Almost overnight during the CCP virus pandemic, third-party fact-checkers like Facebook’s “Science Feedback” and others became virology, medical and pandemic experts. They fact-checked anyone who questioned the “science” behind lockdowns, masks, or vaccines—and they fact-checked websites like ours for daring to suggest the virus escaped from the Wuhan Insitute of Virology lab in Wuhan, China. The media worked hand-in-hand with Dr. Fauci to push one falsehood after another while suppressing the truth about the origins of the virus responsible for destroying the lives and economies of millions of people around the world.
After two years of hiding the truth about the origins of COVID19, US Right To Know, a nonprofit investigative research group focused on promoting transparency for public health, has disclosed a bombshell revelation. According to an April 20 report, the Wuhan Institution of Virology requested one of their partners in the US, a lab at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, destroy all records of their work.
From the US Right To Know (USRTK) report:
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has the right to ask a partnering lab in the U.S. to destroy all records of their work, according to a legal document obtained by U.S. Right to Know.
A memorandum of understanding between the Wuhan lab and the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch states that each lab can ask the other to return or “destroy” any so-called “secret files” — any communications, documents, data, or equipment resulting from their collaboration — and ask that they wipe any copies.
“The party is entitled to ask the other to destroy and/or return the secret files, materials, and equipment without any backups,” it states.
This right is retained even after the agreement’s five-year term ends in October 2022. All documents are eligible for destruction under the agreement’s broad language.“All cooperation … shall be treated as confidential information by the parties,” the agreement states.
The directors of the maximum biocontainment labs in Wuhan and Texas announced a formal cooperative agreement in Science in 2018. The labs are two of just a handful of facilities in the world that do similar cutting-edge work on novel coronaviruses. The lab in Texas, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, was doing biosafety training with the lab in Wuhan, which operates under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The labs also intended to do joint research projects and share resources, according to the agreement.
The revelation that the Wuhan lab retained the right to call for the destruction of data on U.S. servers funded by U.S. taxpayers comes amid a debate about what sort of investigation is necessary to exculpate the city’s coronavirus research from suspicions it sparked the COVID-19 pandemic. It also raises questions about assurances from Wuhan Institute of Virology senior scientist Zhengli Shi that she would never delete sensitive data.
The clause also raises a number of legal red flags for the Texas lab, experts say.
“The clause is quite frankly explosive,” said Reuben Guttman, a partner at Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC who specializes in ensuring the integrity of government programs. “Anytime I see a public entity, I would be very concerned about destroying records.”
Guttman said that even private entities are expected to have internal records retention and destruction policies, but that as a public institution the Texas lab faces an even higher standard under laws meant to safeguard federal and state taxpayer dollars. These laws include the federal False Claims Act and the Texas Public Information Act. The Galveston National Laboratory is part of the University of Texas System and receives federal funding.
“You can’t just willy nilly say, ‘well, you know, the Chinese can tell us when to destroy a document.’ It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “There has to be a whole protocol.”
The clause could also risk obstructing Congressional investigations into the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Texas lab was “built by the National Institutes of Health to help combat global health threats,” said Christopher Smith, a spokesman for UTMB, in a statement. “As a government-funded entity, UTMB is required to comply with applicable public information law obligations, including the preservation of all documentation of its research and findings.”
“UTMB believes it is an operational — and moral — imperative that all scientists working in biocontainment anywhere in the world have first-hand knowledge of the proven best practices in biosafety and laboratory operations,” Smith continued. “All research at UTMB is subjected to a rigorous and transparent pre-experiment approval protocol, including involvement and oversight by scientific experts who helped design federal guidelines.”
Only the Texas attorney general can make a determination about what otherwise releasable public records should be exempted from disclosure, according to Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. It’s also unlawful to destroy records requested under the Texas Public Information Act.
