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talks about efforts to change voting laws. after that, the wall street journal reporter will talk about the origins of the coronavirus and later come a look at 2020 election audits in arizona and georgia with an elections group partner. >> the american people deserve to know about the origins of covid-19. they deserve to know how this terrible pandemic that ravaged the globe and our country, how it got started and what china's role was in starting it. host: that from the senator from missouri, josh hawley, requiring declassification of any links between the lab in wuhan and the covid-19 virus into do so within 90 days. good morning, the measure passed unanimously and we will begin our first hour on the developments regarding the source of rotavirus.

the senate is back in session at 10 a.m. and republicans are ready to use the filibuster to block a commission on the january 6 insurrection of the capital. if that occurs as expected it would likely end plans for a bipartisan investigation, renewing the debate on the filibuster. it's thursday, may 27. we want to begin with the president calling for officials to redouble the source -- the efforts to find up the source of a virus that has killed 3.5 million people worldwide. we are dividing phone lines among democrats, republicans, and independents. (202) 748-8000 free democrats, (202) 748-8001, for republicans. for independents, (202) 748-8002 . you can send us a text message at (202) 748-8003, be sure to tell us your first name and where you are texting from.

we want to begin with the front page of "the washington post." the story from san jose, california, death to nine in that california railyard, the latest mass shooting in the country. the president asking for a roof on the origins of the virus. a statement from the president yesterday that reads in part "i have asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect information to bring us closer to a definitive conclusion and report back to me in 90 days and as a part of that report i have asked for areas of further inquiry including specific it's host: we carried the senate debate live last night. here's more with the missouri republican as he outlined his

resolution. [video clip] >> we have seen a parade of government officials speculate and there is increasing numbers of statements from government officials saying that perhaps this virus originated in a chinese lab, in the wuhan institute of virology. it's time that the american people got to decide for themselves, time they actually got to see the evidence the u.s. government has collected on the issue in that is exactly the measure we are introducing here tonight. it would make available to the american people the evidence that the united states government has about the origins of this terrible virus and terrible pandemic. host: that from senator hawley. this issue on both ends of pennsylvania avenue, along with last nights debate in the u.s. senate and this report from "the washington post," the headline,

biden asks intelligence community to redouble efforts to determine the definitive origin of coronavirus, reading in part that the new message is a notable shift in some prominent scientific assessments that the virus almost certainly jumped from an animal series -- animal species to humans, but the other theory is that the pandemic that killed 3.4 million people worldwide host: again, that story at washingtonpost.com. monday morning, -- good monday morning, thanks for being with us in covering this story. guest: hi there, good morning. host: how significant was that statement from the president? guest: it was a significant statement on a number of different fronts.

the first piece of it was that biden was really reversing a position that his white house has been quite dug in on, which had been that the world should take the lead in investigating the origins of the coronavirus. the problem with that has been the who trying and failing in the past to do that. it is sort of seen as being quite deferential to china. it was a little bit like having the foxes investigate what happened at the henhouse. but there were other parts of the president's statement that work right remarkable. one was his sort of discussion of a debate within the intelligence community that is not settled. typically, presidents do not reveal those kinds of discussions. particularly of intelligence that is considered of low to medium competence, which the

intelligence that the president discussed is categorized as. that was odd, too. politically, the president also took a veiled dig at trump in his statement, sort of saying that he has a candidate, that biden is a candidate had been urging more transparency from china, urging the trump administration to push china harder to let investigators on the ground there. sort of making that point and putting some sort of reminder out in the air that biden had wanted the trump administration to push china at a time when trump was saying a lot of very positive things about that country. host: let me follow up on that, the president saying that there are specific questions for the chinese government and president gees and paying saying that the investigation is now closed.

what pressure can the west put on china to reopen the investigation and specifically to find out the answers they need regarding the lab and wuhan? >> there are quite a bit of tools that can be used. one of them is of course the specter of the sanctions, diplomacy, pushing, you know, the chinese leadership to be more open using those methods. one of the really striking aspects of the statement that the president put out was that he directed the intelligence community to analyze, this is a keyword, and collect more information about what happened on the ground in china. intelligence sources i have been talking to is that the second word, collect, is particularly significant because the president is sort of directing them to do more, you know, what we would just call spying on, on

china, which is something that we obviously do and something that we don't typically talk about and doesn't come from a presidential statement typically. guest: we are talking to annie linskey. "the origin carries norma's implications for public health and beyond. if investigators point to china, it could ignite a global diplomatic firestorm. health officials complained that china has hampered investigations into the matter and a definitive finding could remain elusive, despite the presidential

host: so, fill in some of the from that excerpt from yours worried this morning. guest: yeah, i think one of the keys to remember here is that there isn't actually any new development that is fueling this flurry and renewed attention on the theory that the virus could have come from a laboratory and wuhan. it's not as if a major scoop has been had. what has happened, this is just sort of unusual in big stories like this, what has happened is a lot of the fact that have existed in the world have been sort of assembled, you know, i have to say, "wall street journal," to give them credit, have done a really good job in the last few days putting together a lot of information that had already been out there

into a sort of very clear narrative that shows more of a possibility that this lab could have been sort of the culprit. also, the scientists who are quite credible had early on dismissed these theories, but these scientists have also reassessed their views. so, that's different from facts changing. i guess the worrying that many of the people i'm talking to would say is that look, we are not like, it's not, the facts haven't changed. it's the political dynamic that has and people i was talking to yesterday and were quoted in the story as saying that the trump white house lacked so much credibility in so many areas that when they were she and this theory, it fell on deaf ears because so many of the other

statements coming out of that administration were sort of demonstrably false, so there was a sort of reluctance for people to sort through what might be true and what might not be. what has changed is that trump is no longer in power and it has provided little bit more space for consideration of this theory. the other piece of it, too, is just distance. last year as the theory was circulating, there were a lot of other things going on, the country was in the middle of a pandemic and there was concern and worry over the immediate future and immediate crisis and now that we are emerging from it a little bit, there is also more reflection about ok, how exactly did we end up in this position? host: annie linskey, the president calling for a report within 90 days.

thanks for being with us. guest: thank you. host: with that background, we want to get to your calls and comments this morning. one of the lead reporters there at the journal, who impart broke the story about this, he will be joining us at 8:45 eastern time. until then, for the first hour as the u.s. re-doubles efforts to investigate the source of her own virus, tell us what you think. we are dividing phone lines between republicans, democrats, and independents. jeff, good morning. caller: thank you for the opportunity. the fact that trump is no longer empower explains everything you need to know. it's apparent that the vast majority of the media is an extension of the democratic party propaganda and because trump said x, fact checkers said that not x is true. this is sad.

the reason the founders put the first amendment in there was to put a check on corruption and we have lost that. it happen even with c-span when there was bias towards the democrats before the debate. the fact is there was intelligence then and it was suppressed because trump set it. thank you for your time. host: democratic line, virginia, good morning, ben. caller: welcome back, steve. i actually wanted to tell you, i think i first heard this comment by senator tom cotton last year when he was prepping for this anti-chinese sort of things about it's probably the fault of china, because he serves on the intelligence committee. then i went back and looked and

did my research and so forth. it could be that china had the virus all over the world. but i'm not too sure of that theory. the elements of animal is what seems feasible, steve. one other thing, steve. i wanted, about the commission on the september, if i may, please, i wondered if some of those republican senators who are leaving congress can clearly vote their conscience. they don't have to talk the borders anymore. even i don't know, people like that who are leaving, they don't really have to face the voters anymore. host: senator pat toomey standing down next year, you mentioned the january 6 mission.

60 votes needed and it appears as if the democrats do not have those 10 republican votes. the senate is in session at 10 a.m. eastern time, live coverage as it unfolds. china's first covid patients, this op-ed says the following. "in the hunt for the origins of the virus, the first cases are extremely important and could reveal fighter -- vital information about where the virus came from. this may not be the whole story. -- story." next to that is this editorial cartoon showing the covid investigation hitting a brick wall. this is the china great wall. david joins us from monks corner, south carolina, republican line. good morning, david. caller: this is kind of a

classic flip-flop. i will just give a couple of quick examples and then make a prediction that might be kind of out there, but you may remember it in a few years. first of all, when the, when the trump administration officials allowed states to set their own policy on masks and localities, etc., it was called by the left no national plan. now of course this is the national plan, to let states do what they want, but it's considered wise. when the former president said this virus may have come from a wuhan lab, he's called a racist. don't say he didn't, he was definitely -- it was definitely called a racist comment and it was shut down out of spite by the current president's investigation into that. now he is of course trying to look like a hero. the other, the other example i

had is one of the reasons for the success of the vaccines development so quickly is that the prior administration guaranteed payment for hundreds of millions of doses before they were even produced. the narrative that we here in the press today is that trump couldn't deliver and it took biden to get the vaccines out. i'm going to make a prediction that i hope is wrong, i think one of the reasons behind the huge push behind the new type of vaccine is that it is radically different from former antigen -based vaccines and they can be used to make the body produce any protein of choice and can even be used to instill new genes into our genome. i won't explain the science of how that works, but it's very possible. it could be that this virus was created with, you know, it's, in

factivity and -- infectivy and -- as an excuse to implement this new type of vaccine and we will see greater and greater enforcement of it and eventually it will be used i believe to reduce fertility and longevity in certain populations that can be targeted specifically. host: inside "the washington post," looking at the risk factors for those people not vaccinated. it's also on the web. the darker the color, the higher the risk of the spread of covid-19 if you are not vaccinated. it comes as an estimated 35 million americans prepare to travel for the memorial day break. the cdc warning those who have not received a vaccine to follow safety protocols. a number of you mentioning former president trump in april of last year at the white house, asked about coronavirus and its

possible source or sources. [video clip] >> the question i had was, have you seen anything? >> we are looking at that separately. looking at exactly where it came from, who it came from, how it happened, separately and also scientifically. >> my question is, have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the wuhan institute of virology was the source? it >> yes, i have. yes, i have. in the world health organization should be ashamed of themselves. they are like the public relations agency for china in this country pays them $500 million a year and china pays them $38 million a year. whether it is a lot or more, it doesn't matter. they shouldn't be making excuses when people make horrible mistakes.

