NEW: USAID Caught Sending ‘Thousands’ Of Viruses To Wuhan Lab

A joint public health program between the U.S. and China has been linked to the transfer of viruses that eventually made their way to the lab in Wuhan where the COVID-19 outbreak likely began, according to internal documents from USAID.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was officially shut down last week, capping an ignominious end to an agency that has been targeted for years by Republicans for its spending on humanitarian projects around the world. With its closure has come the release of a new trove of documents outlining how the agency paid for virus samples to be sent to the Chinese lab where gain-of-function research was being performed on deadly pathogens.

A $210 million program within USAID, known internally as PREDICT, ostensibly sought to prepare for global pandemics by partnering with virologists to gauge how such an outbreak might occur. Backed by researchers from the University of California-Davis, samples of viruses around the world were collected and shipped to the Wuhan lab for storage after a lack of funding kept the program from maintaining its own long-term stock.

In Yunnan Province, China, approximately 11,000 viral samples were collected during the 10-year program and sent to Wuhan, despite having no formal agreement with the lab where viruses were being engineered to become even greater dangers to the public.

A 2019 document about PREDICT is short on details. One passage reads, “No need [sic] information from Yunnan. They were never an official lab partner for PREDICT. All samples they helped collect [sic] are sent to, tested, and stored in Wuhan.”

The “lab” described by researchers references the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has previously been linked to funding from associates of Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health. The Daily Caller has previously linked the lab to China’s communist government.

“Investigations involving USAID’s former funding of global health awards remain active and ongoing,” a senior State Department official said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The American people can rest assured knowing that under the Trump Administration we will not be funding these controversial programs.”

The internal documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Right to Know, a nonprofit chasing the origins of the pandemic and the U.S. government’s involvement in gain-of-function research.

The shuttering of USAID has sparked a debate about the efficacy of the multi-billion-dollar effort. The program has received bipartisan praise from former presidents, including George W. Bush, who famously funded the program to combat AIDS and HIV in Africa.

Conversely, the Trump administration and MAGA allies have singled out USAID as a sanctuary for far-left activists inside the government, some of whom have promised revenge through extra-government “color revolution” tactics meant to undermine President Donald Trump.

“Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week in announcing the agency’s official closure.

“Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown.”