Rep. Wenstrup to Newsmax: Biden Reluctance on China 'Not Fair to Mankind'

The Biden administration's reluctance to push China harder on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is "not fair to mankind," because it's important to understand it from a scientific aspect so steps can be taken to prevent further recurrences, Rep. Brad Wenstrup told Newsmax Tuesday.

"I don't know why they're doing that [or] if it's some type of diplomatic move," the Ohio Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "We really need to know how this virus started ... but we're not getting the cooperation and without the cooperation, there's no trust."

His comments come as the United States on Tuesday called for international experts to be allowed to evaluate the disease's source and its early days. The demand comes after reports that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were seriously ill in November 2019, a month before the first cases of the new coronavirus, which came to be known as COVID-19, were reported.

"The Chinese military is also part of this institute of virology, and that's a concern," Wenstrup told Newsmax, adding that there are still concerns about whether U.S. tax dollars were spent there and if there was gain of function research being conducted.

Such research, which refers to the work to increase the transmissibility and virulence of microorganisms, should be called "gain of destruction," said Wenstrup, because "you take a virus and you try to make it altered so that it can attack human beings."

Meanwhile, several other theories were circulated about the beginnings of the virus, including blaming it on a wet market in Wuhan, but "none of that has happened," said Wenstrup.

"On the intelligence committee, we put together an interim report, putting together all the things that we do know that would tend to implicate that there's a very high possibility that this came from the lab," said Wenstrup. "We cannot verify that if we don't get all the information that we need, and there's certainly a lot to be concerned about, especially if the U.S. has been funding this lab."

Wenstrup added that it is disturbing that President Joe Biden got the United States back into the World Health Organization after Trump withdrew from it.

"You've got to have the facts and you've got to be able to investigate things if you're going to get to the bottom of something," he said. "As far as those that got sick, we do know that that some people from the lab got sick early on ... this just gets deeper and deeper into some really serious offenses on mankind."

Wenstrup also said he'll never be able to tell what Dr. Anthony Fauci, now Biden's chief medical adviser, "knows or doesn't know" about the beginnings of COVID, but he thinks the doctor should say what happened, including with funding at the Wuhan lab and gain of function research.

Meanwhile, Wenstrup said he believes Trump should get more credit for the development of the COVID vaccines being used across the nation and world.

"Dr. Fauci and other experts say it could never happen," he said. "Well, it did happen, and we should be so proud of this as a nation ... it was President Trump's leadership that put this thing together that got us a potential to end this pandemic and the world I think is grateful more so than our mainstream media."

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