U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) participated in a tele-town hall Monday with U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty and described why he believes COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab.
This, even though many people originally believed the virus started at a Chinese wet market.
“All the evidence I am about to lay out is circumstantial. It’s not direct evidence. That doesn’t mean it’s not persuasive. In fact there is no circumstantial or direct evidence to support the theory that it started in a so-called wet market in Wuhan. And every day in America people are convicted on circumstantial evidence in our courts,” Cotton told Hagerty and other people on the call.
“Moreover, circumstantial evidence is usually all you have in the intelligence business. You have to piece together bits of circumstantial evidence to put together a full painting and understand what really happened. The circumstantial evidence supports the theory that there was an accidental breach from this laboratory, not that it was genetically engineered or modified in some way.”
Cotton went on to say that a virus can occur naturally. People can later study the virus in a laboratory. And that laboratory can have an accidental breach.
“We know that the [Chinese] laboratory studied bats, the animal that most likely was the source of the coronavirus. We know it studied coronaviruses. We know that U.S. diplomats in Beijing in 2018 had traveled there and expressed grave reservations about the quality of safety practices at the Institute of Virology,” Cotton said.
“We also know that China has a history of shoddy safety practices at its most advanced labs.”
Cotton said one can look at the recent behavior of Chinse Communist Party officials who, he says, have tried to censor information about the origins of the virus by intimidating people.
Hagerty said China’s actions “to cover this up are factually demonstrable.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Sen. Tom Cotton” by Sen. Tom Cotton.
Nothing about University of North Carolina, Ralph Baric’s coronavirus gain of function work with a CDC exception when it was otherwise prohibited in this country? What about his collaborators in Wuhan? Or the millions of tax dollars given to Wuhan Virology Lab by NIH? Fort Detrick?
I guess those wouldn’t have the same persuasive effect.