6 OCT 26 SITREP

• White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro alleged that former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci knew in January 2020 that COVID-19 came from a laboratory in Wuhan, China after meeting with 12 leading virologists, 10 of whom reportedly told Fauci the virus came from the Wuhan laboratory; Navarro further alleged that Fauci knew his agency had funded gain-of-function research and had moved dangerous research to a Chinese biological laboratory to evade stricter U.S. regulation and obtain the work more cheaply.
• Navarro alleged that scientists who privately told Fauci the virus came from the Wuhan laboratory later produced the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 paper approximately four weeks later concluding that the virus came from nature; Navarro said some of those scientists had grants pending with Fauci and that Fauci subsequently displayed the paper in the White House Brady Press Briefing Room while publicly promoting the natural-origin explanation.
• Navarro said he confronted Fauci in the White House Situation Room in January 2020 after President Donald Trump directed him to make the case for a China travel ban, while approximately 20,000 people per day were traveling from China into the United States; Navarro also said he opposed Fauci over lockdowns, masks, and universal COVID-19 vaccinations and alleged that Fauci knew about myocarditis risks for young men and miscarriage risks for women in the first trimester of pregnancy while supporting vaccination requirements tied to employment.
• Navarro said attorneys general around the United States were attempting to subpoena Fauci and advance state-level cases, specifically citing Texas law concerning miscarriages and Florida law concerning homicide, myocarditis, and deaths involving senior citizens; he also said Fauci aide David Morens had destroyed evidence, pleaded guilty, and faced prison time, while Fauci aide Conrad had been subpoenaed by U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and faced a potential contempt action requiring two additional Democratic votes in the committee.

• Companies receiving tariff refunds reportedly planned to use the returned money differently, with 75 percent intending to keep the refunds in cash, 53 percent planning to invest in research and development or capital projects, 17 percent planning customer rebates, and 15 percent planning to use the money to lower consumer prices; Navarro argued that companies importing subsidized goods from China, Vietnam, and Malaysia were retaining refunds after successfully challenging the tariffs at the Supreme Court.
• Navarro said the original tariff program gave U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick leverage to negotiate trade agreements that forced more than 30 countries to lower tariff barriers, while the Supreme Court later struck down the IEEPA emergency tariffs and required refunds but left other tariff authorities intact.
• Navarro identified Section 232 tariffs covering products including steel, aluminum, and copper and Section 301 tariffs involving China and other countries as measures that remained available after the Supreme Court decision; he connected those tariffs with the Trump tax plan, reduced regulation, and 100 percent full expensing for factories built on American soil.
• Navarro said approximately $17 trillion had been pledged for investment and pointed to trade data showing that a rising trade deficit was driven largely by imports of capital goods intended for new factories, including industrial machinery and ships; he said imports of consumer goods were declining while factory construction, employment, higher wages, and American manufacturing were moving upward.

• Foundation for Freedom Online Executive Director Mike Benz said his investigation into the censorship-industrial complex repeatedly identified the U.S. Agency for International Development alongside State Department, intelligence community, and Defense Department activities, leading him to characterize USAID as an agency capable of shifting among diplomatic, military, and intelligence-related functions rather than performing a unique function unavailable elsewhere in the federal government.
• In Brazil, Benz alleged that USAID funded labor unions associated with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party, LGBT groups, constitutional-law advocates working on fake-news legislation in Parliament, approximately 24 disinformation-flagging organizations around the Brazilian Supreme Court, think tanks including FGV DAP, universities, youth movements, Afro-Brazilian identity groups, and environmental activists; he placed combined USAID and State Department funding at approximately $333 million during the four-year period between the 2018 and 2022 elections.
• Benz said USAID declared right-wing populism a threat to democracy and connected the agency’s activities to political influence operations across Latin America, Eastern Europe, and parts of Western Europe; he also linked USAID’s diminished role to political developments in Brazil, where members of the family of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro won Senate seats and Bolsonaro advanced toward a runoff election scheduled for the end of October.
• Benz said USAID and the State Department developed a practice called hip hop diplomacy involving relationships with record labels and artists in North Africa, West Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and other regions; he specifically alleged USAID involvement with rap networks in Senegal, Nigeria, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Mali, Cuba, Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, including alleged use of rap collectives in Bangladesh during the 2024 overthrow of the government and support for rap networks surrounding the Arab Spring.