Ex-DNI Ratcliffe to Testify Lab Leak as ‘Only Explanation’ for COVID-19 Outbreak

John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence (DNI), is set to testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Tuesday, according to Fox News, which has exclusively obtained Ratcliffe’s prepared testimony ahead of his appearance.

He is expected to state that the “only explanation” for the COVID-19 pandemic is a leak from a lab controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, based on U.S. intelligence and “numerous, diverse and unassailable” sources.

Ratcliffe, who was confirmed as DNI in May 2020, will provide an unclassified summary of the intelligence community’s findings on the origins of the virus.

According to the testimony, Ratcliffe will assert that the Biden administration’s reluctance to declare the assessment is due to the “enormous geopolitical implications” they “seemingly” do “not want to face head-on.”

He will say, “My informed assessment, as a person with as much or more access than anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the virus outbreak and pandemic onset, has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense.”

Ratcliffe’s testimony will argue that if evidence supporting a lab leak theory were compared with evidence for a naturally occurring so-called “spillover” theory, the lab leak side would be significantly more compelling, while the spillover side would be almost devoid of evidence.

He will also point to China’s failure to provide exculpatory evidence and its obstruction of investigations into the virus’s origins.

“The intelligence community’s sources for the information are numerous, diverse and unassailable,” Ratcliffe will assert.

The former DNI is expected to discuss the “challenges” faced by him and other Trump administration officials, including concerns about intelligence sources and methods, professional conflicts of interest, and partisan politics.

He will mention the initial labeling of the lab leak assessment as a “conspiracy theory” by scientists and the mainstream media, as well as its censorship as “disinformation” by social media platforms.

Ratcliffe will also touch upon the influence of “national and electoral politics” on the intelligence community’s analysis of China.

He will criticize the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) ongoing indecision on the matter: “To put it bluntly, this is unjustifiable—and a reflection not that the agency can’t make an assessment with any confidence, only that it won’t.”

He will argue that the intelligence community frequently makes assessments based on much less information than what is available regarding COVID origins.

Ratcliffe will state, “The real problem is, now three-and-a-half years later, the only plausible assessment the agency could make is that a virus which killed over a million Americans originated in a Chinese Communist Party-controlled lab whose research included work for the Chinese military.”

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