saying it s time to dismiss the wet market as the source of the outbreak. we believe the preponderance of evidence proves the virus did leak from the wiv sometime before september 12, 2019. the report references satellite images in september and october of 2019. showing a significant increase in hospital visits. in october of that year, wuhan hosted thousands of international athletes for the world military games. the report says athletes complained of illness and four countries that sent athletes to one confirmed covid-19 cases in november and december of 2019. before the outbreak became public. it s the greatest cover-up in human history. i think the chinese communist party are very concerned about this report. chinese government has intensified its efforts against any evidence pointing towards the lab leak. instead demanding investigations into the united states. republicans produce their report
of some 22,000 virus samples had been taken offline to prevent a hack during the pandemic. which seemed to make sense, except that the ad hoc group of investigators at drastic figured out that the database was actually taken offline on september 12, 2019, three months before the official start of the pandemic. so here is my takeaway. first, that the lab leak theory is plausible. not assured. but plausible. second, that politics and bureaucratic turf wars hampered the full exploration of the lab leak theory. my ongoing larger concern is the damage this is going to do to public confidence in other institutions at a moment when we can least afford further erosion. if the lab leak theory was erroneously sdodiscounted it wi fuel authority like elections.
help or how many lives we could save. as i stated earlier, i have voluntarily appeared before congress on three separate occasions and spoke to the member of the special counsel s office. i will be as sincere in my answers as this committee is with its questions. thank you for your testimony. we will now proceed under the five-minute rule with questions. at the completion of the members questions, pursuant to the chairman s september 12, 2019 resolution for investigative procedures and pursuant to notice, this will be followed by one hour of staff questioning equally divided by the majority and the minority. i will begin by recognizing myself for five minutes. mr. lewandowski, we received a letter from the white house just yesterday that they will not let you answer any questions beyond what you told the special counsel and was publicly released. the white house s instruction to you is based on a bogus claim of