especially mistakes that cause hundreds of thousands of people around the world to die. the world health organization should be ashamed of themselves. host: that from the former president in april of last year. michael is on the phone from belleville, new jersey. good morning, michael. caller: good morning, thank you for c-span. i think there needs to be more investigation into coronavirus. following the reporting that's been coming out of the hill, talking about dr. fauci's role in pushing research where they modify viruses, it's a controversial topic within the field of virology and something that had been banned under the obama administration.

in 2017 anthony fauci pushed to have this research be allowed. i think the fact that they are able to study it in their virology network, will have -- wuhan lab included without safety standards is probably the most likely cause of the virus. host: thank you for your call. a number of you with tweets and text messages. one viewer said the caller from south carolina wouldn't explain the science because there is no science to explain his theory. this is from mlb, the current president believes in science like his predecessor, who lied incessantly and who incited hatred towards asians. kurt says i don't know where it came from but based on human history it would not be surprised if it connection to an

organization connected with the wuhan lab in china. dr. fauci getting questions about that yesterday on capitol hill. back to your calls. republican line, debbie, missouri, good morning. caller: i would like to say that david from south carolina was on target with his ideas about gene manipulation. i believe that china is looking at a gearing people to being able to adapt to different food sources. trump is not stupid. he's not a science denier. he was very on top of this virus and he did a good job. host: thanks for the call. mike in orlando, wire republicans concerned about the origins of the virus but no interest in getting vaccines to put an end to the virus? yes, let's investigate the

virus, the attack on the capital , trump obstruction and criminal activity. the headline that we are talking about this thursday morning, the president ordering a report within 90 days on the origins of coronavirus. walter, maryland, democratic line, good morning. caller: i'm a little nervous, my thoughts are all over the place here. but as to the first caller in the callers before hand, they were claiming that trump was on top of the knowing where the virus came from. trump never actually, he never actually spoke up on anything about the virus coming from, from, my god, i'm confused, trump never addressed anything about the, the virus coming from a lab in wuhan.

he tried to suppress discussion of the matter until the dow fell out and it was affecting us here in america. after that he obfuscated, lied, and just totally through a lot of bull into the woodwork with the coronavirus. that's all i had to say. host: nice job, walter, thank you, don't be a stranger. filling in for jen psaki yesterday, the deputy white house secretary was asked about the president's statement and what happens next. we carried the briefing live. here's this portion. [video clip] >> he said he received the report and asked for additional follow-up. did the follow-up include the current position? in other words, when did the president first learn about this

current position, that they don't have enough information to say if it was animals or lab accident? >> from the readout, it says he learned about it a month ago and i don't have more than that. one of the reasons we are doing it now is because classified information takes time to declassify and that's a process that takes some time, so now we are sharing that information with you all. just, it was a month ago that he got the readout. >> doesn't have anything to do with the reports that three researchers were hospitalized in november of 2019? like this is something the president has been working on for some time, as i mentioned in the readout statement. something that the president called out back in early 2020.

this is something, an issue that has been top of mind and that he wanted to dig into and make sure that we really get to the bottom of how we got here. >> trying to understand if there is new evidence that emerged or a new posture from the ice. medical experts have long said that it's highly likely that the virus came from an animal to human transmission. so, but changed? >> the readout basically said it's inconclusive. that we needed more time to get to a better answer. so, this is why we are doing a 90 day review, to get a better sense of where we take this next. host: that exchange from yesterday's white house and. jd, alabama, good morning. caller: good morning, steve. good to see you back. bringing a voice of seniority

and stability to c-span. i'm a little surprised that the initial person that was on, the reporter, who said that there is no scoop that brought this about. nothing could be further from the truth. the paper, "the australian," it's all easily accessible online, they brought forth u.s. state apartment brought out what they describe as a bombshell roof work. they intercepted chinese, the people's republic of china memos that said that viruses are now, have been the core weapon from the memorandum from the pla. viruses and genetic manipulation of viruses are the core weapons for victories in world war iii. now, this should frighten any patriotic, sane american person. the people's liberation army and

the chinese communist party have been engaged since 1999, when two kernels in their army wrote a book called unrestricted warfare. again, it's published, you can purchase it. they are fighting from maryland, the united states of america, and western democracies on multiple fronts. this is simply one part of it. propaganda is another. regarding trump and pompeo, they deserve tremendous credit for bringing this out. they were voices early on that warned america and the world that red china, pla, ccp, were and are behind it. as far as this being something that is not known, a bombshell was found in a memorandum that said this is the core part, biological weapons are the core part of the world war iii that

china is planning against the united states. host: the report that you cited, when did that come out? when did you read that mark caller: i'm reading a root -- that? caller: i'm reading the report from "the daily mail," the link is to "the australian." it links quotes from the american u.s. state department that they recently intercepted memorandum from red china pot pla and ccp that they were going to weaponize and genetically manipulate viruses, including covid. in 2015 they saw how devastating the sars virus had been. they decided they could manipulate it genetically and make it even more impactful. these things will be used. it's people genius.

they can release these viruses as aerosols into the water system in a very cost-effective way, much the way al qaeda did against america. very cost-effective. i think it cause them $500,000 to plan and execute the attacks. look at the damage, look at how it cripple our country. it took out two aircraft carrier battle fleet men. we couldn't man the ships to defend our nation. when they use this, and i say when, they are going to. it's going to come about because of taiwan. i'm so glad c-span is finally covering this. i really appreciate it. i hope we will see more coverage of the doings and the malevolence of the people's liberation army. it's been since last fall when there was small but bad violence against asian americans. there is a key distinction that needs to be made.

we have 4 million excellent chinese-americans who serve in west point, annapolis, the cia, the military. they are excellent people. i have friends. the pla and ccp in red china are distantly different animals from the american chinese people. host: thank you very much from the call -- for the call. a lot of comments from chris in wisconsin. this message says that when covid first started, researchers went to wuhan because the research was illegal in the united states and i will question any answers from our government. the exchange yesterday was with john kennedy of louisiana and dr. anthony fauci before the appropriations subcommittee, sensibly to talk about the nih budget, but of course covid-19 was front and center. we carried it on the c-span networks and here's a part of the exchange. [video clip] >> can we agree that if you took president xi jinping and turned

him upside down and shook him, the world health organization would fall out of his pocket? >> out of think i can answer that question, sir. i'm sorry. [laughter] >> what do you think, does he have undue influence over the world health organization, do you? >> i have no way of knowing the influence of the president of china over the who. >> you think the who is a level playing field, independent body, call it like you see it and they really want to get to the bottom of the origin of the virus, do you believe that? >> my interaction with the director general of the who has been one that i do believe he is a person of a high degree of integrity. >> am going to ask one last question. why did you guys spike -- not guys, guys and ladies, why did you all spike the prior administration's investigation

into the origins of the coronavirus and whether it could have come out of the lab wuhan? >> sir, we did not spike anything in the prior administration. i'm not sure what you mean by spike. >> the state department spike to the prior administration's study. x but that has nothing to do with the national institutes >> they did not consult with y'all? they just spiked it without talking to their experts? you don't want to answer that one, do you? >> i just read about it. host: that was john kennedy from louisiana and dr. anthony fauci. back to your phone calls. arnie, staten island, new york, democratic line, good morning. caller: good morning. i was calling because i think, i hope and trust that the

president, we will get some information out of this inquiry about the coronavirus origins. the other thing i'm concerned about is what the first person set on your show. the post reporter, she made a good point about trump pot, you know, causing maybe a little kerfuffle with the way he lies. the other balanced thing to say is that we had spent 18 to 24 months in this country persecuting the president over all these other things, the russian thing, then the impeachment. i mean what i really think we should be doing besides these investigations into who china is and who started this is let's research this dan virus. there are a lot of complications of people, like myself, and we need, we need the help. we need the truth.

and we don't get it. i wait for the government people, everyone of them, to report more stuff. they are concentrating on fighting each other. the politics is going to hold us up again. the democrats did it with their stupid inquiries and now all this other jibber jabber going on where they want to find china responsible? it is important, but also let's not forget the research. we have to get to why this thing is so deadly and is hurting us. thank you. host: barney, thanks for the call. this is a text message from jen in new jersey, who said that the wuhan lab had a leak, it was known last year, the establishment laughed and denied at trump and lo and behold, what trump thought turns out to be pretty much true. the new administration wants to buy more time to deny that covid was a way to get trump out. the headline from inside the a

section of the new york times, the president ordering a report on the origins of the virus into to do so within 90 days. the believed origin, did it come from animals or a lab in china? the lab pictured below the president who spoke to reporters yesterday. sandy is joining us from kent, ohio. independent mind. good morning. caller: good morning, so get -- so glad i got on. i like c-span, i watch it a lot. a lot of the collars had a kind of right, but it was my understanding that in the beginning of this covid we wanted to get in there and investigate and china wouldn't let us in. how do they have the authority not to let us in? all of our medicine comes from their. makes me not trust the medicines. they could put anything they wanted to in there if they are making our medicines and we don't even know? i don't understand how we could not have gotten in there immediately to investigate. they can cover it up now after

it's been so long. so, it's terrible that we don't make more stuff here in the u.s. and that everything we buy or get is from china, hong kong, somewhere. this is wrong. we could put more people in the u.s. to work making all these products, especially our medicine, because it's high anyways. how is it we are paying high prices at the pharmacy but we are getting it from china? it's just a maddening, it really is. thank you, c-span. host: another tweet saying that it's a chinese national embarrassment but we must establish the origins of where it's started. while virus is possible. poor safety screenings are possible. bioweapon's labs with no safety protocols is ridiculous. chris, washington, d.c., good morning. caller: i want to say the guy,

barney, that moved me a little bit. i definitely agree with him that the truth is necessary and it evidently seems to have been escaping us. it amazes me how, you know, people talk about what trump did or didn't do, but what we do know is that he didn't tell us the truth initially. because he sat there and talk to bob woodward in january and said how bad he knew this thing was but continued to deny to the people publicly that it was severe. that being said, he could have won the election in a landslide, i heard the guy earlier say, yeah, you know, look at what trump did, saying it came from wuhan, isn't he right now? like barney said, where's the

truth? i want to point everybody to an article from like you know, we don't know where it came from. i mean initially they will say that somebody ate a bat, the eight bushmeat or whatever it was. people have been doing that for centuries. a bat? it might get you sick, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was the cause, what i want to point to is this article in the frederick news post, saying wuhan, came from china? possibly. going back to what arnie said, are we getting the truth? there is an article i want to point people to from the frederick news post 2019 regarding fort dietrich. go look at the article. i'm not saying that it came from us, we don't know, the thing is, there are so many people just talking and believing everything they hear that they don't look for themselves.

