Another stunning turnaround.

Another dissident once denounced as a dangerous conspiracy theorist now sitting at the peak of power — armed with the authority to act.

Four years ago, Tulsi Gabbard was just a private citizen, a former Hawaiian congresswoman who went public with her concerns about a sprawling network of U.S.-funded biological laboratories operating overseas.

Back in March 2022, Gabbard publicly accused the Biden administration of concealing the existence of biolabs in Ukraine and other foreign countries, and researching dangerous pathogens.

Her warning came days after senior Biden official Victoria Nuland acknowledged during congressional testimony that Ukraine possessed “biological research facilities” — a statement that contradicted wholesale denials circulating from government officials and major media outlets.

As reported by Yated at the time, Nuland was responding to questions from then Senator Marco Rubio of Florida (now Secretary of State), during her testimony at a March 2022 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

Sen. Marco Rubio: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?

Victoria Nuland: Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of. So, we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

Nuland’s testimony was seen by many as confirmation that the United States was in fact funding bioweapons facilities in Ukraine.

Sounding the Alarm

“There are 25 plus U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, which, if breached, would release and spread deadly pathogens to the United States and the world, causing untold suffering and death,” Gabbard said in a podcast. She called for the labs to be secured and the pathogens destroyed, emphasizing the biosecurity risks, and warning of possible outbreaks.

“Instead of covering this up,” she urged, “the Biden-Harris administration needs to work with Russia, Ukraine, the EU, the UN, NATO and all relevant parties to immediately implement a cease-fire in the vicinity of these labs until they’re secured and all these pathogens destroyed.”

Gabbard noted that in addition to the biolabs in Ukraine, “the United States funds over 100 such facilities around the world that are engaging in dangerous research, including gain of function similar to the lab in Wuhan.”

“After realizing how dangerous and vulnerable these labs are, they should have all been shut down two years ago,” Gabbard insisted. “But they have not been.”

“Why is this research something that is so critical, not being done in secure labs within the United States?” Gabbard asked on a Fox News show in 2023. “Why is this research being outsourced? And if they have nothing to hide, why are they trying so hard to hide it?”

Another witness at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that heard the shocking testimony from Victoria Nuland was Dr. Steven Quay, chief executive officer at Atossa Therapeutics Inc. He co-wrote a Wall Street Journal column citing four studies that provide strong evidence for the lab-leak theory.

One study, published by Nature Medicine, concluded the original Covid-19 pathogen was 99.5% optimized for human infection, which is strong confirmation of the lab-leak hypothesis.

Quay was asked at the Senate hearing by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., if he was concerned about the expansion of Chinese GOF research. In response, Quay pointed out that in December 2019, Chinese researchers were “doing synthetic biology on a cloning vector of the Nipah virus, which is 60% lethal.”

“We just experienced a 1% lethal virus,” Quay said, referring to Covid-19. Noting the Black Plague “was a 20% lethal event that set the world back 250 years, a pandemic of the Nipah virus (associated with encephalitis, a severe swelling of the brain), would set us back a millennium.”

‘Conspiracy Queen’

As a May 2025 Yated article reported, Gabbard made allegations about the Biden administration covering up its funding of overseas biolabs when the federal and media censorship machine was running at full speed.

Not surprisingly, she was immediately mocked as the queen of conspiracy theories and trashed by Democrats in Congress and their media allies.

“Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives,” Senator Mitt Romney spewed out.

USA Today raced to “fact check,” slamming Gabbard’s allegations as “Russian disinformation.”

“Russia Teams Up with China to Amplify False Claim of U.S. labs in Ukraine,” the paper’s headlines warned darkly.

Forbes, Newsweek, the New York Times and many other mainstream outlets joined in the attack.

By 2024, Homeland Security had branded Tulsi Gabbard a security threat and placed her on the Secondary Security Screening Selection (“SSSS”) travel restriction list for ‘enhanced’ searches at airports. (DHS later claimed it was a ‘mistake.’)

