jay, because this is one of the things that we've consistently said to the United Nations that we are going to address the issue of human trafficking each and every place in the world that it comes up. And that's going to include the United States. Jay, we've got another several filings due at the United Nations coming up on July 1st. Each of those reports will have a section in it looking at human trafficking for the countries that are being considered. But Jay, I would tell you, we really proved that we mean what we say on this. Several years ago we did a state-by-state analysis of trafficking inside the United States and over the course of the last few weeks we've had many conversations on this broadcast about being transparent about the problem of human trafficking on our southern border. We're supporting a bill in the United States Senate right now that would crack down on this significantly because when a minor came to that border with someone that could not prove that child's identity, they would have to take a DNA test.

I say all of that, Jay, to say this. One of the main focuses of the ACLJ and the ECLJ is to look around the world and wherever human trafficking exists, which is every country to some degree, we are going to tell the United Nations about it and we are going to work to eradicate it. You know, in our reports we rely on, we look at expert statements that have been issued in other settings and other hearings and other forums. And in one that we did that involved Antigua, we pointed out that women are specifically targeted for, we know, the sex trafficking and exploitation.

But this is what John McKinnon said. He was a member of the local Trafficking in Persons Prevention Committee. This is his quote, most of the human trafficking victims are women, but most of the cases we have seen are sexual exploitation. We have, however, had recent domestic servitude cases that also involve females. When they're talking about domestic servitude cases, Jordan, they're talking about slavery. Yeah, modern day slavery. It happens throughout the world in many places and small and large where people are taken advantage of. So here you saw some of these countries in the Caribbean, which we're focused on. Islands where you don't have huge populations, but you have people, again, if they can draw you out of where you know of your home, you're gone.

You disappear in the world. And it's an issue, again, it's one of those controversial issues that some of the world doesn't like to confront because it's happening in their own country. Yeah, I think that the issue to me, Thanh, is I know we're active on this in the U.N., is what is the reception of the countries because in some cultures, unfortunately, I hate even saying this, but in some cultures these practices are accepted. They are, Jay. I would tell you this.

I think there's two main buckets. I hate to say it. Well, there are two things. In some places, the law is not strong enough. So in those places, what we're asking them to do or we're demanding that they do is they update their laws to outlaw this kind of practice. In other places, Jay, exactly what you're saying is the truth. The law might be strong enough, but it's not enforced. Look, sometimes, and you almost hate to say it, but when you're talking about an issue like this, you don't hate to say it. You have to shame the countries or the individuals who are looking the other way.

And, Jay, look, that's true here as well. If we are not taking this seriously at our southern border, the people responsible for enforcing the laws of the United States that are strong enough, Jay, they need to be shamed into enforcing them. You know, the American Center for Law and Justice entered into a multi-year project.

Now, you remember this, Jordan. I mean, this was a number of years ago, multi-year project where we drafted model legislation on trafficking for every single state in the country for 50 states. And a lot of those states adopted it. Now, what I'm explaining to you is whether it's at the local state level or all the way to international tribunals like the United Nations, the American Center for Law and Justice, the European Center for Law and Justice, our affiliates around the globe are mobilized to engage these issues and to make a difference. None of that happens.

None of this broadcast happens. None of the information that we can get out to you happens unless you support the work of the ACLJ. And as we close the month out and we're in the last several days here, I encourage you to do that at ACLJ.org. We're excited and encouraged about the months ahead. There's a lot of great opportunities we've had. We've been talking about that. We're going to continue to work on these issues that are at the cutting edge of human dignity, on life, on freedom, national security.

The list goes on. That's right, folks. Again, we encourage you, all this information is up at ACLJ.org, information on what we're doing on human trafficking at the ACLJ so you can get further into that and even see those reports and how they're presented to the U.A. That's all there at ACLJ.org. Of course, it's a great place to go to support the work of the ACLJ financially.

You can do that safely and securely at ACLJ.org. We're going to stay on. We're just getting started. Now that we're starting to emerge out of COVID as a country, our minds can go and focus to say, okay, how did this happen and who should be held responsible?

And we can't let that just drift into history. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org where you can learn more about our life changing work. Become a member today. ACLJ.org.