i really do hope that we get through this. we could have been really ahead of this if we had started in time and we didn't and now there are just political games being played. i appreciate you, c-span. host: chris, thank you. this tweet, this so-called bombshell news of germ warfare is old news, read a history book. a couple of other headlines from the business and finance section of "the wall street journal," a big purchase, amazon purchasing mgm for 6.5 billion dollars and inside the washington post, president lukashenko of belarus, attacking the west, including great britain and the european union. inside "the wall street journal," liz cheney discussing her future. republican line, good morning. caller: i think it's really

important that we find the origins of the virus. the problem with donald trump is that he was the most prolific liar to occupy the presidency and as such is treated like the boy who cried wolf. i think if we had had a more responsible person in the presidency, a more honest person, we wouldn't be facing these issues right now. thank you, steve. host: thank you, gary. mike in new jersey says we had a president who was inept who ignored the virus that caused hundreds of thousands more lives. mike braun yesterday, cosponsor of the legislation that passed unanimously, demanding more transparency by the u.s. intelligence community, asking for it to be delivered in the next 90 days. more from the floor of the senate. >> who disagrees --[video clip]

>> who disagrees with transparency? i was in a committee hearing and when you get the individuals that we relied on mostly in this whole journey, dr. fauci, dr. collins, first acknowledging that transparency is paramount and that yes, we should declassify this information, when we listened to them help navigate us through this tricky journey and they tell us earlier today, give us the information, i think that is why here this evening this will go through with unanimous consent because it makes sense. wherever it leaves us, we should be happy that we might finally get to the bottom of this. whatever -- whatever it reveals. we don't know where it will take us. it's relying on what's most important. on the information that we have,

let's make sure that the american public can see it, that any group that wants to analyze what happened, including the rest of the world. host: president joe biden calls for a further probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, urging transparency from china. below that, another photograph of the wuhan institute that is the center of this latest development. later in the program we will talk to one of the reporters who broke the story. michael, new york, independent line, your thoughts on all of this? good morning. caller: the question about where the virus came from, it's occam's razor, the obvious answer is often the right answer. in this case we know the bats have the coronavirus and was in these caves in china for

thousands of years and we know the wet markets have been there for probably a thousand years. suddenly we have an outbreak of the coronavirus behind the street and you tell me they are not related? that's ridiculous. it's perfectly obvious that if it didn't jump from bats to humans and suddenly we have a breakout in close proximity to the outbreak? it's perfectly obvious that this came from the virology lab in wuhan. we don't need a big investigation that will be clouded by disinformation put out by the chinese authorities. host: thank you for the call.

this is from "the new york times," the directive into the origins of the virus came as health officials and scientists renewed calls for a more vigorous examination. as we learn from "the washington post," one of the issues remains as to whether china will be transparent in providing information. william, kentucky, thank you for waiting, good morning. >> we have known for a long time, since donald trump, that this was a problem. you had that post reporter on earlier that said that we has reporters didn't like donald trump and felt like we couldn't trust him. hey, well and we always hear about this from the media where donald trump lies.

what about the truth now? what we need is another edward r. murrow who went to war. walter cronkite, who went to war. but instead we got you, steve. host: since this is a worldwide pandemic, according to william, it should have participants from multiple countries. william, detroit -- linda, detroit, good morning. go ahead. caller: it's strange to me that people are talking about china,, china, china now. trump opened to businesses there. his son alone was over there to borrow money from china to build trump world. you get what you ask for.

host: thanks for the call. this is from inside of "the new york times," one man believed to be the hong kong coronavirus patient, the first of january 2020, now 3.4 million people worldwide have died as a result of covid-19. ruth is joining us next from illinois. independent line, good morning. how are you today? caller: i'm fine. i just want to say that when it first started in january, what trump told woodward was not so. because dr. fauci and his team was at the podium three or four times a week, telling us all about covid.

and in january about she told us that it was airborne. trump wasn't there that day. so, he didn't know. found she told us it was outboard -- airborne. it comes out of your mouth, goes a few feet and falls to the floor. as a caregiver, i was going to work and coming home every day. we pulled our shoes off, one -- once you pulled the -- the other shoe off, my foot pulled the other shoe off because it doesn't want covid coming off the bottom of my shoes. now, everyone hated trump so bad that they switched when the story from woodward came out. host: we will leave it there.

thank you for the call. the president prepared to extend the infrastructure. politico reporting that the white house will extend things not too long, perhaps another week or so, to bring republicans on board. david, north carolina, good morning. as the u.s. intensifies its investigation into the source of covid-19, what are your thoughts? caller: how did dr. fauci know about it in 2017? if you do digging, he was talking about us having a pandemic back in 2017, this doctor. the same doctor that stood up for the world health organization. he was bought and paid for. nothing that comes out of his mouth is true. joe biden, i think is bought and paid for by the china men. in his son, how do you do this

without saying something to someone? looking for justice? let's have justice. host: thank you for the call. this from daniel, the investigation should have participants from multiple countries. this from mona, americans need to settle down and stop jumping to conclusions. because there are new questions does not mean there is proof to anything yet. we may never know exactly. stop jumping to conclusions on -- conclusions based on feelings and party affiliations. a house subcommittee hearing yesterday with michael burgess and diana degette. a discussion between these lawmakers on the source of covid-19. more from the c-span video library yesterday. [video clip] >> where did this virus originate? these stories are not comported

with the stories we are hearing now. it would be incumbent on this committee to primarily investigate the subcommittee of energy and commerce to have those questions asked thoroughly. >> willet gentleman yield? so, i agree, i think it's very important that we find, that we investigate, particularly if the virus escape from some lab, because that has implications for international health. i have already spoken to the ranking member. whatever we can do. i don't think china is going to produce documents to the committee, but we are going to do whatever investigation is appropriate and mr. griffiths and i are on that committee. host: that from yesterday's

hearing. mark langer saying we need to hold someone to account if something preventable happens and do what we can to prevent and delay the next one. brenda, montgomery, alabama, good morning. caller: biden is doing the best he could. trump said it was a hoax. that there wasn't a virus. as far as biden getting paid by the chinese? trump was always in with putin. thank you, sir. host: thank you. kyle, good morning. caller: how are you? host: fine, thank you. caller: so, i believe this is the perfect time for biden and the rest of the world, quite frankly, to take a stand against china on this.

they are not releasing where it came from. it's pretty obvious. i'm not a biden fan by any means, but i would love to see biden launch an independent investigation into this. i don't think the who should be involved. that's it. hopefully we can find the truth here before, i don't know, say, a year or six months? but i doubt that. i doubt that we will find that out. host: thank you. from faith in california, people won't admit that it was biological warfare because they don't want to go to war with china. the pompeo lead effort shut down by the biden administration was done over concerns about the quality of evidence. you can read the full story at cnn.com. rick in providence, kentucky, good morning. caller: good morning, sir.

when you think about the financial dealings the biden family has had over the years with the chinese communist government, don't expect anything bad to come out about china. that's all there is to it. host: this is another tweet. who is surprised that china, who are corporations trust enough to manufacture nearly all of our consumer products, might not be an honest government? by the way there is a way to investigate without imperiling millions of americans. sally, edwardsville, illinois, good morning. caller: i want to point out that homeland security had a pandemic response team. we have had viruses come out of the wet market in wuhan. swine flu, bird flu, all kinds of other viruses. this has happened before, just not this bad.

homeland security had a response team there to look out for things like this and investigate things like this. trump kicked them out of china. told them to come home. took all their money away from them. that was in 2018. this is in trump's lap. no, we can't blame china and we can't blame biden. we can blame conservative stupidity. they never want to spend money on anything that benefits people. that's all i've got to say. host: we will leave it there. this from the white house yesterday, a statement from president biden that has been our focus for the first hour, i have asked of the intelligence community to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion and report back to me in 90 days and as part of the report i have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be were hired, including specific

questions for china. the u.s. will keep alert -- working with like-minded partners around the world to press china to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based investigation and provide access to all relevant data. next is tiny, from texas. brookshire, welcome to the conversation. caller: good morning, thank you very much. wonderful conversation, wonderful conversation. everyone wants to badmouth president trump. but just like one of your callers said, found she spoke about this and 17 because he knew what they were doing over there in china because they was going along with it. it's not in the lap of president trump, it's in the lap of the democratic party because they supported that. dr. fauci it and the world health organization new it.

they knew what they were doing. that's why president trump stopped funding them. it's not his fault. the democratic party brought this on themselves. host: thank you for the call from texas. bobby makes this point, another u.s. mass murder by gun yesterday, investigate that. we mentioned it at the top of the program, the death toll is now nine and the gunman died from a self-inflicted tuned. the scene there is outside the santa clara valley transportation authority, the shooting took place just past 6:30 a.m. yesterday, the latest mass shooting in the united states. anne-marie joins us from new york. good morning. caller: high, good morning. i just want to say that, first off, i used to be a republican. but since they threw trump under the bus, some of them are corrupt also.

so, now i'm an independent. host: go ahead. caller: also, as far as the virus that came from china, trump stopped flight traffic when people, when people were saying that what china, china stopped him, stopping traffic from china, ok? host: we are going to leave it there, we are short on time and have two more calls. millie, asheville, north carolina, good morning. caller: oh, good morning. i remember sharing videos of what was happening from november in that wahoo, in that area.

host: please, go ahead. we can hear you. caller: i went back and try to find them in november and facebook has deleted them. i had videos of what was going on and them taking people and boarding up their doors and windows and leaving them in there to die. facebook removed those videos. host: benjamin, you get the last word from west virginia. the u.s., now looking to redouble the investigation into the source of the virus. good morning. caller: good morning. what does any of this prove? this don't prove a thing. those people could have been sick from community spread. the trump henchmen latching onto this scapegoat his handling of the coronavirus. that's all this is. host: thank you for the call

from west virginia. you can continue your comments on the facebook page, we will have more of your tweets and more on this topic later in the program. up next we turn to the heritage foundation and a discussion on the latest efforts to as mentioned, new information on the source of covid-19, did it originate from animals or was it a lab source? warren strobel will be with us later in the program. you are listening and watching "washington journal" on c-span. we are back in a moment. >> on sunday, june 6, max hastings will be our guest on "in-depth." >> inflicted humiliation on the planet's most powerful nations.