It’s worth recalling the false messaging that came from the highest levels of the federal government at this time. In a March 9, 2022, statement, the Biden administration denied the existence of “US-owned or US-operated chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine,” dismissing the claims as Chinese and Russian propaganda.

“The Russian accusations are absurd. They’re laughable. There is nothing to it,” White House Press Secretary John Kirby told a news conference. “It’s classic Russian propaganda. If I were you, I wouldn’t give it a drop of ink worth paying attention to.”

Stunning Reversal

Today, Tulsi Gabbard holds the post of Director of the Office of National Intelligence, one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world.

According to an “exclusive report” in the NY Post last week, Gabbard has opened an investigation into those same foreign biolabs she warned about in 2022— transforming a subject once spurned as malign “misinformation” and conspiracy theory into a vital national security concern.

The DNI announced her office’s investigation of more than 120 biological laboratories abroad that the U.S. government had allegedly funded for decades. The Biden administration’s denials and dishonest messaging about the biolabs are now the subject of intense scrutiny.

The Post quoted the Director of National Intelligence saying her team is going “to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain and what ‘research’ is being conducted.”

The goal is “to end dangerous gain-of-function research—risky experiments aimed at making viruses more deadly—that threatens the health and well-being of the American people and the world,” Gabbard said.

“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have,” Gabbard told the NY Post. “Yet despite the known, obvious dangers, politicians, so-called health professionals, like Dr. Fauci, and many within the Biden administration’s national security team, lied to the American people about the existence of these US-funded and supported biolabs.”

‘Worse, they threatened those who attempted to expose the truth.”

Trump Bars All Funding for Gain-of-Function Research

In May of last year, President Trump signed an Executive Order immediately halting all U.S. government funding for gain-of-function research “in China, Iran and other foreign countries.” 

“Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens,” the order reads. “If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, an impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security.

“The Biden Administration allowed dangerous gain-of-function research within the United States with insufficient levels of oversight,” the Order noted.

In a statement to the press, Trump reasoned that Covid-19 had proved that dangerous pathogens “can leak out innocently, stupidly and incompetently, and half destroy the world.”

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, from 2014 to 2023, the United States funded overseas pathogen research with $1.4 billion. However, during the same period, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General could not even identify how many studies on potential pandemic pathogens (PPP) were conducted with this money.

The explosive clause in Trump’s order detailing U.S. government funding for gain-of-function research “in China, Iran and other foreign countries” should have dominated headlines. Instead, the media largely ignored it — as though the prospect of deadly pathogens falling into the hands of hostile regimes was not worth mentioning. [See Sidebar]

Under new guidance from Gabbard, the U.S. Intelligence Community will review research at all US-funded biolabs, particularly at facilities where gain-of-function experiments could increase the transmissibility and lethality of viruses.

National Intelligence officials noted that the foreign labs extend into more than 30 countries, and date all the way back to a Department of Defense program that sought to dispose of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) after the end of the Cold War.

More than 40 of the biolabs under review are located in Ukraine — and could “be at risk of compromise” due to Russia’s war, National Intelligence officials noted.

Subterfuge Kept the Grant Money Flowing

In 2014, the Obama administration paused funding for gain-of-function experiments in 22 fields, including those involving SARS, influenza and MERS, because of the increased risk such experimentation carries of causing a pandemic.

Yet EcoHealth Alliance director Peter Daszak, reportedly in collusion with Fauci, diverted $600,000 in grants from the NIH to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to a lab known to have engaged in GOF experimentation.

Gabbard’s office, working alongside NIH leadership and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has set out to trace the paper trail of NIH grants linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, targeting gain-of-function research and its potential role in causing the pandemic through a lab-leak.

Her office has launched a comprehensive probe into more than 120 overseas biolabs that have received U.S. tax dollars, aiming to catalog the pathogens and research being conducted.

The administration has published details about the financial links between U.S. agencies and the Wuhan lab, actively focusing on former NIH director Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role in the funding.

