LAS VEGAS (LifeSiteNews) — During a raid on an illegal biolab in a Las Vegas private home – operated by a Chinese national convicted of running a similar lab in California in 2023 – a SWAT team discovered refrigerators containing vials of “potential biological and hazardous materials.”
Both labs are thought to be tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to represent a health threat not only to neighbors, but to national security.
“When you do research like this, potentially in an environment where there’s very little biosecurity, you’re posing hazards to everyone around you. And the fact is these were completely flying under the radar screen,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told Just the News.
FBI Director Kash Patel suggested in a Just the News, No Noise television interview that the Biden administration had misled the public about the California lab, denying any connection with the CCP.
Authorities are concerned because the California lab was found to contain genetically engineered mice designed to carry COVID; tests showed that vials collected there contained COVID, hepatitis, herpes, and malaria. They also found “pathogen-labeled containers” with labels in English and Mandarin that read “dengue fever.”
The materials found in Las Vegas were “consistent in appearance to the items found and described” in the 2023 California investigation.
Law enforcement descended on the Las Vegas home after individuals staying at the residence — which also functioned as an Airbnb — became “deathly ill,” according to court documents reviewed by local news outlet KLAS.
The man linked to both illicit biolabs is Jia Bei Zhu, age 62, who though in jail for his 2023 conviction, is thought to have been running the Las Vegas operation from behind bars.
‘This can’t keep happening’
“This can’t keep happening,” said Congressman Kevin Kiley (R-CA) in a statement. “The federal government must do more to stop illegal labs from operating in our communities. This bipartisan bill closes loopholes that allow dangerous facilities like these to operate under the radar.”
An alarming report issued by the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party following the discoveries at Zhu’s Reedley, California, biolab, found that Zhu remains a “wanted fugitive from Canada with a $330 million Canadian dollar judgment against him for stealing American intellectual property.”
“The illegal biolab received millions of dollars in unexplained payments from PRC banks while running the illegal biolab,” recounted Representative Kiley’s statement, summarizing the congressional report’s findings.
The lab contained “thousands of samples of labeled, unlabeled, and encoded potential pathogens, including HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and Covid,” as well as “a freezer labeled ‘Ebola,’ which contained unlabeled, sealed silver bags consistent with how the lab stored high-risk biological materials.”
“Ebola is a Select Agent with a lethality rate between 25-90%,” added the California congressman.
The biolab contained nearly a thousand “transgenic mice, genetically engineered to mimic the human immune system. Lab workers said that the mice were designed ‘to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus.’”
Inexplicably, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) refused at the time to test any of the samples found in the California lab.
“Biological material and liquids that were meticulously collected” at the Las Vegas lab were “sent to FBI labs for testing,” police said in a statement.
In a Fox News interview, Patel noted that his agency had recently arrested three researchers at the University of Michigan with ties to the CCP “for bringing in biologicals and for trying to harm our agricultural seed industry.”