Republican Senator Rand Paul has released documents indicating that the FBI instructed US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents to halt a planned inspection and questioning of Peter Daszak, a virus researcher whose organisation, EcoHealth Alliance, had links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The disclosure feeds into Paul's long-running effort to scrutinise the origins of Covid-19 and allegations that US officials sought to suppress the lab-leak theory, adding fresh scrutiny to how federal agencies handled inquiries into researchers connected to gain-of-function work in China.

The documents show CBP agents had been preparing to question Daszak at the border before the FBI intervened to stop the encounter, though the article does not fully detail the FBI's stated justification. Paul, chairman of the Senate committee that has probed the pandemic's origins, has separately accused Dr Anthony Fauci of funding gain-of-function research and of pressuring intelligence analysts, including at the CIA, to revise their initial conclusions on a possible lab leak, which he describes as part of a broader "cover-up."