the stairway up which on the evening of the 29th of april, fugitives ascended to a rooftop helicopter, securing their place among some bulk images of that era -- among symbolic images of that era. the struggle was among the foremost experiences of our careers. i was one of those that flew out of the u.s. embassy on that day. >>'s most recent book is "operation pedestal." other books include "catastrophe ." tune in on sunday, june 6 with

max hastings. tune in on july 4 with professor and award-winning historian annette gordon reed. >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining me is hans von spakovsky. his expertise include election law. good thursday morning, thank you for being with us. guest: thank you for having me back. host: sr one is now in the senate. you opposed the measure. what are the biggest sticking points? guest: sr one is a federal takeover of elections that have been run by our states since the founding. the problem is that it puts in all kinds of bad mandates, mandates that are dangerous to

the integrity of the election process but also gets rid of every security and safety protocol states have put in. if a state has a voter id law, that can be avoided. that requires a witness signature. that is out the window, they cannot enforce that. it also requires things like same-day registration which means states have to require you to walk into a polling place on voting day and immediately vote. if you combine that with the fact that you cannot make people provide a knee -- provide an id, you are basically inviting fraud. it is an invitation to cyber attacks and hackers to commit fraud. host: democrats are calling it

the "for the people act." here are more details. it includes automatic voter registration and would strengthen absentee voting and early voting. it would create a small dollar, non-taxpayer financing system for offices. it would overturn the scotus of the united decision. it would require states to use independent redistricting commissions and enhance resources to stave off foreign threats on elections. yesterday, -- last week, chuck schumer was critical of your organization supporting s1. here's what he has to say. [video clip] >> as butcher laws -- the

political right is bragging about how successfully they are restricting the franchise. last week, a spokesperson for the heritage foundation told republican donors that they were drawing new voter restrictions and handing them over to state legislatures to give laws "the grassroots field." she went on to talk about how quickly and quietly her organization managed to get new limits on voting in iowa. she told donors she looked at her team of right-wing lobbyists and said it cannot be that easy. that is how the far-right is talking about making it harder for americans to vote. behind closed does with donors, they are laughing about how easy it is to limited voting rights because republican legislatures -- republican legislators are willfully going along. it is despicable.

in this country, in a democracy, when your side loses an election, you try to win more voters over, you don't try to stop the other side from voting. seizing on that lie that the election was stolen, or is publican -- republican legislatures are contracting the greatest voting rights since reconstruction and jim crow. these laws cannot go unanswered. democrats are moving forward with legislation s1 to combat these voter suppression laws. it has gone through the rules committee and will receive a vote on the senate floor. our republican colleagues need to decide if they're quick to stand up for democracy or not. host: that is chuck schumer and he mentioned your organization. how do you respond? guest: the big lie is everything he just said. we are not working restricting voting rights or restrict access to the polls.

what we believe in is the same thing that the american people believe in witches you have to have both access and security -- which is you have to have both access and security. we want to make sure their core vote is not lost through fraud or errors or mistakes. the american people don't agree with chuck schumer. americans overwhelmingly support the common sense requirement that you ought to have to show an id when you vote to authenticate your identity. we do it every day when we boarded a plane or buy drugs at pharmacies. american support that. that is a majority of whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, republicans and independents.

people like chuck schumer say that is restricting the rights. that is not true. host: what about the part of the bill that would restrict super pac's from having any activities in campaigns? guest: there are many finance rules which in -- finance rules within s1 which seek to restrict free speech. there are already rules on political action committees and candidates. the restrictions they want to put in are really meant to chill speech and achieve the ability of americans to participate in the political process. host: what about the idea of trying to take politics out of congressional redistricting which will begin in all 50 states and put it in the hands of a nonpartisan commission? guest: that is a misnomer, the

idea that these commissions are independent. when a state legislature draws up a new redistricting plan, if voters don't like it, they can try to vote those legislatures out of office. they are accountable to voters. the members appointed to the commissions are often chosen by the political parties. the idea that they are somehow independent is not true. they have no accountability to the voters. if you don't like what an appointed member of the commission is doing, you cannot vote them out of office. the details in s1 are really shocking. hr one s1 puts in racial agenda quotas for the members of those commissions. if you are a citizen and you want to apply to be in the pool of individuals that may be picked to be on that commission,

not only do you have to disclose your income, but you have to disclose your religious affiliations and your memberships in all kinds of organizations, community organizations, nonprofit associations. it is shocking that they would require something like that, particularly your religious affiliation before they decide if you would be on one of those commissions. host: we are talking with hans von spakovsky, a senior fellow at the heritage foundation, joining us at our studio's here in washington. we will get your questions here in a second. we want to ask about what is going on in maricopa, arizona. is that recount credible? guest: i think conducting an audit is a good idea. audits are routinely done in businesses and large and small companies. the purpose of an audit is to check on your performance to

make sure everything functioned the way it should have and to spot any potential problems so you can fix them so those problems won't occur again. i think every state around the country ought to routinely conduct audits of their election process after elections. that is going on in maricopa. maricopa has gotten all the attention. to give an example, there is any audits going on in new hampshire . the auditors have already found problems in the way the election was conducted. there were problems with the computer scanners used cap the paper ballots to the point that the error rate was so high they have realized that the winning candidates in the races were not meditate with 300 votes they received and the losing

candidate who thought she lost by 24 votes lost by 100 votes. if they were not conducting an audit, they would not realize there is a problem with their voting equipment. now they will be able to fix that problem. host: is president biden the legitimate winner in your mind in 2020? guest: an audit cannot change the outcome of an election. it is over with, joe biden is the president. the purpose is to look at the election system. did it operate the way it was supposed to? did it comply with the rules set out by the state? if not, what can the state do to remedy whatever those problems were to make sure it doesn't happen again? i don't see why anybody would be against conducting those type of audits.

host: have you seen anything in 2020 that would have overturned election to donald trump? guest: i don't know the answer to that because there were lawsuits filed in many states making all kinds of claims. those claims were not investigated. they were dismissed on procedural grounds. we never had a substantive investigation. i don't see anything that would change the outcome. i don't think there was ever the kind of investigation that there should have been so we don't have these questions still arising. host: the democratic argument is that republicans are making it more difficult for the american people to vote. how do you respond to that? guest: that is simply not true. let's look at facts and evidence.

the biggest contention liberals make is that if you put in a voter id law it will suppress the vote. we know that is not true because voter id laws have been in place for more than a decade in this country in states like indiana, texas, georgia. turnout actually went up. there was a study released two years ago by the bureau of economic analysis. looking at 10 years of turnout data from all 50 states, and its conclusion was that voter id does not prevent anyone from voting and getting to the polls. that is true of all races and all socioeconomic backgrounds. the fact shows that is not true. the polling shows the american people do not agree with the idea that voter suppression is going on. host: our guest was chosen by

president trump to serve on the board of election integrity. he is the author of a number of books including "who's counting?" we go to james in north carolina. good morning. caller: i am an 18-year-old vietnam that. [indiscernible] i am a black man and you try to take my foot from me. -- tried to take my vote from me. i got shot up for you and i'm sitting here with one arm. you are trying to take my vote. host: thanks for the call. guest: that is simply not true.

the majority of african-americans support requiring any id. every state that has put in an id requirement has put in a provision to provide a free id to anyone who does not already have one. in georgia, when they put this law into effect starting in 2008, the turnout of african-american voters went up dramatically. it did not go down. the idea that somehow this will prevent people from voting i think does not take into account the fact that americans overwhelmingly support this kind of requirement. they overwhelmingly already have any id and states have taken care of the small percentage of people who do not have any id. this has not been a problem and has not led to the suppression of votes. the census bureau issued its report and in last year's

election we had the highest turnout in this century in a presidential election. it was even higher than when barack obama was elected in 2008. we had the highest voter registration, higher than the past five presidential elections all during the time that states like indiana and georgia have had a voter id for more than a decade -- a voter id law for more than a decade. this claim that people's rights to be -- rights to vote is being taken away is not true. host: our guest is hans von spakovsky, a senior fellow at the heritage foundation. he earned his law degree from vanderbilt university. michael is joining us from morris, illinois. good morning. caller: welcome back. mr. -- what ever the gentleman's

name is, he is a con man. he can have any credentials he wants. his argument he has been talking about is a facetious argument. any time close voting stations for you say we have a dropbox but we are worried about security so you can't drop off your ballot in the evening, it is voter suppression. i am really tired of this fellow pontificating and claiming that he knows what the american people want, he knows what his corporate paymasters want. that is about it. i have a solution to the problem. every election should require

that the winning candidate gets 50% plus one vote from all eligible voters, not registered, eligible. if you did that, you would see these republicans change their tune immediately and they want everybody registered. they make it really easy for people to vote. you need to call people out because you should be losing your tax-exempt status because he is full of hot air. host: we will get a response. thank you for the call. guest: my response is that we have had this tradition in this country of able to engage in civil debate even on contentious

issues. this caller wants to attack my integrity. i don't have a problem with drop boxes as long as they are secured and under 24 hour surveillance to prevent the kind of problems we had in last year's elections. there were mailboxes in boston in which people were depositing absentee ballots that were set on fire. the postal service in virginia had to send out a notice to voters warning that postal boxes where people were depositing ballots in richmond had been broken into and they did not know if people's ballots had been stolen. if they are put in drop boxes, they need to be secured and guarded and under surveillance to protect the votes of the individuals who put their absentee ballots into those boxes.

i am not saying i know what the american people what -- american people want, what i'm telling you is that americans want both access and security. you have to have both, one does not prevent the other. examples of that everything from acquiring any id to vote to verifying the citizenship of individuals who were registering to vote. host: beyond that, what to think is the biggest security lapse when it comes to voting to make sure that people are not footing twice, that illegal's are not voting, or dead people are not voting. what needs to be done from your -- from your standpoint that is not being done. guest: even the pew foundation which is very liberal issued a report on how terrible the voter rolls were in 2012. that situation has not improved.

