A bombshell trove of documents has exposed that the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the transfer of over 11,000 virus samples — including some genetically close to COVID-19 — to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) without any formal agreement, chain of custody, or plan for retrieval.
This reckless scheme unfolded under USAID’s $210 million PREDICT program, which operated for a decade and was quietly steered by University of California–Davis with deep ties to EcoHealth Alliance — the same controversial group that funneled taxpayer funds to Wuhan for gain-of-function research.
No Oversight. No Backup. No U.S. Access.
According to internal documents obtained through FOIA litigation, USAID simply handed over the samples to Wuhan — no contract, no retrieval clause, no U.S. ownership.
“No need [sic] information from Yunnan. They were never an official lab partner for PREDICT. All samples they helped collected [sic] are sent to, tested, and stored in Wuhan,” the internal document reads.
That’s right — the epicenter of the pandemic was gifted thousands of potentially dangerous viruses from Yunnan Province, the very hotspot where some of COVID’s closest relatives originated.
The Usual Suspects: Daszak and the PLA
The scientists managing the samples?
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Ben Hu — the WIV virologist who reportedly fell ill with COVID-like symptoms in late 2019.
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Peter Daszak — the longtime EcoHealth Alliance chief now banned from receiving U.S. funding after his shady Wuhan operations were deemed a public safety risk.
WIV, for those keeping score, has well-documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, and operates with notoriously lax biosafety protocols.
Rubio: USAID Was a Disaster
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, now leading the America First foreign assistance overhaul, blasted the agency’s legacy:
“USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War… Instability has worsened, anti-American sentiment has grown, and development objectives have rarely been met.”
Rutgers biologist Richard Ebright called the program a “grift” that lacked basic safeguards:
“The PREDICT contract should’ve required that all samples be copied and stored in a U.S. government facility. But the grift did none of this.”
Left-Wing Scientists Cry Foul as USAID Finally Shuts Down
The same globalist circles that cheered endless foreign aid are now melting down over USAID’s long-overdue dismantling. One Lancet-funded study even claimed USAID’s closure could be linked to “14 million deaths” — a convenient bit of fiction from the same crowd that cheered COVID lockdowns and mandates.
The Bigger Question: Did U.S. Tax Dollars Help Birth a Pandemic?
The documents raise a chilling possibility: U.S.-funded virus samples sent to Wuhan may have helped create or supercharge COVID-19, yet they’re now off-limits to the very government that paid for them.
And because USAID had no contract or enforcement mechanism, there’s no accountability — just a paper trail of negligence.
“In any scientific endeavor, you need confidence in your results. That requires paperwork to prove your methodology is sound,” said government program oversight expert Reuben Guttman.
