Game Day

“Secret” COVID-19 Pandemic Litigations Uncovers Potential Divisions Between Intelligence Community and Public Health Authorities

WASHINGTON (September 17, 2025)—If you thought that attorneys were skilled at drafting language, you probably never litigated or worked in diplomacy and intelligence. Much has been made in the press about what the Intelligence Community had concluded about the origins of the novel virus. However, consider this statement from the final report, published on October 29, 2021: “Since September 2020, a virologist who worked in a WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong has publicly stated that Beijing created SARS-CoV-2 from bat coronaviruses and that China’s researchers intentionally released it.” One member of the IC, in retired status argues that this short statement, like in court opinions, only informs the reader what had been presented to examine, like deciding whether it was more likely a virus you had a less than five percent chance to catch had either spilled over or had escaped. And, the IC had concluded that “The scientific community did not peer review these articles and some publicly rejected the articles’ claims as scientifically unsound.”

Yet, first on February 4, 2020, to authorize PCR tests, and later, on March 27, 2020, the HHS Secretary, escaped the attacks of the present HHS Secretary, when he had described the pandemic pathogen as “a CBRN agent or agents” presenting a “heightened risk of attack”, not of infecting, but through a biological weapon. Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen had repeated this description in their problem statement to the government, but certainly are not widely advertising this, while the Virginia Governor has recently made it easier for Virginians to get their hands on these products, as early voting begins. But in courts, on an issue too hot to handle for even those seeking to be Attorney General, quietly behind the scenes, the question is how much did the Presidents know, and did the HHS Secretary just lie.

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