not enough states are comparing their statewide voter registration lists with the voter registration lists of other states to find people that are registered in more than one state. anyone who thinks that is not a problem ought to google a name, it is wendy rosen. she ran for congress in maryland and won the congressional primary, was sent to challenge the incumbent republican until someone in her own party who had done research discovered she was not only registered to vote in maryland and florida but has voted in both states in multiple elections. she pleaded guilty to voter fraud and withdrew from the race. that caused problems within the democratic party, having to scramble to find a new candidate. this is not a partisan issue and it should not be. fraud, when it occurs, can

affect both parties. in 2018, the north carolina congressional race was overturned due to absentee ballot fraud. who was responsible for that? a political consultant hired by the republican candidate who was declared the winner on election day. the candidate was a democrat. the absentee ballot fraud was hurting the democratic candidate. fortunately, that fraud was discovered. an in-depth investigation occurred, the investigation -- the election was overturned and a new election was held. this should be a bipartisan concern. we want to make sure everyone eligible is able to vote but that their votes are not stolen. the ninth congressional district race occurred two years ago. host: hans von spakovsky is with the heritage foundation.

in west chester, ohio on the republican line, we thank you for waiting. good morning. caller: good morning. i spent my career as a scientist and i did a lot of process validation. i think there are a lot of smart people in washington, d.c. when we mass mail ballots, what i don't understand is what we -- is why we did not put in some kind of process to make sure it is valid. if we asked our citizens to put a copy of their id attached to their ballot and told everybody we are going to keep the envelopes and the ids together and separate in a locked area so that we would have an audit trail if we see there is a reason for an audit we will say we have 100,000 envelopes. we have 150,000 votes, something is wrong.

or we questioned the validity of citizens versus noncitizens. in the county where las vegas is, we have noncitizens. i think all of these smart people in washington, why did we not think about an audit trail before we did a mass mail the ballot -- a mass mailed ballot? host: thank you for your call. guest: you make some great points and some folks thought of that. alabama passed a law that requires a photo id both for in person voting and for absentee ballot voting. a number of other states have done that, too, and they have had no problem with that. georgia in its big election reform bill that was so supposedly controversial

extended its voter id law which only applied to an person voting to absentee balloting. they made it externally easy for people to meet the requirement. if you have a georgia driver's license or the free id they provide you, all you have to do is write the serial number of your id on your absentee alex request form -- your absentee outlet request form -- absentee ballot request form. they also put in some easy exemptions so people could meet it. you did not hear any controversies over the results in alabama. one of the reasons is because they put in this provision. georgia is not try to fix that by doing the same thing that alabama did. i might mention, a lawsuit was

filed claiming that this requirement in alabama would somehow be discriminatory, the lawsuit lost because they were not able to show that anybody in alabama would be able to meet this requirement. host: from independence, missouri, democrats like. caller: christopher krebs who works for donald trump said this was the most fair and decent election we have had. he was appointed by the administration. you are sitting there pretty much refuting everything christopher krebs has mentioned. it is curious how trump is only challenging elections and he

states he lost, but what about the states he won? is there any fraud in the states -- in those states we should look into? we have the lowest voter turnout in all western nations. the thing the heritage foundation is doing is going to squash that. the constitution does not say you have to have any id to vote. i hope the heritage foundation is aware of that. these ideas you are pushing about with an id, that is all you hear about from fox news and from people like you. that is ridiculous. we have people in arizona recounting the ballots saying chickens ate the ballots and stuff like that. you're making a mockery and i wish you would stop that. host: thanks for the call. guest: again, we have somebody trying to insult me personally.

i believe in democracy. in first generation american, my parents grew up in a tyrannical regime. i don't need you or anyone else telling me that i'm making a mockery of democracy. what i am trained to do is ensure the value of the vote of every eligible american. for those out there who think we do not have problems, we maintain a database at the heritage foundation of proven cases of fraud. this is just a sampling of cases, it is not a comprehensive list. it is just a sampling and we are constantly adding new cases to it. to give you a quick example, last year an election judge in philadelphia pleaded guilty to

stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent ballots. he was bribed to do so by a political consultant and the election judge admitted he stuck fraudulent ballots in multiple elections for multiple candidates. the gentleman he said paid him to do this was indicted last summer by a federal grand jury. he is a political consultant and a former congressman from pennsylvania. unfortunately, this kind of thing does still go on in this country. speaking of pennsylvania, the pennsylvania secretary of state was forced to resign after he admitted at least 10,000 noncitizens had been registered to vote over the years in pennsylvania due to a glitch in their dmv and election database. pennsylvania until today has

refused to acknowledge or disclose how many of those aliens actually voted in pennsylvania elections. we don't know the answer to that. does fraud occur every election? no. many elections are conducted above board and we don't have problems. but the u.s. has a long history of election fraud, something the supreme court acknowledged in 2008 and a case coming out of indiana -- in 2008 in a case coming out of indiana. it is something that happens often enough that we should try to make sure it does not happen. when it does happen, it cheats the average american. it cheats them out of their vote and we need to make sure that is not happening. host: we are talking with hans von spakovsky from the heritage foundation. i want to follow up with two points, one from the center

saying the republican efforts are suppressing the vote for future elections with 360 voter suppression laws across the country in a number of republican states. this is from pamela karlan, she is a principal deputy attorney general for the civil rights division. "past experience with similar investigative efforts raising concerns that they could be directed at minority voters which can implicate the anti-intimidation prohibitions of the voting rights act. such investigative efforts can have a significant, intimidating effort that can deter them from taking a vote in the future." your response to these points? guest: the brennan center is simply wrong. if you look at the election reforms the states have put in,

it is laughable they would call them voter suppression. the new york times wrote a piece attacking our recommendations on making sure voter rolls are clean. one of the examples they gave was the fact that arizona had passed a law directing election officials to on a regular basis check the state department of vital records to find individuals who are dead who are still on the voter rolls. as to pam carlin who has been running the civil rights division, her claim that an audit being conducted is somehow intimidating voters is simply wrong. that is not a violation of federal law as she claims. you cannot intimidate voters because you are auditing the election process six months

after the election ended. that is a very absurd claim. host: diane from jacksonville, florida. thank you for waiting. you are next. caller: i am listening to the gentleman. in republican. -- i am a republican. however, i did not vote for donald trump because i did not think he was qualified to be president. but, as this gentleman is speaking, he is saying how the voters want their id to be checked which i agree with. the voters also want common sense gun laws but i don't see republicans fighting to defend the voters on that issue. there is an old saying that a house divided against itself will fail. we have republicans that won --

but everybody is still upset because trump lost. there are plenty of republicans in the same states that are being audited. wouldn't it make sense if they were going to cheat they would cheat favor all democrats and not just the president? i am curious as to why we are not fighting for common sense gun laws as we are fighting for common sense voting laws. host: thank you for the comment. hans von spakovsky has written this piece, voter suppression -- "voter suppression." -- "voter suppression?" talk about diane's call, your thoughts?

guest: i am not here to talk about gun laws but defending -- gun laws. i'm here to talk about election integrity. i think audits are to be conducted in every single state whether it is a blue state or a red state or a purple state. all purpose of audits is to make sure that the election system, which is complex -- their election -- their vote is processed by election officials, everything from absentee ballots to early voting to then counting the votes. that is a long and complicated process and you want to be sure it is operating up to par so everyone is able to vote. we want to make sure that is

happening in every single state, not just red states but blue states, too. that is the purpose of the election integrity project we have at the heritage foundation. it is not to ensure that one political party wins elections, it is to ensure that we have a fair and secure process at the end of which even the losers, no matter which party they represent, say i lost the election but it was a fair election and i'm not going to contest it. that is the kind of system we want to have in place. host: in the washington post, jennifer morrell who is a local elections expert and a partner in the elections group "i watched the gop's election audit, it was worse than you think." she will be joining us later in the program. anthony is next from pennsylvania. caller: i agree with you on the

auditing of every election. the democrats and chuck schumer are just gas lighting everybody about how voter id is not possible and it suppresses votes. it is ridiculous. in order to file your taxes on live, you have to give your drivers license and nonstate id on your tax return to enforce a valid tax return. voting is so important in this country and i don't get why everybody is -- everybody does not scream that we need voting id for any election. it should be mandatory in every election. 400,000 votes in georgia had no -- because of these dropbox areas. i am sure fraud exists and may

be fraud could even be detrimental to trump last year. i believe he lost the election because of fraud. thank you. host: anthony, thank you. your response. guest: we have been talking about voter id but that is not the only security protocol that states need to put in place. on february 1, the heritage foundation published a long fact sheet that made our recommendations on the entire voting process, not only how voting should occur but on how to clean up statewide voter registration lists. let me give you an idea of how bad the system is. last year there was a report issued that unfortunately did not get a lot of attention. they went and obtained the voter registration lists of 42 states. they also got the voter

histories that showed which actions -- which elections voters voted in. they then supplemented that data with commercial data. they could get unique identifiers on each voter. they then did a comparison. by having unique identifiers on each voter, they could tell whether the john smith registered in alabama was the same or a different john smith registered in georgia. do you know what they discovered? in the 2016 and 2018 elections they found tens of thousands of individuals who had voted illegally twice because they were registered in two different states. many of them were registered in the same state twice. election officials did not

realize it. there were also tens of thousands of individuals who were registered in what they call residential addresses which turned out not to be residential addresses but everything from pawn shop's to a nevada casino to vacant lots to ups stores. they covered over 144,000 potential cases of fraud. that has been out for six months and not a single election official in those affected states and not a single law enforcement official has contacted the foundation and said to send us your file so we can investigate this. no one seems to be interested in looking at it. that shows you the possible extent of the problem. remember, they were not even

looking at the problem of noncitizens registering and voting across the country like the 10,000 in pennsylvania that the government admitted had got register to vote. host: our guest is hans von spakovsky the heritage foundation serving over the election reform initiative. this is from the new york times, "the bill is facing major obstacles from a may 14 courtesy -- is facing major obstacles." host: richard, good morning. caller: thank you for your time this morning. i was surprised to hear you mention the heritage foundation's voter fraud database and it would be great if you could put a link on the screen so people can look at it. in the last 40 years, something

around 1500 or 2000 documented cases of fraud have been found across all 50 states in elections over 40 years. even if that is off by a factor of 100, there is no way there could be an impact on the billion and a half of votes that have been cast over the last 40 years. host: you mentioned the site that has a sampling of recent election fraud. it is available at heritage.org titled election integrity. your response? guest: it is a sampling of cases. you're talking about as if it lists every fraud that has occurred, that is something not true. we don't cast a billion votes in every election. i don't think the people in north carolina's ninth

congressional election that had their election overturned due to ballot fraud would have the same cavalier attitude. i don't think the voters in patterson, new jersey was overturned because of absentee ballot fraud would have the same cavalier attitude. the mayor of a small town in alabama was removed from office after he was convicted of absentee ballot fraud in a race he won by little over one dozen votes. we have elections all the time in this country at both the federal, state, and local level. our -- many of those elections are -- [no audio]

