Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., told Newsmax Friday that he has "no doubt" the COVID-19 virus started in the lab in Wuhan, China.
"I'm personally thoroughly convinced," Fitzpatrick said during "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" Friday. "I'm a career FBI agent. I was focused on China as an FBI agent. I'm now on the House Intelligence Committee, focused and assigned to the China portfolio. And I have no doubt in my mind. No doubt. I've seen enough evidence."
Fitzpatrick said there is a large amount of circumstantial evidence that the pandemic, which killed millions of people across the globe in the past two years, started as a leak from the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology; but a "smoking gun" may never be found because of a cover-up there.
"Nobody can tell you definitively anything because the direct evidence, the 'smoking gun' evidence, resides in one place and one place only," he said. "And that's Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been on complete lockdown since shortly after the outbreak and has been completely scrubbed."
Fitzpatrick said that prior coronaviruses and their respective host bats were eventually identified in a timely manner, unlike COVID-19, where a host bat or other animal has not yet been found in nature.
"In this case, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming and will continue to point to one direction, and one direction only," he said. "This was originally designed as a bioweapon by the Chinese military, the PLA. It was then sought to seek a vaccine for this, and that's where that accidental leak occurred."
Fitzpatrick said that once the new GOP majority takes over in the House, there should be a full investigation into the origins of the pandemic and that China should be held accountable for its role in the deaths of 7 million people worldwide, as well as the negative impacts on the economies of the world.
"We're going to have to do two things once we retake the majority," he said. "No. 1 is to get to present the evidence to America and the world that China was responsible for this, so there's accountability. Second, to try to get to the bottom of how our intelligence community missed this."
He said Congress needs to empanel a commission like the one formed following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to find the underlying cause of the pandemic's origin.
"That's what we need here," he said. "We need to get to the bottom of what happened because — and this is all anybody should need to know — 7 million lives lost."
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.