How much U.S. taxpayer money has been funneled to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and how have the lab experiments there impacted the world?
These are questions Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said she wants to find out with her three amendments to this year’s annual defense spending bill, which would authorize $886 billion for the Pentagon.
The amendments, Ernst said, aim to bar defense dollars from going to the WIV, the state-run Chinese facility suspected as the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed millions around the world.
Other objectives include cutting off Pentagon payments to EcoHealth, a New York nonprofit that has worked with the Wuhan lab to experiment on dangerous bat coronavirus with federal funds, as well as opening an independent investigation to decide whether EcoHealth has “diverted any U.S. defense dollars into the Wuhan Institute, or any other Chinese lab, or spent it to create enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential.”…