Hassan Joins Democrat Senate Boycott Of COVID-19 Whistleblower's Testimony

By Leonard Robinson, NH Journal

COVID-19 killed more than 2,700 Granite Staters. But when a CIA whistleblower appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday to testify about an alleged cover-up of the virus’s origins, New Hampshire U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan was a no-show.

Hassan joined the committee’s other Democrats in boycotting the hearing chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) CIA whistleblower James Erdman III recounted his evidence that the federal government helped bury intelligence pointing to a laboratory accident as the likely origin of the virus.

“Intelligence community leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that the COVID pandemic originated as a result of a lab incident,” Erdman testified. “Intentional or not, the IC’s actions resulted in a cover-up, wasted resources, and a failure to properly inform policymakers.”

Paul said Erdman’s testimony shows CIA scientific analysts repeatedly concluded between 2021 and 2023 that a laboratory leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19, but that those conclusions were “buried, softened, or withheld from Congress.”

“The American people have never received a full accounting of where it came from, what our government knew, or why they had to fight their own government to find out,” Paul said in his opening statement.

COVID-19 killed more than 7 million people worldwide. In New Hampshire, the official toll is 2,758 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Both Republicans running for U.S. Senate this year say they would have attended the hearing.

Scott Brown told NHJournal he listened to a significant portion of the testimony.

“Sen. Hassan should have been there, as well as the other Democrats. This is an important topic,” Brown said. “I would have been there and asked questions, trying ot get to the bottom of COVID-19 once and for all.”

Brown also called out the Biden administration for “intimidating, harassing and teaming up with high-tech companies to suppress people’s First Amendment rights. “It was criminal.”

John E. Sununu said that the “bare minimum the citizens of New Hampshire should expect from their elected representatives is that they show up for work. From Chris Pappas taking a paycheck while shutting down the government to this latest example, it’s clear New Hampshire residents need a Senator focused on them, not just politics.”

Hassan has publicly claimed to be an advocate for transparency on the origins of COVID and investigations into U.S. government policy in response to the pandemic. But she’s also lined up with her fellow Democrats in refusing to participate in committee hearings on the origins of COVID. She boycotted a Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on gain-of-function research in 2022.

In Wednesday’s hearing, Erdman’s testimony focused in part on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Erdman alleged Fauci was central to a broader effort to steer public and intelligence-community conclusions away from a possible lab origin.

“At the center of the government side of this circle was Dr. Anthony Fauci,” Paul said, arguing Fauci had conflicts because NIAID funded research connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth Alliance.

EcoHealth Alliance, led by Peter Daszak, received NIH funding and worked with the Wuhan lab on bat coronavirus research. Daszak also organized an influential February 2020 statement in The Lancet signed by scientists who said they “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” The statement helped frame early discussion of the lab-leak theory as fringe speculation.

That framing later came under scrutiny after Daszak’s ties to Wuhan coronavirus research became public. The Lancet eventually added a competing-interest disclosure related to Daszak’s work.

Meanwhile, the available evidence continues to point to the lab-leak theory as the more likely source of the virus than the natural-origin theory. The debate has since largely broken down along partisan lines.

That partisanship was one reason Congress unanimously passed the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), requiring the declassification of intelligence related to possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the pandemic’s origin. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law in March 2023.

Hassan voted for the bill.

But on Wednesday, Hassan was absent as Erdman alleged the intelligence community failed to comply fully with that transparency mandate. She also declined to respond to requests for comment.

Paul said Wednesday’s hearing showed why congressional oversight remains necessary.

“When Congress asked those questions, government officials lied to our faces,” he said. “They classified documents. They suppressed information. They changed definitions. They invoked sources and methods. They told Congress only what they wanted Congress to know.”

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This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.