EDITOR'S NOTE: The grant dollars in question were processed through EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit. Further specifics on the distribution of monies, including to the Wuhan lab, were unavailable at the time of publication.
It has been widely reported the U.S. and Canada had helped fund the Wuhan, China, virology lab that is believed to have accidentally released the global coronavirus pandemic because of lax safety protocols, according to U.S. intelligence.
Now, it turns out that $3.7 million grant was awarded by Obama administration in 2015.
"The Obama administration gave them a grant of $3.7 million," Trump told Newsmax TV reporter Emerald Robinson during the White House coronavirus task force daily briefing Friday.
"I've been hearing about that, and we've instructed if any grants are going to that area – we were looking at that, literally, an hour ago and also early in the morning – we will end that grant very quickly."
The funding grant was award to the Chinese virology lab to research coronavirus pandemics, but intelligence reports the lab had been written up by skeptical U.S. officials for problematic safety procedures.
Fox News reporting has revealed U.S officials' believe the lab accidentally infected an intern, who spread the virus to the city of Wuhan in the Hubei province through the nearby wet market – and ultimately the world.
More than 156,104 people around the world have died from the global coronavirus pandemic, including more than 37,175 in the U.S. alone, according to Worldometers, which culls data from Johns Hopkins University and recent media reports.
The Trump administration, which has already faced historic investigations since before he was even elected, has repeatedly been dogged by Obama administration officials, holdovers, and policies. The fact the administration of former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden funded the lab potentially responsible for worldwide death and trillions in economic losses might prove problematic for the Biden 2020 campaign.
"It was granted quite a while ago," Trump told Robinson. "They were granted a substantial amount of money. We're going to look at it – 2015? Who was president then? I wonder."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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