Transcript of CIA Whistleblower Drops COVID Bombshell & Vance Freezes Fraud Funds | 5.14.26 New

A CIA whistleblower testifies about a COVID cover-up at the highest levels of the federal government.

Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for an emergency use authorization mRNA products.

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, May 14th. And this is Morning Wire.

Vice President Pence announces a major crackdown on fraud, freezing $1 billion in spending after a series of explosive investigations.

We want to protect Medicaid. We want to protect Medicare.

But we can't do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters.

And all eyes on Beijing as President Trump faces off with Xi Jinping.

It's both both our top political challenge geopolitically, and it's also the most important relationship for us to manage.

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In a Senate hearing Wednesday, a CIA whistleblower testified that Dr. Anthony Fauci intentionally prevented the U.S. intelligence community from releasing evidence in 2021 that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab. Not a single Democrat appeared at the hearing.

Cabot Phillips, host of Wired In Live, is here with the latest. So, Cabot, you got a little heads up from Rand Paul that something like this was coming first tell us about that testimony and some of the allegations.

Yeah, many Americans may have moved on from COVID-19, but Republican Senator Rand Paul has been on a warpath for years now demanding accountability for what he views as a federal cover-up. Remember, this all centers on the government's messaging regarding the origins of COVID We all remember in the early days of the pandemic how the medical community, led by Dr. Fauci, were adamant that the virus came about naturally, likely in their view from a wet market in Wuhan. Anyone who contradicted that narrative, including us here at the likely wire-faced censorship on social media, and we later learned that the White House was colluding with big tech companies in that effort. But on Wednesday, a CIA whistleblower testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the intelligence community led by the CIA was in fact prepared in 2021 to announce that the virus likely did leak from a Chinese lab. However, he alleged to Congress that Dr. Fauci, quote, injected himself into those deliberations and, quote, significantly influenced them. Ultimately preventing the IC from taking their findings to the public. Here he is before the committee.

Dr. Fauci's role in the cover-up was intentional. Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists.

That whistleblower, now identified as James Erdman, is an active special operations officer with the CIA. He went on to say that by the summer of 2021, so still very early in the pandemic, the intelligence community was circulating papers suggesting the lab leak theory was plausible.

CIA scientists from an early time after the pandemic began concluding that the lab leak was the most likely hypothesis. Yes, Senator. For example, DOE circulated a paper in May of 2020 that said that all the conditions were present for a lab leak. But yes, my short answer is yes, periodically throughout 2020, all the way to 2024.

And Georgia, as you mentioned at the top, Senator Paul did come on my show Wired In Live ahead of that hearing and told me that he believes Dr. Fauci and others in the federal government intentionally suppressed this evidence of a lab leak to hide evidence that the US had funded gain-of-function research in China and elsewhere.

The report was written at 2 in the morning. Someone scribbled out no. And ended up switching the report to say instead of that it came from lab, that it came from nature. The carelessness of Anthony Fauci in all likelihood led to this pandemic that 15 million people died. And still there hasn't been responsibility. There are people within the swamp that is the CIA over there that are still motivated not to reveal this.

Now, more broadly, this hearing and others before it are part of a bigger effort from the GOP and Senator Paul in particular, to bring justice to those who they allege lied to the American people and potentially broke the law in covering up evidence that they say did not fit their narrative. And it's worth noting President Biden did offer Dr. Fauci a blanket pardon in his final hours in office. That pardon covers any potential offenses committed between 2014 and 2025. However, Senator Paul told me that he plans to try and overturn that pardon. Have a listen.

We've never had a pardon challenged in court. Where the pardon was given, uh, for a 10-year period of time with, uh, no crime specified. It's kind of hard to imagine a pardon so broad that it encompasses any crime. So I think it could be challenged in court.

So what have we heard from the CIA? Have they actually responded to this testimony?

Yeah, they have.

