Chuck Todd and GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan Agree U.S. Should Hold ‘Public Hearings’ On Possible Lab Leak Cover-Up

After news broke that the Department of Energy has concurred with the FBI that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the covid-19 pandemic that began in Wuhan, China, NBC News anchor Chuck Todd and Republican Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan had similar concordance on the idea of public hearings.

Sullivan appeared on Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC to discuss several issues including Russia, Ukraine, and China. The Alaska senator serves on both the Armed Services and the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committees.

As the two were discussing both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, Todd asked about the lab leak news.

“If we end up determining if our intelligence community over time determines this is the majority view and it’s the U.S. government’s view that this was a lab leak in China and that government covered it up, what should be the consequences?” he asked.

“Well, I think we need to have public hearings on this and really dig into it,” Sullivan answered. “Think about what just happened over the last three years. One of the biggest pandemics in a century. A lot of evidence that it’s coming from the Chinese. And when other countries even raise it, like Australia, the Chinese use their coercive economic activities to shut people up.”

“So I think we need to do extensive hearings,” he said. “I hope our Democratic colleagues in the Congress can support that. I know the Republicans in the House are certainly supportive of that.”

Sullivan said that if we hold hearings, “we need to make sure every country in the world knows” what happened.

“Look, this is a country that has no problem coming out and lying to the world,” he said. “We just saw that with this Chinese spy balloon. It’s the nature of a communist dictatorship to lie to their own people, to lie to the world. But I think that we need to make sure every country knows that and then look at what the consequences could be.”

He recounted the consequences the rest of the world faced as a result of the pandemic: “Obviously, millions of deaths, huge economic impacts.”

“And it would once again show that the Chinese Communist Party is not only a menace, but the nature of these regimes is to lie to the world, and we need to make that clear to people,” he concluded.

Todd was in complete agreement about transparency at home and abroad.

“I think you’re definitely right on those public hearings,” said the NBC anchor. “At a minimum, we need to know what we know and the world needs to know what we know.”

The theory that the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic began with a lab leak was long dismissed as a conspiracy theory by many in the media. During a 2021 episode of MTP, Todd noted that it had been “scoffed at,” and admitted the reactions had become “tangled up in politics.”

Watch the clip above, via NBC’s Meet the Press.

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