Ashe Schow writes for Just the News about one of Tulsi Gabbard’s final acts as the Trump administration’s top intelligence official.
Back in 2022, then-former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard got blistered for raising concerns that the United States might be funding bio-research labs with dangerous pathogens in foreign countries like war-torn Ukraine.
Republican Mitt Romney – like Gabbard a former presidential candidate – accused her of spreading “treasonous lies” and “Russian propaganda,” and many in the news media joined the chorus in a concerted effort to diminish the threat that U.S. tax dollars could one day lead to an accidental virus outbreak from one of those foreign labs.
Four years later, Gabbard turned the tables in epic fashion.
In one of her final acts as the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, she declassified evidence Friday showing that America did, in fact, fund a whopping 120 bio-labs in 30 foreign countries, and that some of those labs had handled dangerous pathogens or were engaged in virus-enhancing techniques known as gain-of-function research.
And yes, Ukraine was one of the locations with multiple labs.
“Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in bio-labs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported bio-labs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth,” Gabbard declared in a video released on her social media account.
The release of the declassified memos and video statement was more than just a retort to Romney: it was a rebuke to the journalism profession and its pack mentality coverage.
Numerous legacy media outlets, including The New York Times, long claimed that conservatives were pushing conspiracy theories relating to the funding of biological laboratories in other countries.
Some got the basic facts wrong. Others changed the argument, suggesting there was no reason for concern because tax dollars weren’t going to bioweapon labs.
And nearly all missed or distorted Gabbard’s factually driven point.