During a recent television appearance, Tulsi Gabbard went further than any senior U.S. official in publicly addressing Fauci’s alleged role in pathogenenic research. She said that preliminary findings “make it clear that Anthony Fauci helped fund the research” that in all likelihood “caused the pandemic.”

“We are working on being able to share that specific link very soon,” Gabbard said, hinting that Fauci may be at the top of those soon to be subpoenaed. “During a Senate hearing on May 11, 2021, Fauci said under oath that the NIH never carried out gain-of-function research in Wuhan. He denied the allegations over and over to Senator Rand Paul. But the facts say otherwise. Is it any wonder that he sought a preemptive pardon from President Biden?”

“And the reason why this is so important is not just what happened in the past,” the National Intelligence director continued. “It’s because this gain-of-function research is happening in biolabs around the world. Who knows what kinds of pathogens are in these labs that could create another Covid-like pandemic?”

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the Trump administration is righting the wrongs of the Biden administration.

“The prior administration bankrolled dangerous gain-of-function research and foreign biolabs with American tax dollars, then deliberately hid it from the American people,” Hegseth said in a statement.

“The declassification of this discovery shows how little oversight this work had. Under President Trump’s leadership, DNI Tulsi Gabbard and the entire Cabinet are righting these historic wrongs and delivering justice for those on the front lines and the ones they protect. The era of lies and betrayal is over.”

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A Time Bomb Built Over Decades

In May 2025, standing at President Trump’s side in the Oval Office as the president signed the newest executive order, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy detailed the little-known history of how gain-of-function and bioweapons research in this country accelerated so drastically over the past seven decades.

“GOF research began in 1947. By 1969,” Kennedy said, “the CIA said it had reached nuclear-level equivalency [as a potential bioweapon,] that it could kill the entire U.S. population for $0.29 per person.”

The HHS director recapped how GOF research was recognized early on as a dangerous, fruitless avenue. Leaders who sought to shut it down, however, were outmaneuvered by individuals who championed the experimentation.

“By 1969, President Nixon went to Fort Deitrich and announced a unilateral end to gain-of-function research, which was called ‘dual use’ research, meaning it was intended for both vaccination development and military purposes,” Kennedy said.

“Nixon then persuaded 180 countries to sign the bioweapons charter of 1973 that ended gain-of-function research around the globe.”

A fateful twist came with the passage of the Patriot Act in 2002 following the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers, the HHS chief recounted. “The Patriot Act had a little-known provision in it that said that although the Bioweapons Charter and the Geneva Charter are still in effect, US officials who violated it cannot be prosecuted.”

“That relaunched the bioweapons arms race, and that was driven by gain-of-function research,” he said.

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Lab Accident Caused Ebola Outbreak

Experts say that in 2014, several pathogens escaped from U.S. labs in Africa, causing the deadly Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa.  President Obama declared a moratorium on future use of bioweapons research and instead, much of that research was moved offshore to the Wuhan lab and other sites.

“GOF research and bioweapons have become a global preoccupation,” Kennedy said at the signing of the May 25 Executive Order. “Russia is deeply engaged in this research, as is Iran and other countries.”

“In the entire history of gain-of-function research, we can’t find a single good thing that has come out of it,” he declared.

NIH director Jay Battacharya who was also present at the signing ceremony noted that the fallacy of GOF research is “believing that it can protect us, either against pandemics or against bioterror attacks from other nations. That belief is an illusion,” he said.

“Any nation that engages in this research endangers their own population and that of the world.”

The president signed the order last Monday “to improve the safety and security of biological research in the U.S. and around the world.” But experts say it’s not at all certain that the gain-of-function genie can be put back in the bottle.

Battacharya has observed that countries around the world are doing this research, which he says has become cheap, easy, and convenient. Any mad scientist determined enough to create his own bioweapon can order equipment from Amazon for next-day delivery and quickly start creating Ebola viruses from scratch.