US Congress to take leaf out of Sharri Markson’s book on Wuhan Covid leak

When Sharri Markson set out to investigate what really happened in Wuhan she didn’t envisage she would end up telling US Congress about her findings.

Investigative journalist and author Sharri Markson. Picture: Adam Yip

When Sharri Markson set out to investigate what really happened in Wuhan she certainly didn’t envisage that she would end up addressing US Congress members on her findings.

Yet on Tuesday, The Australian’s investigations writer will be doing exactly that after being invited to a Congressional briefing to discuss her revelations of the origins of the pandemic that featured in her book, What really happened in Wuhan.

Senior US political representatives took serious notice of Markson’s research and she will deliver a 30-minute speech from Australia via video link, delving into her world-exclusive reports into the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab leak theory.

Markson, 37, released her book in September, and it gained international traction including in the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand.

She is confident her 30-minute address to Congress will help prompt US political figureheads and representatives to launch a formal investigation into the lab leak theory.

“It’s encouraging that more and more US Congressmen and women are taking seriously the possibility the pandemic started from a laboratory accident and are prepared to examine the hard evidence, uncomfortable and embarrassing as the revelations may be,” she said.

“For a year and a half now I’ve been saying there needs to be an independent investigation into how the pandemic started, and that China isn’t being transparent.”

What Really Happened in Wuhan by Sharri Markson.

Markson has been relentless in her reporting of what happened at the institute, despite much criticism from other parts of the media including the ABC, who said numerous times that a potential lab leak was a “conspiracy theory”.

She’s broken many stories on the issues including that the institute housed live bats in cages – something the World Health Organisation failed to uncover. Markson also exposed in March this year the institute had workers who were hospitalised with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019, which was when US officials first suspected the first cluster of the pandemic. Markson also had another international scoop when she revealed that the US National Institutes of Health and top ­government health adviser Anthony Fauci was funding gain-of-function research by the Chinese military.

The Walkley Award winner said documents should be subpoenaed from the NIH, Eco Health Alliance and other institutions including the University of North Carolina that were conducting or funding coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute.

Even now, Markson said there’s a raft of information that is difficult to obtain and has significantly hindered efforts to discover what really went on in the Wuhan lab.

“I’ve been arguing there’s a lot of information that is held by US agencies and other international bodies that would be extremely helpful in finding out more about whether Covid-19 was the result of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” she said. “It’s important they have an independent bipartisan inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, whether it’s a congressional inquiry or a presidential commission.”

Markson’s findings also aired in her documentary on Sky News Australia, which featured an interview with former US president Donald Trump and has now had more than 6.5 million views on YouTube.

Her book, released six weeks ago, has been a success, with strong sales across Australia, the UK, US, Canada and New Zealand.

Markson will address the US Congress on Tuesday at 6.30am AEDT.