On Monday night, Tucker Carlson teased a guest that would appear on his Tuesday night show: a Chinese whistleblower who had unimpeachable proof that China manufactured the novel coronavirus and, determined to cause global unrest, unleashed on the world.
Now, the scientist and three colleagues have been outed as linked to a group founded by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and his Chinese benefactor, billionaire Guo Wengui, who is in self-exile from China, where he’s wanted by the Chinese government on corruption charges, according to Business Insider via Yahoo.
Li-Meng Yan, who fled China earlier this year, claimed that she worked in the lab where the coronavirus was developed and had inside knowledge that the Chinese government intentionally released the virus. She offered no evidence to support her claim, which reflects various conspiracy theories from Trump supporting groups like QAnon.
“I know how they treat whistleblowers,” Yan told Carlson. “I am the target that Chinese Communist Party wants disappeared.”
Yan is a member of two New York City groups cofounded by Bannon: Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation. Bannon led both groups until his arrest by US Postal Inspectors while he was on a $28 million yacht owned by Wengui.
Bannon was arrested for fraud in association with funneling money raised for a private border wall to pay for personal expenses.
The two New York City groups have no history of publishing scientific papers before taking up Yan’s claim that the Chinese government engineered the virus to infect humans.
Yan was a researcher at University of Hong Kong where she apparently studied the virus, which has 96% of the genetic code of a virus found in bats. The University released a statement that Yan never studied the transmission of the virus to humans.