26. Trade · Notable · Contested — excluded from counts
Create a commission to investigate COVID-19's origins and CCP damages
Printed page 790 26. Trade · from “The Case for Fair Trade”
“Hold the CCP accountable for the COVID-19 virus, which almost certainly originated as a genetically engineered virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and do so through the establishment of a presidential commission or select congressional committee that would investigate the origins of the virus; its various costs, both economically and in human life; and the possible means of collecting damages from the CCP, which are likely to rise to the trillions of dollars.”
What has happened
- Not started
Congress ordered an intelligence review, not a select committee. Section 6803 of the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (Pub. L. 119-60) requires the Director of National Intelligence, within 180 days, to run a declassification review of intelligence on COVID-19's origins, expressly including research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, gain-of-function research and its funding. No select committee on the pandemic was constituted in the 119th Congress - the House created select bodies on electoral reform, the drug cartels, President Biden's health and January 6, and none on COVID - and no mechanism for assessing or collecting damages exists.
- Not started
The White House published its own account of COVID-19's origins rather than creating a body to investigate them. covid.gov now redirects to "Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19" on whitehouse.gov, which asserts the conclusion the Quote wants investigated. A finding published by the Executive Office of the President is not a presidential commission, it took no evidence, and it says nothing about costs or about collecting damages from the CCP.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Both events are not started and both carry Evidence, under playbook 3b: the record contains dated Primary action adjacent to the ask, and burying it in the body would make a researched item look like an unresearched placeholder. Neither instrument is the named object - “a presidential commission or select congressional committee”.
The 118th Congress’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic did not carry into the 119th; the House rules package of 2025-01-03 (H. Res. 5) predates the evidence window in any case.
- Action
- create
- Object
- Presidential commission or select congressional committee on COVID-19 origins
- ID
- 2092