Top Republicans in Congress are asking the Department of Justice to investigate a global nonprofit that funneled U.S. taxpayer money to Chinese scientists but failed to abide by a grant agreement in doing so. EcoHealth Alliance, which received millions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2014 to 2019, broke the agreement by not alerting the NIH that the experiments led to a sharp increase in the virulence of a modified coronavirus, an agency official told members of Congress last week. “EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant,” Lawrence Tabak, the NIH’s principal deputy director, informed lawmakers in letters. The revelation “raises the prospect about whether EcoHealth violated 18 U.S.C. § 1031 and committed a major fraud against the United States,” Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote (pdf) on Wednesday to Attorney General Merrick …