Senator Rand Paul just put 41 pages of border records, laboratory findings and internal emails into public view.

The paper trail starts in 2018—before anyone had heard of COVID-19.

It leads to a traveler arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with three undeclared vials hidden inside paper towel and wax film.

And that was not the last time border agents would stop him.

The evidence comes from a newly released Customs and Border Protection record, backed by internal emails and laboratory findings.

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Paul’s 41-page document release lays out a timeline centered on University of Minnesota virologist Fang Li and researchers connected to his laboratory.

In April 2018, Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist Zhengli Shi emailed Li about monoclonal antibodies for SARS-related testing. She asked whether one of Li’s students could bring the material back to China.

Li rejected that specific plan, writing that it was not a good idea given the “current tension between USA and China.” He suggested that another scientist ship the antibodies instead.

Six months later, Qibin Geng, a student in Li’s lab, emailed University of North Carolina coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric. Geng said he was preparing to send Baric a protein and live porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, or PEDV, along with a detailed expansion protocol.

Then came the airport stop.

According to the CBP field report, the traveler arrived in Detroit on November 28, 2018, and did not declare biological materials during the primary inspection.

After he was referred for a secondary agriculture inspection, he amended his declaration to include “antibodies.” A physical search of his carry-on baggage uncovered three vials obscured by paper towel and wax film.

The traveler told officers the vials had come from Yusen Zhou and were intended for Fang Li.

The CBP report identified Zhou as a professor at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, an institution connected to China’s People’s Liberation Army.

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Agents escalated the encounter after hearing his explanation.

Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate took possession of the vials. They were sent to the National Bioforensic Analysis Center for testing.

The laboratory identified partial immunoglobulin heavy-chain precursor mRNA and partial PEDV spike-protein material, according to the report.

That distinction matters.

PEDV is a swine coronavirus. It is not SARS-CoV-2, and these records do not say the three vials contained the virus that causes COVID-19.

USDA animal-health guidance says PEDV causes diarrhea and vomiting in swine and can be especially deadly for young piglets.

The agency states that the virus is not zoonotic, does not affect people and is not a food-safety concern. That separates PEDV from human coronaviruses and from the virus responsible for COVID-19.

USDA first confirmed PEDV in the United States in Iowa in May 2013. Animal-health officials then worked with veterinarians, laboratories, pork-industry groups and the FDA to investigate how the disease was spreading among pigs.

The federal guidance treats PEDV as a serious livestock and biosecurity problem, not a human pandemic virus. That is precisely why the name of the intercepted material must be reported accurately.

That does not make an undeclared transfer of biological material across an international border unimportant.

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It makes precision essential: the alarm here is the hidden movement of research material, the permit questions and the network described by federal investigators—not a claim that these vials caused the pandemic.

The CBP report also examined the people around Li’s lab.

It said Geng had earned a degree from Southern Medical University, formerly known as the First Military Medical University of China, and did not disclose military service or affiliation on his visa application.

Another researcher in Li’s lab, Chuming Luo, had studied under Shi and listed a thesis topic involving bat-coronavirus receptor analysis, the report said.

CBP further noted that Li’s research was supported by National Institutes of Health grants and that his list of collaborators included Shi, Zhou and other scientists with Chinese military or state-linked backgrounds.

The report did not announce criminal charges against Li or conclude that his lab created COVID-19. It recommended additional investigation to determine whether the work and scientific advances at issue benefited the United States or China.

Then, three years after the first Detroit stop, the same traveler appeared on CBP’s radar again.

This time he was attempting to leave the United States for China.

A June 2021 incident report says agents found a shipping box containing 132 vials that likely held a species of Drosophila—flies commonly used in biological research.

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The traveler initially denied carrying biological material, according to the report, before acknowledging that he had about 100 vials of fruit flies and had not declared them because he was unsure whether they could cross the border.

Agents also found a laptop issued by a U.S. research institution to another person. The traveler had that person’s username and password with him, the report said.

One undeclared airport encounter can be dismissed as a reckless mistake.

A second encounter involving the same traveler, 132 more vials and somebody else’s institutional laptop is much harder to brush aside.

Fox News reviewed the release and traced the same sequence from Shi’s 2018 antibody request to the proposed PEDV shipment, the three-vial interception and the traveler’s second stop in 2021.

The outlet reported that Li’s laboratory had received NIH funding and that the DHS material described a research network spanning American and Chinese institutions.

Its review highlighted Geng’s degree from a school formerly affiliated with China’s military and the CBP report’s allegation that he had not disclosed military service or affiliation on his visa application.

Fox also detailed the 2021 stop, including the 132 vials that CBP believed likely held research flies and the institutional laptop issued to another person.

The outlet kept the critical distinction intact: the documented material involved PEDV and antibody-related genetic material, not a finding of SARS-CoV-2. The issue was that the materials were undeclared when federal officers discovered them.

Fox News said it had reached out to Li.

Paul released the files through The Reading Room, the public archive his Senate committee created for primary-source records connected to its COVID-origins and risky-research investigations.

The archive gives Americans something they have been denied far too often in this debate: the underlying documents instead of another official conclusion handed down without the full record.

Paul launched the archive as a rolling repository, meaning additional records can be added as the committee’s investigation continues. The site already groups document releases, interview transcripts and internal correspondence into one publicly accessible record.

The CBP package includes the committee’s timeline, the underlying 2018 emails, the federal field report and the later airport incident records. Readers can inspect the sequence themselves instead of relying on a single press statement.

Those documents do not settle the origin of COVID-19.

They do establish that federal border officials had identified undeclared biological materials moving through a U.S.–China research network years before the pandemic—and that the same traveler was caught twice.

Congress should now demand the rest of the record.

Who authorized the transfers, and which institutions knew?

What happened after the laboratory results came back? Were NIH officials informed?

And why did it take until 2026 for the public to see a report dated June 15, 2020?

Rand Paul has opened the file.

Now the agencies and institutions named inside it need to start answering questions.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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