And the agency typically is not exactly quick to comment on things like this, but they offered a forceful statement on Wednesday claiming that Senator Paul and the committee, quote, acted in bad faith by subpoenaing an agency officer for testimony today without notifying defying the CIA. They went on to claim that this hearing, quote, amounts to nothing more than dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing. As the CIA has already assessed, COVID-19 most likely originated from a lab leak, and efforts to undermine that conclusion are disingenuous.

So not actually refuting what he said, but they don't really like being painted as the bad guy here.

Yeah, they were not happy, clearly.

All right, well, Cabot, thank you so much for reporting.

Absolutely.

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Vice President J.D. Vance is freezing more than $1 billion in federal spending after a series of reports exposing potential healthcare waste and fraud in his home state of Ohio.

Joining us now is Daily Wire DC Bureau Chief Tim Rice. Tim, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me, Georgia.

So we didn't think that it would take the vice president long to respond to some pretty stunning evidence that our own Luke Rosiak published, um, detailing abuse and negligence, if not outright fraud, going on in his home state of Ohio. But now he's making some very aggressive moves here. What steps is he taking to crack down on fraud?

So there was obviously this huge press conference that the vice president had along with, uh, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Dr. Oz, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But let's take a step back because even before this press conference, the White House announced early yesterday morning that they were suspending Medicare home health programs until they could figure out what was going on with this fraud. Now, I did not misspeak there. I said Medicare, not Medicaid. Luke Rosiak, our colleague, has reported on Medicaid fraud. Medicaid is a jointly administered program between the federal and state governments that serves poor people, right? Lower income, you know, indigent populations. It is administered by states, jointly funded by the federal government, state governments. So the federal government can't just shut down Medicaid programs because technically they're state-run programs. What they can do is they can act unilaterally in Medicare, which is the government-run healthcare for elderly Americans, which is entirely federally controlled. So the Trump administration is really taking a whole-of-government approach to shutting down the kind of fraud that Luke has uncovered. Now, this brings us to 2 PM yesterday when the vice president got up to give his remarks.

The first thing that he said was that the Trump administration is deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of California. Right. So this is something that the federal government can do. They can say, well, we can't shut your program down, but until you start taking fraud seriously, we're not going to reimburse you. So this is a serious threat. And it goes really hand in glove with the main thing the vice president announced yesterday, which is that his new task force, the joint task force between his office and the FTC, are sending letters to all 50 state Medicaid programs saying, We are sending Medicaid Fraud Control Units to your state. We are going to start investigating fraud. If you don't comply, if we find evidence that you have been ignoring fraud, we are going to act. We could penalize you. And now, right, they're showing right off the bat with California what that penalty will look like. It will look like a sizable, uh, cut in what the federal government is paying to these state Medicaid programs.

Now, which states have shown they are taking action on this?

Sure. So this was a very interesting thing that the vice president noted. He said the United States government is generous. We send out hundreds of billions of dollars a week to state Medicaid programs. There are always going to be bad actors who try to take advantage of this. He pointed to his own state of Ohio, a red state, which is where Luke, Luke's investigation focused, and said, look, you know, it can happen in my backyard. It can happen in a red state. That said, and perhaps unsurprisingly to most of our viewers, it is blue states that seem to have mostly taken, turned a blind eye to fraud. Indiana is the state that the vice president really singled out. He said that they logged 4 times as many fraud indictments in their Medicaid program as New York State, despite having a completely much, much smaller Medicaid program. New York, meanwhile, administers a $100 billion a year Medicaid program. This is New York. This is like, you know, there's certainly crime in New York City. We all know that, organized and otherwise. They only had 9 fraud claims in all of last year. 9 out of $100 billion.

