Rand Paul Looking to Get to the Bottom of the COVID Origin Story

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As the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is on a mission. A large part of that mission is to continue his quest to unravel the story of how the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus came to be and who, if anyone, was responsible.

But Paul sees his mission in much broader terms. A libertarian on economic issues and a classic conservative on most other matters, Paul wants nothing less than to change the debate about government spending.

“I intend to restore our Committee’s rightful place as the oversight body of the Senate,” Paul wrote in a letter sent to his Senate colleagues on Thursday, shared with Reason.

In addition to COVID origins, Paul wants to delve deep into the Secret Service’s systemic failures, which almost cost the new president his life. He also promised “new investigations into executive branch failures and abuses, as well as conducting oversight of every dollar spent by the government.”

But it’s the origin of the COVID-19 coronavirus that has occupied the senator’s time and energy for the last two years. Even without the cooperation of the Chinese Communists, Paul has managed to uncover a lot.

“I think we’re on the cusp of, really, the beginning of uncovering what happened with COVID,” Paul told the New York Post.

The most recent revelations are contained in a new whistleblower’s report. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy, who worked in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2021, discovered that the unclassified grant proposal containing a “blueprint” for creating the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was “accidentally” filed away as a highly classified document.

New York Post:

The DEFUSE proposal, which has since been cited by scientists as “smoking gun” evidence that COVID was engineered in a Chinese lab, was not included — despite being unclassified — in a final Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report on the virus’ origins released in August 2021.

Murphy was unable to uncover why the proposal had been over-classified, and it was never used in the ODNI report, despite the fact that it had been submitted to the Intelligence Community (IC) by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he worked at the time.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) revealed the whistleblower files in a Thursday letter to Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim and called for a thorough investigation into whether “the DEFUSE records were impeded, misdirected or if the significance of the proposal was downplayed by advisors or staff.”

The deeper we go down the COVID origins rabbit hole, the murkier the story gets.

Paul has always been a budget hawk — perhaps the only true budget hawk in the Senate— and is promising to try and change the debate about federal spending before our debt problem overwhelms us.

“I am gravely concerned about the fiscal health of our nation and the growing federal debt,” he wrote in a letter to his colleagues. “Adding to that debt is irresponsible. We cannot continue to say yes to every new program and new spending proposal and expect to escape the consequences. We must also ensure every dollar the government spends is being spent properly and wisely.”

Paul’s first order of business is to confirm South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary.

Reason.com:

There’s no doubt that Paul will continue his important work into the origins of the pandemic, but living up to the promises made in Thursday’s letter will require that Paul casts a critical eye on the incoming Trump administration too. We’ll get an early indication of how seriously he takes the new oversight role at Noem’s confirmation hearing, where Paul and other Republican senators should press her on everything from abolishing the Transportation Security Administration to President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to pardon Ross Ulbricht.

From there, Paul wants to restore some kind of constitutional balance so that Congress, once preeminent among the three branches of government, steps up and assumes a greater role in government.

“This Committee’s mission of oversight and investigations is critical to Congress reasserting itself,” Paul wrote. “For the health of our republic, Congress must stand up once again for its constitutional role.”

A tall order, that. But if anyone can come close to achieving his goals, it’s the Kentucky senator.