By Brownstone Institute at Brownstone dot org.

According to newly released emails, the United States Intelligence Community, led by the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, held regular meetings with Dr. Ralph Baric, one of America's leading coronavirus experts, since at least 2015.

Senator Rand Paul's office has worked for years to obtain the documents.

Baric has been accused of engineering the Covid-19 virus in his lab at the University of North Carolina, but he has never had to testify about his role in the pandemic despite his well-documented collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The newly released emails reveal that the CIA hoped to discuss "Coronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation with Baric" and that Baric held quarterly meetings with members of the Intelligence Community.

These emails are just the latest additions to the suspicious amalgamation of facts implicating the US Intelligence Community's role in the origins of the pandemic, as discussed in The Covid Response at Five Years.

A very brief overview of the timeline suggests that the CIA and the Intelligence Community are implicated in the creation of the virus, a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and censorship to evade any public scrutiny for their role in the pandemic.

2015: The Intelligence Community held quarterly meetings with Dr. Ralph Baric and discussed "possible human adaptation" to coronavirus evolution.

2019-2020: The CIA had a spy working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology doing "both offensive and defensive work" with pathogens, according to Seymour Hersh. That asset reports in early 2020 that there was a laboratory accident that resulted in the infection of a researcher.

March 18, 2020: The Department of Homeland Security replaced Health and Human Services as the lead Federal Agency responding to Covid, as explained in depth in Debbie Lerman's The Deep State Goes Viral.

Spring 2020: The CIA offered bribes to scientists to bury their findings refuting the "proximal origin" theory advanced by Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a whistleblower. The House Oversight Committee explains: "According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China." Then, however, the "six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position."

2020: Dr. Fauci began holding secret meetings at CIA headquarters "without a record of entry" in order to "influence its Covid-19 origins investigation," according to a whistleblower. "He knew what was going on…He was covering his ass and he was trying to do it with the Intel community," the whistleblower told Congress."

2021: Scientists in the Department of Defense compiled significant evidence suggesting Covid emerged from a lab leak, but President Biden's Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, banned them from presenting their evidence or participating in a discussion on the origins of the virus.

2021: CISA, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, implemented a program known as "switchboarding," where officials dictated to Big Tech platforms what content is permissible or prohibited speech.

2022: The Department of Homeland Security announced it will establish a "Disinformation Governance Board." The Ministry of Truth is only discontinued when the absurdity of its chief censor, Nina Jankowicz, receives sufficient blowback from the public.

What exactly was the play here? A populist impulse has been alive in the American electorate since the end of the Cold War. A growing popular demand on the left and right has been for a government that serves the people and not some globalist, bureaucratized, and militarized scheme that only benefits the ruling class.

In 2015, Donald Trump, a consummate outsider to the ruling elites, was ascending in poli...