Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott at the London Times provide the most comprehensive collection of evidence to-date describing how COVID-19 was intentionally created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as part of a bioweapon program run by the Chinese military and funded by American taxpayers.

Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military were combining the world's most deadly coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus just as the pandemic began.

Investigators who scrutinised top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak.

The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons.

With millions of dollars in funding from American taxpayers.

Its work protecting pets and endangered species did not attract substantial funding. But after the September 11 terror attacks and the Sars outbreak, the US began to see the importance of funding work combatting bioterrorism and pandemics. The trust began to focus on how viruses might cross from animals to people and spark a pandemic.

Shi's team provided the fieldwork for the trust's campaign and the laboratories to test and experiment on the viruses. In 2009, the trust was given $18 million over five years from a new programme, called Predict, to identify pandemic viruses. Shortly afterwards, the trust was rebranded as the EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak assumed the role of president. The Chinese collaborators who helped put him on the map were also rewarded: $1 million of the Predict grant was redirected to the Wuhan institute.

The article has a lot more information that is all very compelling. At this point I think it's virtually certain that the lab-leak hypothesis is true, and that it's very likely that COVID-19 was developed as part of a bioweapon program.

(HT: Powerline Blog and Instapundit.)