As the vice president said, that, you know, those defy, you know, logic. The other big state, again, unsurprisingly across the, across the country is California. Interestingly, Dr. Oz, who was also there at the press conference, as I mentioned, he noted that one-third of all hospice providers in the United States are located in the Los Angeles area, not California, Los Angeles. He said that CMS has estimated that about half of those hospice providers in the LA area are fraudulent. That they have recently shut down 800 of those clinics. And perhaps as a sign that these people were really just running a grift as long as they could, of those 800, he said only 20 appealed the decision. The other 780 just said, "All right," and went home.

Wow.

All right, well, Tim, a lot to keep an eye on. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Thanks for having me.

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President Trump sits down today in Beijing with President Xi. The two are expected to focus on technology and trade, but geopolitics looms large.

Joining us now to discuss is Ben Domenech, Daily Wire opinion editor and host of The Big Ben Show. Ben, great to have you back on.

Great to be with you as always.

So we have this very significant Beijing visit taking place right now. President Trump welcomed with a lot of fanfare when he arrived yesterday, and there's certainly a lot to talk about between Trump and the Chinese president. First, what are the priorities for the U.S. here?

Well, the United States is interested in a number of different things. First off, we had our own Mary Margaret O'Han ask the other day about the potential release of prisoner Jimmy Lai. Humanitarian concerns are going to be an element of this. But of course, the main thing with this visit is primarily about the economic concerns. China has been wracked by a lot of different effects, not just because of the most recent incidents in Iran and the war there, but also because of their various relationships around the globe with Russia, with, you know, in the course of the Ukraine war and their interests that frankly apply to a much more ambitious approach to the world at large. China views things in much longer terms than just the cycles of election years. And because of their priorities in the region, they very much are focused on trying to extract something from the president, potentially on Taiwan. Potentially on agreements about ending the Iran conflict in ways that could be beneficial to China, which has been starved when it comes to a lot of their energy sources, and an overall approach to the, the Pacific Ocean where China would like to see their power projected more significantly.

All of these are going to be challenges, and, you know, this has been a meeting that was already delayed once because of the Iran conflict and takes on new importance given the number of things that President Trump is juggling when it comes to international affairs.

Trump obviously very big on leverage in his negotiation tactics. Generally speaking, who comes in with more leverage into this conversation?

Well, the general opinion of most analysts, and this is in multiple headlines across the board, is that she holds all the cards. One of the headlines, she's the boss. And that's one of the things that I think you assume when it comes from the foreign policy blob in DC to take with a bit of a grain of salt. Xi does not actually hold all the cards here. He has a military that is untested. They have, as I said, energy problems. They have internal problems when it comes to the makeup of their people and to the lack of the kind of increases in their own economy that they would have liked to see. They've already had multiple revisions downward in terms of expectations for the coming year. And so I think that President Trump is actually going to go in with a, with a pretty tough attitude towards the Chinese. He wants to have some pretty significant wins coming out of this, and he doesn't want to be viewed as being someone who in any way, you know, bent over for, uh, the priorities of the Red Chinese.

Yeah, and about that, what are some realistic expectations about what Trump might walk away with from the summit?

Well, I think one of the big things, uh, that a lot of people will be paying attention to on that humanitarian side is whether he can come back with some of these key prisoners who've been much in the news of late, there could be a deal when it comes to AI and chips. That is something that the Chinese want very much. Uh, it is where they are lagging and where they are frankly stealing a lot of Western technology. So I think that that's something where you could see a, you know, a potential deal that could take place along those lines. But China and Trump have not gotten, gotten along at all. I mean, you know, you had all these different crackdowns when it came to the, you know, the, the different Confucius Institutes that were in place at various academic institutions across America. You have had the tension there where he obviously blames them for trying to control world trade. I think at the end of the day, the president is going to be reluctant to agree to something that establishes, you know, Xi's dominance over, you know, not just the immediate neighborhood that they have, but what they really want to achieve, which is dominating the Indo-Pacific.

Well, Trump certainly walking in with a lot of confidence into these negotiations. We'll see if he walks away with the better end of the deal. Ben, thanks so much for joining us.

Great to be with you.

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