Report: Jeff Zucker Forbade CNN Staff from Investigating ‘Trump Talking Point’ Coronavirus Lab Leak Theory
Former CNN President Jeff Zucker ordered employees during then-President Donald J. Trump’s administration not to investigate the theory that the coronavirus pandemic was sparked by a lab leak in China, calling it a “Trump talking point,” according to a report.
A “well-placed CNN Insider” told Fox News Digital that Zucker issued the directive in the early stages of the pandemic.
On March 13, 2020, Harmeet Kauer, a “culture writer” for CNN, called the notion that the virus may have started in a laboratory a “fringe theory.”
Her colleague, Scottie Andrew, on April 13, 2020, wrote an article entitled “Nearly 30% in the US believe a coronavirus theory that’s almost certainly not true” in regards to the lab leak theory. It included the subheading, “Its origin is up for debate, but it wasn’t made in a lab.”
“There’s still much we don’t know about the coronavirus pandemic, but virus experts agree on one piece of its origin story: The virus likely originated in a bat, not in a Chinese lab,” he wrote.
“People are slowly waking up from the fog,” the source told Fox News. “It is kind of crazy that we didn’t chase it harder.”
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Energy provided documents to the Biden administration and key lawmakers in which it concluded a laboratory leak was likely behind the global pandemic.
The Journal’s Michael Gordan and Warren Strobel noted that not all federal agencies are on the same page about the virus’s origins:
The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory.
Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.
As Breitbart News highlighted last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray appeared on Fox News’s The Bret Baier Podcast last Tuesday and shared the agency’s belief that the virus began in Wuhan.
“[T]he FBI has, for quite some time now, assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” he said.
Revelations of the FBI and Energy Department’s belief that the virus originated in a Chinese lab come weeks after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the origins of the virus.
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