>> and all of the information available to scrutinize. >> since you have been the point person to the covid saga, does that mean that you will as president biden to declassify that information? >> i don't think i can promise you -- >> wouldn't it make sense to get

information we have question mark if it doesn't come from you, dr. collins or someone who was in it from the get-go. we owe it to the american people to at least look at the information we have. >> i am not sure of the information we have. i am not sure it is my place to tell the president of the u.s. -- >> you have been very engaging on a wide range of topics and i think he would respect your opinion. dr. collins, where are you on that subject of giving the american people the information we have? >> we are with -- i am with where dr. fauci is in trying to be as transport as possible. i agree that i think it is a virus that arose naturally but we cannot exclude a lab accident. that is why we have said the who

needs to go back and try again. their investigation satisfied nobody and we need an expert driven expedition. i'm not in a position to know what might be in declassify documents and what else might be there that might be relevant to this end might be harmful to national security. i know the president is interested in seeing the truth come out so it may not require tony or me to know this might be good. host: that was a portion of an exchange yesterday before the appropriations subcommittee focusing on appropriation matters for nih. the attention shifted to covid-19. you heard from dr. francis collins and dr. anthony fauci. warren strobel is joining us from annapolis, maryland, one of the reporters that broke the story about new investigations

into the origin of covid-19. let me share with our audience part of what you and your colleagues had been reporting this week. "three researchers from china's wuhan institute of virology became sick enough in november 2019 that they sought hospital care according to a report that could add weight to whether the virus might have escaped from a laboratory. the details of the reporting go beyond a state department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the trump administration, which said that several researchers came sick in autumn of 2019 with symptoms consistent with covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses. the wuhan institute has not shared raw data, safety logs, and rap records -- and lab records on his work with that switch many consider the cause of the virus."

can you comment on that? guest: i want to give a shout out to to my colleague, michael gordon, we took the state department's statement issued five days before trump left office. it is not given elective attention and i think it was discounted because president trump and pompeo had it in for china. we tried to get behind that statement and confirm the intelligence. over the course of many weeks we were able to tease it out in details. two of those details were important. the researchers had to seek hospital treatment. -- reporting indicates that much more need to be learned. host: will we learn more from

china? will they be open to communication? guest: indications now are no. china basically said investigation is done. it is time to start looking at other countries. all indications are that china is not going to cooperate further. there is a question about how we will ever know if this pandemic which has taken more than 3 million lives how it started. host: we had a caller earlier that made reference to 14th street. make reference to that. "beijing asserts the virus could

have originated outside of china, even in the department on -- the department in maryland. the white house has said there are no credible reasons to investigate it." guest: dietrich is the primary u.s. lab. they don't do viral warfare, but they do study pathogens in order to defend against them. as far as i am aware, there is no evidence that the coronavirus has any connection to dietrich, maryland. i don't want to point fingers, but we do know that the wuhan institute of virology was studying that coronavirus is -- bat coronaviruses. after the outbreak, they took

down from their website at genetic data they were working with. i should not hesitate to add that president biden has called for the u.s. intelligence community to double down its efforts and give a report in 90 days. they have been working on this for more than a year and it is unclear to me what additional work or information they can get. they will be working closely with the national laboratories which have expertise in this. we will see what they come up with but it is unclear if they can answer this difficult question. host: that deadline in the u.s. senate, a resolution that passed unanimously put together by josh hawley of missouri calling for the intelligence community to be more transparent. i want to go back to the who. initially there was a delay in the who sending a team to wuhan, china.

ultimately they were left inside the country and inside the lab. did they have enough access and what did they find? i have a colleague who covered the who and had been tracking that. i will be honest with your viewers, i have not uncovered it directly but what i understand is that there was a delay and when the team went in, they had to rely on whatever the chinese was going to show them or tell them. it is not an independent investigation in that they were able to do interviews with research and staff -- researchers and staff. they were not able to look at safety logs, logs of disposable materials, those sorts of things. they issued a report in which he said that originating there it is unlikely. that same day, the head of who said that the lab should be

investigated along with other theories. the who was not allowed to do an independent investigation. the u.s. this week called on the world health assembly -- called on an independent investigation at the world health assembly. host: your piece includes the quote "many proponents of the lab hypothesis say a lab with an infected that -- while the lab hypothesis is being taken more seriously, the debate is still colored by political tensions, including how much evidence is needed to sustain the hypothesis. if we are not getting answers from china -- sustain the hypothesis." if we are not getting answers

from china, can we sustain the hypothesis? guest: i have talked to officials who say we may not know or it will be many years and decades before we know. there are two leading theories, one is the lab theory and the other three is that the virus came from nature, from a bat perhaps from eating an animal. that is part of the investigation. the problem is that no animal or speeches of animals have been identified -- they have not been able to find a transition -- a transmission chain. early on without the on wet market was the place where the virus kicked off. it is now known that is not true, it was circulating earlier in the wet market was a super-spreader event. there are a lot of unanswered questions. the world deserves to know, not

just for this pandemic but to help event super -- prevent future pandemics. host: when you talk to your experts, why is china reluctant to reopen any kind of investigation? what is the government afraid of? guest: that is a question i don't think they can answer or i can answer. i don't want to point fingers here, just want to describe what china's actions have been like. one might speculate they are embarrassed by the fact that the pandemic did start in china. it reflects badly on them and they are try to shut down the investigation or focus attention elsewhere. i'm afraid it is a question that is hard to answer without getting into the chinese leadership which is difficult for you and i and for u.s. intelligence. host: let's get to our listeners.

democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. our guest, warren strobel is with us. what other looming questions do you have that remain unanswered? for you personally. guest: there are a lot of questions. why did china take some of the actions they did in terms of deleting data and blocking the investigation? did the researchers get sick? what did they get sick with? was it seasonal flu or something like covid? i think there are other questions surrounding the lab and other activities of other medical institutes near the wuhan institute of virology. it is also -- the head of the

chinese cdc is there. there is the wuhan institute of biological products which develops vaccines so i think there is a lot of question about the activity going on there. the question going forward is how do we set up a system that helps detect early pandemic outbreaks and move quickly to stem them. host: sue, you are on the air. caller: back in january 2019, there was a chinese reporter that reported all of and she had pictures of one guy in the hospital. i want to know if you know anything about that. my next question is isn't there an international lawyer that has brought papers up at the hague for a trial there? guest: good questions.

i am unaware of activity at the hague. there was some earlier reporting and china, january, 2020, right after the pandemic began. that is my understanding. there was some reporting done by chinese journalists, bloggers, activists, and that was shut down quickly, and scientists in china were told not to speak out on this topic and so forth. again, not pointing fingers or drawing conclusions, but it does way -- raise questions. host: from georgia. bill. good morning. caller: good morning. my question is, i wonder what contributes more -- what contributed more to the deaths of over half a million people in the united states -- where the virus came from, or the last

president deciding and saying to bob woodward that he was going to minimize it, and actually are allowed the virus to spread throughout the united states. i am just confused. which is more important? it does not matter where it came from, what happens is what happened with the former president did with that information. host: bill, let me turn the question to you -- are they both important, or is one a higher priority? caller: to me, it does not matter where it came from. it does not matter. it is a virus, and it kills people -- it killed over half of a million people in the united states. i wonder the reason it -- if the reason it killed over half a million people in the united states is the way that it was handled. host: thanks for the call.

3.4 million people worldwide. warren strobel? guest: those are two separate questions, and one thing we have not talked about, hopefully we will answer the question one way, the lab leak theory originally, for much of last year was derided and looked down upon. many observers would say president and others in his administration were bringing this up, pointing the finger at china to deflect from their own, arguably poor effort in battling the pandemic. so what has happened is obviously trump has left office. china has not cooperated with who. you have a series of scientists, some prestigious, shifting public views and statements, starting to say the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy theory -- it should be

investigated. these include people like dr. anthony fauci, leading infectious disease expert in this country, -- who worked with the pool on -- wuhan lab, and so many others, so it has gone from a conspiracy theory to mainstream, and our article posted sunday, followed by a lengthy, excellent article examining the entire lab leak theory on monday has kicked off a debate to where president biden issues a statement saying i will double down on the intelligence committee efforts to find the answer to this. host: and based on your reporting, what you know about this lab in wuhan, china? what is its purpose? guest: it is certainly one of the leading institutes in china to study viruses. it was built with french help. i am told -- i have not

confirmed this -- part of the deal is 50 french researchers give or take were supposed to be able to work there. once the lab was completed, they were disinvited from participating. it has done a lot of important, good science. it studies coronavirus's and other viruses, and it is a s --bsl 4, a biosafety level four and interestingly the coronavirus work was done at a level of two. host: we welcome our viewers. if you are just listening in, we are talking with warren strobel, with some new reporting on wuhan, china, and as you mentioned, the president calling for a full, 90-day review of the possible source or sources of covid-19. our next caller is robert. washington, d.c., independent

line. thank you. caller: two are for taking my call. there are a lot -- thank you for taking my call. there are a lot of things going on around this conspiracy. i would like to ask, have you ever read the strecker report? guest: which report? caller: no, i have not. guest: have you ever heard of -- caller: the strecker report. guest: no. caller: i went to a luncheon with a book called aids made in the usa and he pointed a finger at -- directly at who created the aids virus. the coronavirus is definitely created because of the way it functions. i called in on c-span last year

about a possible way to take care of this airborne virus. host: thank you for the call. let me take this point and ask, are there lessons learned from past health crises whether it is aids or other pandemics that have been applied or need to be applied with what is happening with covid-19? guest: it is a good question pin this pandemic is the worst one since the spanish flu of 1819, so the question is what lessons do we take from this pandemic, what can we do better, and certainly there are a bunch of recommendations. we need to have a much better global monitoring and detection system, and maybe even have rules that force countries to share information one day are at the center of a pandemic or the beginning of a pandemic. most people think the u.s.

