On Friday evening, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) finally released a report on the origins of COVID-19,”Potential Links Between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” to Congress.

The statement from the ODNI reads:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) today released “The Potential Links Between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic” report.

The COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 required the Intelligence Community to declassify information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In reply, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a joint statement by Chairmen Mike Turner (OH-10) and Brad Wenstrup (OH-02), respectively, on the report’s release. They point out that the ODNI’s report has been long delayed, and they had been “pushing for years to make this information available”:

Over one million Americans and nearly 7 million people worldwide have tragically died from COVID-19. Everyone deserves to know the truth, and the declassification of this report is a promising step toward full transparency.

HPSCI and SSCP Republicans have been diligently working to get it right. Based on the classified information that we received, we suspected right away that the coronavirus was not a natural phenomenon. We’ve been pushing for years to make this information available for all to see.

In addition, information gathered by HPSCI and SSCP Republicans this Congress and the last supports the likelihood of a lab leak. The Committees will continue to investigate the origins of COVID-19 and the information obtained today will help to further its investigation.

The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have some serious explaining to do. This declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Intelligence Community lends credence to the “lab leak” theory, which suggests that the coronavirus outbreak most likely originated from a Wuhan virology lab in China. This is on top of the Government Accountability Office’s report released last week outlining the flow of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Chinese entities known to be doing coronavirus research. While we appreciate the report from ODNI, the corroboration of all available evidence along with further investigation into the origins of COVID-19 must continue.

RedState was at the forefront in reporting on uncovering the origins of COVID-19, including in February 2022, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sought to illegally withhold and redact the information from the American people, and in September 2019, when a new “Lancet” letter claimed there was no direct evidence the coronavirus originated in nature.

You can access the full report (.pdf) here.

As this is a breaking story, RedState will provide further updates as they become available.