Biden State Department quietly shut down team probing COVID origin

The Biden State Department shut down an inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19pandemic that was investigating whether the virus stemmed from a leak out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Fox News has confirmed.

The Biden administration terminated the inquiry – which was being led out of the State Department’s arms control and verification bureau and initially launched at the request of former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – after being briefed on the team's initial findings in February and March.

A State Department official told Fox News that Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not disband any cell looking into the origins of COVID-19, and that the department only employed a single contractor who was conducting research on several topics – including coronavirus. That contractor, according to the official, left the State Department before Blinken’s confirmation. The official said the inquiry was closed amid concerns about methodology. 

The Biden administration’s investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic is currently being led out of the White House National Security Council.

Fox News has learned that David Asher was the contractor leading the investigation. Asher has a history of investigative work tracking money for the AQ Khan network, North Korea's nuclear program, and top Al Qaeda leaders, but has fallen under scrutiny from former State Department officials.

In a statement to Fox News, Asher defended the investigation, and said that, at the time, some State Department colleagues "were deliberately playing down possible links to China’s biological weapons program."

"It is U.S. law to engage in effective arms control and nonproliferation, not facilitate it via ‘scientific cooperation’ in the name of threat reduction or refusal to engage in effective compliance with Communist countries that openly aim to incorporate synthetic biology into the future of warfare (apparently with our naive material and scientific assistance)," Asher said. 

"We don’t know for certain what happened in Wuhan but we had every reason to investigate and ask questions," Asher continued. "As the State Department's Jan. 15 statement said – and as additional disclosures and expert analyses of the last few months have underscored – there is probable cause for deep suspicion." 

Asher, who left the State Department at the end of the Trump administration, had been hired as a contractor, but had helped to put together the Jan. 15 memo released by Pompeo, using declassified intelligence. CNN first reported the shutdown of the probe.

That memo said the Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborated on "secret projects" with China’s military, and claims that "despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects within China’s military" since "at least 2017."

Asher told Fox News that "certainly the Chinese Communist Party engaged in a huge coverup over the stealth ability of COVID to transmit human-to-human." 

"The coverup continues via refusal to allow WHO access, accept CDC offers to assist, and simply tell the truth of this pandemic’s endemic dangerous, incessant and pernicious injurious traits, which has caused huge injury to the American people and citizens of the world, Chinese citizens included," he said. "Does anyone sane doubt that?" 

Asher added that he doesn’t "know why the Biden team would doubt an effort to carry out a fair and accurate investigation into a subject that increasing numbers of leading scientists are now also calling to study."

"At the State Department in the last months of the last administration we didn’t draw or assert any conclusions, but we worked successfully to reveal certain facts and raise significant questions about the clear plausibility of a lab leak origin," Asher said. "This was a global public service, and it is good that experts and journalists are increasingly turning their own attention to the issue, albeit belatedly." 

David Feith, a former State Department official during the Trump administration, was part of the small team working with Asher on the COVID origin investigation. Feith, this week, underscored the importance of learning how the coronavirus originated.