intelligence community, while not the lead agency on global health companies to put more effort and resources into pandemics because this pandemic has killed -- i don't know how many nine/11's it is, but it is a lot, and this is something they have to pay more attention to. those are a few off the top of my head. i think there are many more. most would agree it has been an international health failure. host: with the president issuing a statement calling for a 90-day review, first what was your reaction to the statement, and secondly how does the review process unfold? guest: my first reaction to the statement -- there is an interesting paragraph where he acknowledged -- kind of unusual for a president to acknowledge there are differences within the intelligence community. it is made up of 18, believe it or not, different entities, and president biden said there are a couple of them that lean toward the natural transmission theory,

that this came from nature, and one of those that leans toward the lab leak theory, but he basically acknowledged that they don't know, and that is what the intelligence community tells me as well. they stand by their two main theories, lab leak or natural transmission, but they don't know with any finality. i guess what happens now is the u.s. -- the intelligent -- intelligence community will have to reorient their policies in terms of machines they used to collect data and analysts they use to analyze data and come to conclusions. they will have to shift priorities to focus on the pandemic and hopefully either tease out new information, or a lot of times, as in both -- journalism and intelligence, it is not teasing out information, but connecting dots and looking at information in a new light. host: peter from provincetown,

massachusetts. good morning. you are on with warren strobel from "wall street journal online -- journal." caller: thank you for taking my call p i am glad you brought up the french role in the wuhan -- call. i am glad you brought up the french role in the wuhan lab. last year there were one or two press accounts of tribute it to french researchers that looked at the structure of the virus and noticed there were proteins present that could not have evolved naturally, and that pointed a finger at a human role , larger than thought previously. host: peter, thank you for the call. warren strobel? guest: that is a really good point. i remember the french work you cite, and if i recall correctly there were some experts say it was not good science or not accurate. i am not saying that myself, but

some scientists did. the bottom line is there are some people who say this virus shows no signs of human manipulation and therefore must have come from nature. there are other scientists that say there are no ways to manipulate things in the lab, techniques where you can manipulate viruses, their genes in ways that cannot be detected. i am frankly not a virologist at all to be able to answer the question, but it is an ongoing debate as to whether this virus shows any signs of human manipulation. one last point if i could, there is a third theory that china was developing a bioweapon deliberately engineered, and the u.s. intelligence committee has said they don't believe that in most scientists don't believe that one we are talking about a lab leak theory we are talking about people doing signs for the

right reason, but then something bad happened and the virus escaped. host: from morgan, louisiana, tom. indiana -- independent line. caller: good morning paradigm wanted to ask -- morning. i wanted to ask how many americans of east asian dissent have died of covid? host: why do you ask the question, tom? caller: on march 10 i saw a report on cnbc that the first cambodian head died, and in mid february on nhk, i saw a report that 10,800 japanese had died, and on c-span in october, just before the election, a woman called and said that her brother who lived in thailand had told her that 159 had died from

covid. host: have you heard that information? guest: i have command i want to say something clearly here -- our reporting and that of others is trying to get to the source of the virus in fact-based sort of way and examine the role of the chinese government and chinese scientists, and in no way should it be taken or used in some manner to harm or malign asian americans, or even the chinese population at large. that is not what we are doing here and i would hate it if our reporting got misconstrued that way. it is simple to shed light on an important international health problem. host: andrew is next good he is on the phone in baltimore. good morning. caller: if information is found that this was generated in lab

and released, what kind of action do you think the united states will be taking on any punitive damages? host: thank you for the question. guest: good question. again, let me emphasize that it is not yet proven, and most people think if it was released from the lab it was not generated specifically to be released, it was a lab accident of some kind. should that be proven, there are laws beginning to move through congress talking about reparations for the hundreds of thousands of americans who have died, sanctions, other sorts of things, and that is really a question for policymakers, and if it is proven, let's say at some point the lab leak theory is proven, i think the question gets thrown back to the world health organization in terms of international laws, international regulations for doing this kind of work, and future investigations of future

pandemic outbreaks, and will they have more authority to be able to go when and find out exactly what happened in the future -- go in and find out exactly what happened in the future? host: jaclyn p you are on with warren strobel -- jaclyn. you are on with warren strobel. caller: good morning. in the obama administration, millions of tax dollars were spent on the obama pandemic plan. is it criminal that trump ignored it? host: thank you, jaclyn. guest: i think it is fair to say there was a difference about that this -- of emphasis. i am being diplomatic care. there were several programs started under president obama that president trump either ended or curtailed. i think there was a cut in funding for state department -- for a state department program that was meant to detect and prevent -- the early detection of global health threats overseas.

i think most people would say there was a downgrading of that under president trump. how much that contributed to what has happened is a question for debate. host: let me go back to one final point of your reporting of those scientists who were -- who suffered some sort of anonymous in november, 2019, and that spurred your reporting this past week. when did you first hear about that, and this is an obvious question, but what does that tell you about the potential causes of this virus? guest: it was mentioned as we discussed in the outset, in the january 15 statement put out by the state department, and we spent weeks talking about current and former u.s. officials. i would guess it was probably a month ago that we first got the number three, the date of november, and a few more details. it was really hard to get, and

we were ultimately satisfied that we had enough to go with the story. again, what it tells us is there are additional questions here. we don't know that the three were sick with covid. it could have been seasonal flu. it is possible they were sick with covid but they did not get it from the lab, it was circulating elsewhere in wuhan and they picked it up and went to work at the lab. it is certainly in the timing of november -- it is very interesting. it is certainly fuel for different ash additional questions and inquiry -- additional questions and inquiry. host: as you do so, the 90-day deadline put in place by the president and what we saw in the senate, will that be enough time to get more answers? guest: my sense tells me it might be time to get closer to the truth but i am a little skeptical that in 90 days you will have a finite answer to a very complex question that is obscured by the passage of time, and frankly by the apparent actions of the chinese

government. host: warren strobel, he covers national security. his reporting at wsj.com and inside today's "wall street journal." caller: thank you for having me. host: we want to turn to elections across the country. joining us today is jennifer morel. she is a partner with the election group to talk about efforts to audit elections in arizona and georgia. "washington can -- journal continues. >> coming up today, treasury secretary janet yellen and lloyd austin testify on the presidents's 2022 budget request. you will find both hearings live on c-span. on c-span two, the senate returns to continue work on a science and technology research bill. senators will also look to take of legislation passed by the

house that would create an independent commission to investigate the january 6 u.s. capitol attack. and on c-span three, executives from the nation's largest inks testify that i let -- largest banks testify at a house financial services hearing. that gets underway at noon. >> c-span's landmark cases explores the stories and constitutional drama behind significant supreme court decisions and for the next several weeks watch key episodes from the series. sunday at tenneco p.m. eastern, the dread-scott decision, that held that a black person, free or slave could never be a u.s. citizen or sue in federal court. watch landmark cases. online at c-span.org or listen on the c-span radio app. >> on memorial day, join our live conversation marking the

100th anniversary of the tallest arrays massacre. our guest from the tulsa way society and museum as an author whose latest book is "black wall street 100 watch live monday at 8:30 p.m. eastern on c-span's washington journal and american history tv on c-span 3. >> washington journal continues. host: we want to continue our conversation on election audits and particularly georgia and arizona, enjoining us is jennifer morrell from salt lake city. to her for being with us. guest: great to be here. host: your recent piece in "washington post," with the headline "i watched the gop arizona election audit. it was worse than you think." what did you see and why was it

worse than you think? guest: we conduct elections, recounts, audits, you and accordance with state laws and statutes. i have come to expect some pretty typical things even though we have 50 states doing election slightly differently. recounts and audits usually follow a similar pattern. the most stark thing was walking out onto that floor and seen those spinning, colored conveyor wheels, a ballot. normally when we leave you a ballot, whether auditing or recounting we take our time with it. we do it slowly, in small increments. humans are terrible at tedious, repetitive tasks. we actually are really bad at counting, all of us. most jurisdictions will find them doing those things and stacks of five or 10, and some sort of verification that both, usually it is a bipartisan, two-person team that will review

the ballots. here we have someone sticking a ballot down a will, encounters trying to record not one but two races. that was the first thing. lots of instances throughout the process where there was a lack of quality control or lack of verification. then the forensic paper audit was really bizarre, looking for things like stains and folds on ballots as evidence of fraud -- certainly something we have not seen in other election audits. near -- really no signs to play out behind that. that was concerning. part of that at the time was the use of these cameras and equipment that were untested, uncertified, so that was a little bit alarming as well. the worst part is the process and procedures change daily. again, when you walk into an official jurisdiction and

election office, whether it is an election, recount, or an audit, those procedures will stay the same throughout the course of the audit. these continue to evolve even as we speak today. host: why was the audit conducted, was it necessary? there had been two previous investigations by local officials in maricopa in arizona, the largest county population-wise in that state. why did it take place? who initiated it? guest: great question. my request is it was the request of the senate, and it is concerning, because just like you said, not only does maricopa run great elections, they did a fairly robust hand-count audit after the election, found no evidence of fraud,'s -- found no discrepancies in the official report or results that were reported. so, it does seem odd that,

again, we are asking for the proof that the outcome was what was recorded. host: as we know, the vast majority of republicans still feel that the election was wrong, that donald trump won the election, that there was fraud in key states across the country. guest: yeah, and i think there is no end to that. as long as we have elected officials such as elected officials in arizona placating those conspiracy theories, those lies, we can continue to go down this path forever. i think george is a great example of that, where they did multiple audits. they had an investigation by the georgia state police, signature verification audits, and found no evidence of fraud, no change in the outcome, yet we see another group coming in demanding to look at those ballots. it is, sort of, easy to see that this could continue until they

find the answer that they want to find. until they hear what they want to hear. if an audit is done correctly, as it has been already, the outcome is what it is. it is not going to change. host: jennifer morrell, what is the elections group? you are a partner in that organization. what do you do and who funds it? guest: we are a private organization. we provide support to state and local jurisdictions. our team is made up of former election officials. host: i want to go back to the issue of looking for any potential bamboo in the ballots. what was that all about? guest: i don't nope there was a conspiracy theory, i guess, that ballots were shipped in from korea, north korea to maricopa county, and somehow mysteriously

slipped into the official ballots, and what is interesting about this is again, if the intent of the senate was to find issues were ensure that the election was correct, they could have taken the opportunity to go down and meet with election officials in maricopa county and learn about all of the safeguards, all the safety mechanisms that would have prevented anything like this, even though it is so bizarre, from happening. from the audit trails that follow when a ballot is requested, issued, and sent, to the chain of custody requirements that are required when retrieving ballots, when checking ballots in for voter credit, all the way to scanning and counting those ballots. so there are a number of guardrails that would have prevented that from happening, yet instead we decided to chase down this creepy theory that

somehow the fibers of the paper will tell us that there was fraud. host: in terms of guardrails, are there things that are not in place that should be in place to ensure that elections are free, fair, and accurate? guest: yes, so, we can go back to one of the things that the forensic paper audit was looking for. security markers on the ballot. that is one of those guard rails. that is one of those things that is already there. when the election officials do the logic and accuracy testing of their equipment, they are insuring the voting equipment is programmed to only read ballots that have been programmed for that election by that office and printed by the vendor, the office, equipment used by that office. those mechanisms are already there. maricopa is a great example of a jurisdiction that goes above and beyond that, and after the election, they go through the same test procedure again to

ensure that nothing has changed during the course of the election. so, there are already these pre-and post election tests to ensure that everything happens. could we do better? sure. we are always looking for ways to improve the process, for ways to make the election more secure. i think we are always chasing that, but the important thing is we do it in accordance with law. we don't get to make up our own rules, bring in our own auditors, and call it an audit, make a procedures as we go. we have to follow the law. if there are things that need to be changed or fixed to make collections more secure, there is process for getting the law changed, and i don't need to go into that, but i think that is really important to note. the other thing here to be concerned about when we are talking about security is state and local efficient -- officials

