On the 13th, when U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met (local time), the U.S. Republican Party put the question of the origin of the COVID-19 virus back on the agenda for a congressional hearing. While the two leaders negotiated trade, Iran, and Taiwan in Beijing, the U.S. Congress simultaneously addressed the source of the COVID-19 virus and allegations of intelligence distortion within U.S. intelligence agencies.
At the hearing on the 13th, a current Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations officer testified that former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci overturned the judgment reached by CIA scientific analysts. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Republican Sen. Rand Paul, held a hearing that day titled "Whistleblower testimony on COVID cover-up." As a witness, the committee summoned current CIA senior operations officer James Erdmann III. Erdmann led the investigation into the origin of COVID-19 at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) under the "Director General-led Investigations Group (DIG)" from March 2025 to April 2026.
Lawmakers at the hearing focused on how far Fauci was involved in the process of investigating the origin of COVID-19. Chairperson Paul said in opening remarks, "CIA scientific analysts repeatedly assessed that a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the most likely origin of COVID-19," adding, "This conclusion was not properly reflected in the final intelligence report and was not sufficiently conveyed to Congress." Appearing on Fox News' "The Will Cain Show" that day, Paul said "Fauci effectively overruled the CIA scientists' judgment." It is interpreted to mean that he did more than provide simple advice and changed the intelligence assessment itself.
Erdmann testified at the hearing that "Dr. Fauci's participation in the cover-up was intentional." He said Fauci directly provided the list of outside experts for the intelligence community to consult, and that many on the list had received research funding from institutions under Fauci or had advocated the natural-origin theory. Erdmann added, "Leaders of the intelligence community and senior analysts intentionally downplayed the possibility that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory accident." He claimed that in a 2022 internal CIA review of 10 people, 8 leaned toward a lab leak, but the conclusion was stitched up in the opposite direction.
Fauci effectively steered the entirety of U.S. public health policy during the COVID-19 period. Vaccine mandates, lockdowns, mask guidance, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding decisions all passed through him. If responsibility is established for Fauci, other suspicions—such as alleged indirect funding links to the Wuhan lab and the rewriting of the definition of gain-of-function research—would be bundled together. Fauci has denied all allegations. The statute of limitations for perjury before Congress, which could allow criminal indictment, expired just before the hearing. On top of that, former President Joe Biden, a few hours before the end of his term, even granted Fauci a "preemptive pardon." A preemptive pardon is a system that exempts in advance a person who has not yet been indicted from punishment for potential future federal crimes. If the acts occurred during the period covered by the pardon, indictment itself is not possible. Not a single one of the seven Democratic members, who were the ruling party when Fauci was nominated, attended the hearing that day.
Allegations that the COVID-19 lab-leak theory was intentionally weakened within U.S. intelligence agencies have surfaced before. In December 2024, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assessed with "moderate confidence" that a lab leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19, but this was excluded from a key intelligence briefing in August 2021 attended by then-President Biden. Three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) also concluded that the spike protein structure of the COVID-19 virus resembled techniques described in a 2008 paper by the Chinese side. However, in July 2021, an order came down from higher-ups not to share this analysis with the FBI, the WSJ reported. The conclusions they reached were also omitted from the final report that went up to then-President Biden. Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) likewise handled a similar assessment as nonpublic.
China has pushed back, viewing such questions as a U.S. political offensive. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been repeating for six years that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not involved in the creation or release of the COVID-19 virus. Spokesperson Mao Ning said in March last year, when the BND report was disclosed, "Tracing the origin of COVID-19 is a matter that must be determined through a scientific approach, and we oppose any form of political manipulation," adding, "The authoritative scientific conclusions of the World Health Organization (WHO) have already been recognized by the international community."
In a June 2025 report, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) under the WHO assessed that "all hypotheses about the origin of COVID-19 should be kept open," while also saying "the weight of evidence obtained so far views animal-to-human transmission via bats or an intermediate host as the more likely scenario."