The White House was noncommittal Friday on whether President Joe Biden would sign a bill declassifying information about the origins of COVID-19.
The House unanimously passed the bill earlier in the day, with not a single legislator voting “no.” But press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not say whether or not Biden will sign it.
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“We will continue to use every tool to figure out what happened here while also protecting classified information,” she said. “We’re going to take a look at the bill. I just don’t have anything to share on how we’re going to move forward at this time.”
The COVID Origins Act would force the Biden administration to declassify all information it has gathered on the origins of COVID-19 as lawmakers question whether the virus originated in nature or as a result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
The legislation’s passage marks a striking departure from the early days of the pandemic when the lab leak hypothesis was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Since then, the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies have said both theories are plausible, yet the debate continues to divide the intelligence and scientific communities.
The bill passed the House in a 419-0 vote on Friday after the Senate unanimously passed it on March 1. The White House could have released the information on its own and has thus far chosen not to do so. However, with a unanimous vote, Biden would likely not be able to sustain a veto of the legislation.
Although the bill garnered overwhelming support on the House floor, Democrats and Republicans engaged in a drawn-out debate before casting their votes. Several Republicans in their speeches sought to blame not only the Chinese government but also some U.S. officials, namely Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“Big government bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci abused their positions of power to disguise and distort the facts and a further tyrannical approach to our country,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) said of the former director of the National Institutes of Health. “Fauci knew as early as March of 2020 that coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.”
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Two reporters pressed Jean-Pierre on what the president will do now that the bill is headed to his desk.
“I totally understand,” Jean-Pierre said. “It is the right of the president of the United States to look at the legislation that is going to be coming before him. We will have more to share.”
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