Free Republic

This is an interesting find though it’s not clear how significant it is yet. A Chinese virologist submitted a complete genetic sequence for the coronavirus to a US database two weeks before China turned over a nearly identical sequence to the world. At the time, no one recognized the significance of the submission and it was deleted because some technical information was not included in the submission.The sequence was submitted by Dr. Lili Ren, an accomplished virologist at the Institute of Pathogen Biology of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, China, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party...

Health Secretary Alex Azar on Thursday reminded Americans of how Beijing, about a year ago, had held back the truth about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus outbreak, allowing it to turn into a global crisis.Azar, during a speech at conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, said the early U.S. response to the CCP virus was particularly difficult because the virus emerged in China, which, given the nature of the communist regime, “severely limited” outside access to information about it.“Let’s consider when and how the United States became aware of the virus,” the nation’s health chief said. “We learned about an...

Today the Washington Free Beacon points out that the World Health Organization has updated its official timeline of the coronavirus outbreak to make clear that China did not self-report the existence of the virus to WHO in December. Here’s what the old timeline claimed: 31 Dec 2019Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified. The revised version of the timeline makes clear that WHO wasn’t informed by China directly. Instead, the virus first came to the attention of WHO when officials noticed Chinese media reports...

A contractor for the Pentagon has been charged with providing classified U.S. intelligence to a Lebanese national connected with terrorist group Hezbollah, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday. The department alleges Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, began transmitting the classified intelligence around December 30, when Iraqi militiamen stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Thompson is a linguist who at the time was working at a U.S. special forces base in Erbil in northern Iraq. The classified “files contained classified national defense information including true names, personal identification data, background information, and photographs of the human sources, as well as operations cables...

A source close to the Trump administration informs Breitbart News that Army Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, a senior ethics lawyer for the National Security Council (NSC), is in charge of reviewing all publications by current and former NSC officials. The New York Times reported Sunday evening that Bolton’s draft book manuscript, which had been submitted to the NSC for prepublication review on Dec. 30, alleged that President Trump told Bolton in August 2019 that he wanted to withhold security assistance to Ukraine until it agreed to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, among others. Bolton’s lawyer, Chuck Cooper, issued a...

Former national security adviser John Bolton's forthcoming memoir is titled "The Room Where It Happened" and is scheduled to be released March 17, according to a posting for the book that went live Sunday night. The new details emerged hours after The New York Times reported a manuscript of the book contained details about an August exchange where President Trump told Bolton he would not lift a freeze on security aid for Ukraine until the country agreed to assist in investigations into his political rivals. The book's release could be affected if the White House attempts to block publication of...

Iranian militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, one of several identified as leading an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, reportedly visited the White House in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama. On Tuesday, a mob in Baghdad attacked the U.S. embassy in retaliation against last weekend’s U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH), responsible for killing an American civilian contractor. KH is one of a number of pro-Iran militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU), which legally became a wing of the Iraqi military after fighting the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group....