(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) CIA Director John Ratcliffe explained the reasoning behind the release of a Biden-era study concluding that the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China. 

Speaking on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Ratcliffe said the CIA’s decision to release its confidential report was aimed at restoring transparency in the obscure spy agency. 

“Part of what we have to do is we have to restore Americans’ trust in our own institutions like the intelligence community and law enforcement—and that includes the CIA,” Ratcliffe said. 

“I had the opportunity on my first day to make public an assessment that actually took place in the Biden administration, so it can’t be accused of being political,” he continued. “The CIA has assessed that the most likely cause of this pandemic that has brought so much devastation around the world was because of a lab-related incident in Wuhan.” 

While Ratcliffe promised to continue its investigation, he emphasized that it was “important for the American people to see an institution like the CIA get off the sidelines and be truthful about what our intelligence shows.” 

Once dismissed as “fringe” and conspiratorial, this theory led to rampant censorship of Americans who dared to discuss it on social media platforms, as documented by the Media Research Center’s censorship database, CensorTrack. 

Former COVID-19 czar “Mr.” Anthony Fauci led the attack against those who proposed the idea the pandemic originated in Wuhan, appearing in a series of media interviews and hearings before Congress.

In contrast to Fauci, one of the earliest proponents of the lab leak theory was Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who faced widespread backlash from the legacy media and the Democrats. 

It was never a conspiracy theory.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) January 25, 2025

He was smeared by headlines like “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins” by The New York Times and “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed” by The Washington Post. 

On Sunday, Cotton shot back on X and in an interview on the latest episode of Fox News Sunday: “I said from the very beginning that COVID probably came from the Wuhan labs. The important thing now is that we have to make China pay for unleashing this plague on the world.” 

I said from the very beginning that Covid probably came from the Wuhan labs.

The important thing now is that we have to make China pay for unleashing this plague on the world. pic.twitter.com/FKOf8ZOczb

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 26, 2025