OAN Staff Lillian Mann
5:18 PM – Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Appearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, CIA whistleblower James Erdman III alleged that federal agents orchestrated a cover-up to suppress scientists who questioned the origins of COVID-19 during the initial 2020 outbreak.
Notably, no Democrats showed up for Wednesday’s committee hearing.
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Erdman, a former intelligence officer and military veteran, provided his testimony just two days after the expiration of the statute of limitations for potential charges against Dr. Anthony Fauci regarding allegations that he lied to Congress in 2021.
In addition to his intelligence background, Erdman is known as the co-founder of Feds For Freedom, a grassroots organization established to challenge federal vaccine mandates and address claims of religious exemption discrimination.
“Others participated in planning event 201 in 2019. This was a coronavirus pandemic tabletop exercise curiously similar to the events that played out during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it was attended by Dr Fauci,” Erdman said.
“The only way we solve this issue is with real accountability for failure to comply with this executive and legislative branch oversight and an escape valve where whistleblowers can continue to contribute to the mission free from retaliation,” Erdman stressed. “Several BSEG scientists helped Dr Fauci rewrite definitions of data function in 2015 to lift a funding pause on dangerous research.”
Critics expressed frustration over the timing of the testimony, which occurred only days after the statute of limitations expired for the former U.S. chief medical advisor, leading many to question why such critical information was not disclosed sooner.
Despite these concerns over timing, the hearing centered on issues of public transparency and government accountability. During the proceedings, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) highlighted that teams of analysts had concluded in both 2021 and 2023 that a laboratory leak was the most probable origin of COVID-19, further alleging that Fauci played an intentional role in suppressing that narrative.
“Intelligence community leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that COVID pandemic originated as a result of a lab incident,” Paul said. “Dr. Fauci convened the now infamous February 1st 2020 call … Some scientists on that call raised some pretty serious concerns about a laboratory origin and ironically, those same scientists later co-authored the proximal origin paper which publicly dismissed the lab leak hypothesis.”
“One author received a $9 million grant for Dr. Fauci’s own agency after he changed his opinion from ‘lab leek’ on the private phone call to ‘natural origin’ in public,” he continued.
According to Paul, the Biological Sciences Experts Group (BSEG) — a cohort of non-governmental scientists tasked with advising the U.S. Intelligence Community on biological threats — was actively researching the origins of COVID-19. However, members of this same advisory group were also involved in the specific experiments that may have led to the creation of the virus, he added.
“[BSEG] stated purpose is to give the intelligence community access to outside scientific experts on biological threats. Sounds reasonable, but not if those experts are not independent,” Paul emphasized. “For example, Dr. Ralph Baric collaborated with Dr. Shi Zhengli in Wuhan [Wuhan Institute of Virology] to create gain of function corona viruses.”
“But Dr. Baric was also part of BSEG and an active consultant to intelligence agencies on the origins of COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, [Dr.] Peter Daszack received hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government and worked with Dr. Shi also on these gain of function experiments.”
Daszak also participated in a WHO mission to China to investigate COVID-19’s origins, according to Paul. Daszak had reportedly been raising concerns that some researchers tasked with studying the outbreak had prior involvement in or connections to gain-of-function research linked to its possible development.
“When Congress asked these questions, government officials lied to our faces. They classified the documents, they suppressed the information, they changed the definitions, they invoked sources and methods, [and] they told Congress only what Congress wanted to know,” said Paul.
“It wasn’t until after the 2024 election that the outgoing Biden Administration directed the CIA to issue an assessment, not because of new intelligence, but so officials could walk out the door claiming that there was nothing left to find. That is not an analysis, that is a clean up operation,” he argued.
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