"If that is not a cover-up, I don't know what is": Hawley's Exchange with COVID Whistleblower

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Erman, thank you for being here. In March of 2023, the Senate unanimously passed legislation requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify all, I believe the exact language is, declassify any and all information related to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Urology and the origins of CO 19. I have some familiarity with this legislation because I wrote it. It passed the House unanimously. President Biden signed it into law under, I think, popular duress.

[00:00:31]As you may remember, well, first of all, are you familiar with this law?

[00:00:34]>> Oh, of course. Yes.

[00:00:35]>> As you may recall, it set a statutory deadline of just a couple of months later, which the Biden administration promptly ignored and blew through. When they finally did release the report, I think we've got a picture of it here that'll appear over my shoulder. It was all of five pages.

[00:00:48]>> Yeah, >> here it is. Wait for it. Five pages.

[00:00:51]Remember, the law says any and all information. Five pages. Heavily redacted. Even the five pages, I think one of those pages is like a cover a cover note or something. Yeah, here it is. The executive summary, five pages.

[00:01:04]This is according to the office of the director of national intelligence. This is this is any at all information related to CO 19 and the Wuhan verology lab. Now, you've been on this task force that has reviewed these documents. I is this all the information the United States government had? That is not all the information. And I'll tell you a little story about that if you'd like.

[00:01:28]>> Please >> story about your five pages there. So, there was a classified report being written at the time all of this was going on. And I assumed as I'm reading through the documents that that um they would just take that classified report, which didn't look like that, and they would just redact it. And because I'm reading through reading through documents, but that is not what happened. They decided to write a different paper. um instead of what was already >> who you say they who's they >> the National Intelligence Council.

[00:01:59]>> The National Intelligence Council was was at the time that the law passed was was doing a thorough review or doing a review. We don't know how thorough.

[00:02:07]>> How many how many pages you you've been on this task force? You you've gotten a sense of if it's not five pages, how many pages worth of information would you guess the United States government was in possession of related to Wuhan lab and co possible links? I can tell you that uh director Gabbard is working through I believe 2,000 pages that they're trying to get released in the in the first batch. She this is a the the law states yes any and all but there's still the requirement to run it through the different agencies to ensure that there's not some sources and methods.

[00:02:40]But there's there's like 2,000 pages that >> 2,000 pages. 2,000 pages. I want to show you what Advil Haynes director Haynes said to me when I wrote to her. Senator Bronn and I wrote to her following this outrageous, ridiculous report. She wrote back to me and said, "Well, we only we classified we we declassified only what we could without endangering sources and methods." Only only what we could. Five pages of summary that itself has redactions. The five pages have redactions. And you're telling me there are literally thousands of documents.

[00:03:13]Why are they hiding all of this material? I can tell you that the inter agency process of declassification is highly bureaucratic and uh that is being worked and I think you'll saw you saw just a few days ago director Gabbard released some information about the labs.

[00:03:28]>> Was was director Haynes Averil Haynes was she involved in in making the decision not to release the material.

[00:03:35]>> I don't have any proof that she was involved in the direct decision. I have no emails saying that directly.

[00:03:42]It's her, it was her, it was her office and it's her signature on the letter to me. It's her office that sent the five pages. She's the one who said, "This is what we have. This is all we have."

[00:03:50]You're telling me there were 2,000 plus documents. They sent us five.

[00:03:54]>> The first swath of documents that we're looking to There's many, many more than that.

[00:03:58]>> I got you. Many, many more. Let let me tell you what this this so-called five-page report, what it said in its substance, to the extent there was any.

[00:04:06]They said number one that nothing that was researched at the Wuhan lab could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS CO2.

[00:04:14]Number two, they said there is no evidence of any research related incident involving Wuhan employees that might have been related to the pandemic.

[00:04:21]Now, in your experience, given what you have seen, are those true statements?

[00:04:30]>> Some of that would have to be covered and classified, but no, they're not true.

[00:04:34]>> Uhhuh. If we wanted to get into details, I I don't believe that's true.

[00:04:38]>> So, the United States government first deliberately violated a law passed by Congress signed by the president that ordered them to release all information related to the Wuhan lab. Number one.

[00:04:49]Number two, they then violated the law again by withholding thousands and thousands of pages that they had at the time and knew were covered by the law.

[00:04:56]And number three, the conclusions so-called they released to the public are false. If that is not a cover up, I don't know what is.

[00:05:04]And if our elected officials and unelected officials in this case in the IC and OD and II, if they can get by with blatantly violating the statutes of this country and lying to the American people, I'm sorry, but we don't have a democracy anymore. I don't know what it is, but it's not a democracy because we, the people, aren't in charge. These people are in charge and they're lying to us every single day. You said in your opening statement that Dr. Fouchy, speaking of someone who's not exactly a trutht teller, that Dr. Fouchy intervened to put his thumb on the scale of what information the the intelligence community, the IC could review in when they did their initial assessments of whether or not the Wuhan lab was linked to CO. What exactly did he do? So let me clarify that. So he he reached in and he provided a this list of scientists and subject matter experts that we should we should talk to. And it's not like he's saying you will go talk to them. He doesn't have the power to do that technically. It's just that the bureaucracy in place at the time was perfectly happy to pursue those recommendations even when there was a number of individuals who expressed concern saying at least one for sure that said, "Are you sure we want to do this? He's he's a policy maker and we need to have our intelligence cycle."

[00:06:30]>> And he had a point of view, did he not?

[00:06:32]>> He certainly did. And here's >> and and what was that point of view?

[00:06:34]Just refresh our memories.

[00:06:36]>> He he believes it's natural origin. He still does, >> of course. I mean, he said this over and over. Now, he would have reason to given that he supported gain of function research to the Wuhan lab. Lied about it to Congress, lied about it repeatedly to the chairman, as I recall.

[00:06:51]So, his hands are dirty in this. And yet, here he is intervening behind the scenes. It's not It's bad enough that he's out there misleading the public.

[00:06:59]Behind the scenes, he's trying to intervene to stop our own intelligence community, who are supposed to work for the public, from actually accurately assessing the evidence. This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable. And then people wonder, gee, why are the American people not trustworth not trusting of elected officials? I wonder why are they? I'll tell you why. Because they're repeatedly, we are repeatedly lied to by these people. Lied to and lied to and lied to. I want to thank you, Mr. Erdman, for your testimony. I just want to note, I think we've only scratched the the the surface here.

[00:07:31]Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing. And I just want to point out when you've got a witness who's saying under oath that the the report that the government issued lied to the American people, that it is false. We've got a big problem in this country. We've got a big big problem and we haven't begun to solve it yet. Thank you, Mr. Damn it.