Biden suddenly bails when asked about the origins of COVID

The president previously shied away from the press after appearing willing to answer questions on Feb. 16 when asked by The Washington Post, “Is your ability to do business with China at risk because of your family’s business ties in China, President Biden?”

“Give me a break, man,” Biden yelled, declining to answer any further questions, adding, “You can come to my office and ask a question when you have a few more people being polite with you.”

Biden rarely mentions an interest in identifying the origins of the pandemic, which the FBI also believes leaked from a facility in Wuhan, China, where risky US-funded research focused on modifying coronaviruses before the outbreak.

“The FBI has long assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a possible laboratory incident in Wuhan,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News on Tuesday. “Here you are talking about a possible leak from a laboratory controlled by the Chinese government.”

Biden’s son Hunter and his brother, James, have extensive business ties to Chinese companies linked to the state — the president has been involved with associates of his relatives in at least two separate business deals.

Republicans regularly criticize Biden for not doing more to pinpoint the origins of COVID-19 or pressure Beijing to stop illegal fentanyl exports that have fueled overdose deaths in the United States, killing nearly 200,000 Americans from 2019 to 2022, And it’s the last years that happened because of it. Data is available.

White House press secretary Karen Jean-Pierre and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Monday declined to confirm reports that the Energy Department had recently updated its stance on the origins of the pandemic.

Under political pressure, Biden in May 2021 ordered a US intelligence community assessment of the origins of COVID-19, after previously saying the US would turn to the World Health Organization for answers.

The spy agencies assessed in August 2021 that it was “plausible” that the virus came either from a laboratory version in Wuhan or of natural origin via animal-to-human transmission.

At the time, a written statement attributed to Biden said: “The world deserves answers and I will not rest until we have them.”

“Responsible nations do not shirk these kinds of responsibilities to the rest of the world,” the statement added. “Epidemics do not respect international borders, and we all need to better understand how COVID-19 emerged in order to prevent further pandemics.”

But Biden, who campaigned heavily in 2020 to criticize President Donald Trump’s administration for the outbreak, has rarely raised the issue publicly since then.

Responding to a question from The Post in January 2022, Biden claimed he pressured Chinese President Xi Jinping to be transparent about the origins of the virus during a virtual summit in November 2021, though then-press secretary Jin Saki had given reporters the opposite. impression. Biden said his press team was unaware he had done so because they were not in the room for that exchange.

After a July 2022 phone call between Biden and Xi, Jean-Pierre deflected questions about whether Biden pressured the Chinese leader about the origins of COVID-19, but said he did bring up fentanyl.

The topic was omitted from Biden’s public opening remarks and the White House reading of the private portion of Biden’s first personal meeting with Xi in November, though Biden aides later claimed he mentioned it behind closed doors.

Documents published by The Intercept in late 2021 reveal that it is based in New York The EcoHealth Alliance used US grants to fund the Wuhan lab Experiments that modified three different bat viruses for COVID-19. The research discovered that they became more infectious among “humanized” mice when human-type receptors were added to them.

Biden’s approach to identifying the pandemic’s origins contrasts starkly with Trump’s. The former president, who is seeking a rematch in 2024 against Biden, has floated efforts to force China to pay $50 trillion in damages for the virus, which has caused massive global economic, social and educational disruptions.

There are two major Biden family business ventures in China that are currently focused on House Republican investigators.

The first involved an investment firm called BHR Partners founded by then-second son Hunter Biden in 2013. The other deals are with a company called CEFC China Energy, which reportedly paid Hunter and his uncle James Biden millions in 2017 and 2018, as Joe Biden contemplated a presidential bid.

Hunter Biden co-founded BHR Partners in 2013 within weeks of joining then-Vice President Joe Biden aboard Air Force Two on an official trip to Beijing, according to The Wall Street Journal. Hunter introduced his father to incoming BHR CEO Jonathan Lee in a hotel lobby on that trip, and Joe Biden later wrote college letters of recommendation for Lee’s children.

Online business records indicate that Hunter Biden still owns a 10% stake in BHR, despite his father’s insistence that there were no conflicts of interest related to the family business during his presidency. Hunter Biden’s attorney, Chris Clark, said in late 2021 that BHR’s stake had been pulled, but neither he nor the White House provided more information about the supposed deal.

Joe Biden was allegedly involved in CEFC’s dealings as well.

Hunter and Jim Biden He earned $4.8 million of CEFC China Energy — an arm of Beijing’s foreign-influenced “Belt and Road” initiative — in 2017 and 2018, The Washington Post reported after reviewing documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, says he met with Joe Biden in May 2017 regarding the CEFC deal, and a May 2017 email from another colleague, James Gilliar, says the “big guy” was due a 10% cut.

Both Bobulinski and Gillier identify Joe Biden as the “big guy” and October 2017 email Joe Biden identifies as a participant on a call about CEFC’s bid to buy US natural gas.