Staff Reports
Chairman Rand Paul this week opened a new chapter in the COVID-19 origins fight. He posted a set of internal Customs and Border Protection records in a public “Reading Room” that show CBP planned to stop and question Peter Daszak when he flew back from China — but an entry in the files says the FBI New York Field Office told agents not to stop him. The inspection never happened, and no one in the FBI or CBP has yet explained why.
What the newly released files actually reveal
The committee released a 23‑page PDF of CBP and National Targeting Center notes. Those notes flag Daszak, now president of Nature Health Global, as “an extremely high person of interest” and describe a planned Tactical Terrorism Response Team exam at JFK. The CBP planned pointed questions about Daszak’s contacts at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and whether he collected or transported biological samples. Then an NTC entry bluntly records: “FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject below.”
Why the timing and the secrecy are disturbing
This file dump came days before Dr. Anthony Fauci, former NIAID Director, is set to testify before Chairman Paul’s committee. That is not a coincidence. Peter Daszak was a central figure in the grant relationships and research that feed right into the gain‑of‑function and Wuhan lab debates about COVID‑19 origins. For the FBI to tell border agents to stand down at the height of the pandemic — and offer no public explanation — raises obvious questions about who was being protected and why.
Questions the FBI, CBP and Daszak still must answer
Was there an active FBI investigation that would have been compromised by a border stop? Was Daszak being shielded for another reason? Did CBP route the planned questions to another agency or simply drop them? Chairman Paul has made the files public so those exact questions can no longer be papered over. The American people deserve an answer, and if agencies are worried about operational security, they should at least say so and provide classified briefings to the committee — not silence.
This is not just another bureaucratic tangle. The “Reading Room” release makes accountability unavoidable and frames Dr. Fauci’s upcoming testimony in a larger pattern that deserves scrutiny. If federal law enforcement expects trust, it must show why the public should trust it. Otherwise, the silence looks less like prudence and more like protection — and that is a problem for every American who wants clear answers about COVID‑19 origins and how our government handled the crisis.