, election officials, are the legal custodians of the ballots. those ballots and that equipment have been moved from their custody to some third-party, external organization, and i think that is concerning. obviously the doj was concerned about that. host: and we have been talking about that -- arizona. what is happening in georgia? guest: my understanding is there is a group, an organization calling for an examination of the male ballots -- mail ballots. again, we've been several audits including the hand count of those mail ballots. they are asking to have a review. my understanding is thankfully, this time the ballots will not leave the custody -- sorry, too many elections/of the fulton

county election officials, but rather the folks that are coming in will be allowed to take images of those ballots. host: let's get to viewers and listeners -- bill joining us from alexandria, virginia. good morning. guest: good morning. really appreciate your comments, but you need to know where the camera is. you keep looking up and over the camera. it is, kind of distracting. guest: thank you. i don't know why they didn't tell you that. i am concerned as an independent about -- guest: i am sorry -- say that again -- what is the problem with more audits? caller: if you are an intelligent integrity person, what is the problem with more audits? you think you would be interested in pursuing them. guest: i am a huge advocate of more audits and i spent a lot of

time writing and talking about broader audits along the whole spectrum, and all of these audits have been focused on post-election -- what we call post-election tabulation audits, looking at the voting equipment operate correctly. my concern is this audit is being done by an external group. we have removed ballots from the custody of the election official -- i am all about more audits, we need to do it in accordance and under the law. as we explore these ideas with audits, we have done lots of pilots across the country with different methods of post-election tabulation audits. we take working groups, experts, test out theories before we put them into practice in official ways. i think that is the danger here -- that we have an organization, their procedures have not been

vetted, their practices are not in accordance with the laws of arizona, in this case with maricopa county, and we have relieved the legal custodians -- we have taken the ballots from them. we have taken the voting equipment from them and given it to someone else who, by the way, has not taken the same old, does not have the same legal obligation that the state and local officials do to protect and maintain those ballots, again, in accordance with law. host: our guest is a partner with a group called the elections group, joining us from salt lake city. she served as an election official in colorado and utah. a graduate from webster university and a veteran of the u.s. air force. thank you for your service. angela join us from mellencamp democrats line. caller: good morning. my question is, in georgia and arizona, after the audits are

done and court cases as far as fraud have gone to court -- they have changed the state laws now to say everything looks fine, but we still feel there is election fraud, so we are throwing out the results, and we get to pick the electors for the candidates we want. i know that is erin -- in arizona and it might be in florida -- in texas. how can they throw out the election results and not call that voter suppression? guest: i am at the legal expert, but my understanding is they cannot, so all of these audits that are happening right now, really, i think, are just to continue this narrative that there was a steel or some sort of fraud. they are knocking to be able to change the outcome of last november -- not going to be able to change the outcome of last november's election.

caller: good morning. they made 30-your navy veteran, and i think -- i am a 30 year native -- navy veteran, and i think every american needs to understand we are at war right now, the domain is not the sea, the air, it is an cyber, and the election was stolen massively. to have this fraud on tv that was disappointing. you think of december 7, a horrible attack on our country and november 3, 2020, was 50 times worse. every state in the union was attacked and we need to stand up and be patriots for this country -- people are trying to dismantle it, they are called globalist to want to destroy the country with violence in our street and dominion voting systems rig in the election had have a fraud on tv pretending to be ethical in military vet is disgusting to look at. host: joe, are you still with

us? caller: yes, i am. host: you mentioned dominion voting. but your evidence, what is it that there was outside influencing the election that gave the election to joe biden over donald trump? caller: i can't swear to their authenticity, but i have seen graphical plots that they stopped the election fraudulently at night and had observers leave, and the graph plots show hundreds of thousands of votes, 100% for biden in the middle of the night, statistically impossible and video on cnn with the vote count decreased pit when you are counting vote on election day, the number should never decrease. 6000 votes were subtracted from trump, i think it was in pennsylvania, just like the elections said. our election was far weaker and more vulnerable than what he supervised as an army service guy in afghanistan and iraq.

he said it cannot be by accident pit they wanted the weakness to exist so they can manipulate it as they have been doing for years. we need to clean house -- almost every institution in america, as you can see, if you have half a brain, from the cdc to our education system, of course our intel agencies are the main culprits on this. 9/11, the air force resources attacked the u.s. navy in the pentagon and killed people auditing fraud at that level. this stuff has to end. host: you are putting a lot out there pit let me stick to the issue of election fraud, and to that point, jennifer morrell's do you want to respond --jennifer morrell do you want to respond to job's theory -- joe's theory? guest: i was sure quick thoughts

-- in every state elections are done at the local level by neighbors, friends, family, both parties -- i'm talking about pollsters that are recruited representing both parties, temporary workers that come in were present in both parties. we have observers presenting all of the candidates and representing all the major parties. so, we talk about some sort of massive fraud or conspiracy theory, or something happening in the middle of the night, i think it is important for people to remember that it would be impossible for that to happen without some of these people that are working -- all of the people that have taken an old, the people that have come in to help support poll workers and others -- when all of these selections were canvassed and certified, they were done so by election boards, canvas boards, state boards of election -- again, bipartisan boards who had

the opportunity to review the documentation, review the results, review the ballot accounting worksheets -- all of those things, and reached the conclusion that the votes being certified were accurate, that the election was conducted with integrity, and i think there has been this tremendous effort since 2017, when elections were designated as critical infrastructure by the election community, by the security community, to ensure all of those things the caller just stated happened couldn't happen. this massive effort to deal with the cyber issues, to enhance physical security, to enhance auditing, testing, all of those things. host: a couple of points from our viewers on social media. this is from loretta who says what is in the law to help democrats keep republican states

on the law and order path? the arizona audit is been called a fraud. nothing is illegal, no trend -- nothing is legally, no transparency, process, chain of custody, security, and the # cyberninjas is uncredited, never did audits. guest: there has to be some accountability for individuals who can to new -- to continue to amplify the narrative and i'm talking about elected officials. i have said this earlier and i will reiterate it again, if their intent was to hone in on the security of the election and look to ways to improve it, they would first spend time understanding all of the procedures that are already being done, all of the security that is already there to continue to amplify these false claims. at some point, we have to hold those folks accountable -- what

is in the law to prevent them from continuing that, my expertise is in election operations, so i am probably not the expert here to answer that, but i think there needs to be some accountability. host: mikey, text message from minneapolis with a simple question, who is funding the arizona audit? guest: i am not sure we know. i don't know, other than what we have seen reported that the first $150,000 of the audit is being paid for by tax payers, and the rest of it is going to far exceed that just based on the coliseum they are renting, the number of days they are renting it. the audit was supposed to end on may 14. it is continuing. we know when it will end. the security they have there, the people they have hired, the equipment they have purchased to put together -- we know the cost are far exceeding that.

who is funding that -- we don't know. host: this is response to an earlier collar -- jennifer has kind eyes with her credentials, and not finding fraud is the proof she is not uninformed. here we go, a cyber attack by dominion and democrats who cannot walk and chew gum pulled off this election fraud? get your story straight. host: good morning penn democrats line. caller: i'm a vietnam veteran. i am trying to understand the role of the judges in this whole mess. i'm tender understand, if it it -- trying to understand, if it is against the law to take a government-run election batch of information and give it to a

private entity, why is there no penalty, why did they judge allow that to happen? guest: i am not the legal expert appeared i don't know if i can answer why the judge allowed that to happen. we do know the department of justice did send a letter to descendant reminding them of that custodial responsibility of the state and local officials, asking them to ensure that those ballots and that equipment remain safe. host: we go next to harry joining us from lawrence, new jersey. you are next. the publican line. we will try again -- republican line pit we will try again. caller: i am an independent. host: go ahead, please. caller: i have been following this closely, and from what i am understanding, these audits are going a little further into the dominion side of things. that really wasn't done to any great detail.

all i know is during election night, when i went to bed, trump was leading by hundreds of thousands of votes, including about 700,000 in pennsylvania, and then overnight, by the next morning, when i woke up, in every state, that was turned around. now, this election was the first election that was held, basically, with absentee and mail-in ballots, and i kind of thought that was funny -- there were these big spikes of ballots in the middle of the night, all of a sudden going the other way, and these audits, they are being pretty thorough, pretty transparent, and from what i am understanding, the democrats

coming in every way they can, they are trying to stop it, sending lawyers from the doj. i am understanding even hillary is sending in lawyers. if it is transparent, if the election was secure and clean, like everyone is claiming, like this lady is claiming, why is there such opposition? why is there so much people coming in to try to throw roadblocks in their? -- there. guest: -- host: thank you. this was written about -- the so-called red maras that became a blue victory after the votes were counted. guest: let me go to the first part of the question around the dominion voting equipment, and remind callers that the equipment is used in as many states that went for trump as went for biden. equipment has been used successfully for years now.

it continues, every election, jurisdiction, every state that uses it, to be tested prior to every election and to go through an audit process after the election. we also know maricopa had two forensic officers go in, review equipment, to ensure and relieve concerns there were issues with the equipment. regarding the shift, folks need to keep in mind that as the caller indicated, some of these states that ended up shifting to biden are states that saw exponential growth in mail ballot voters and states like pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, that could not start counting those ballots were preprocessing them prior to election day. they were also states working around the clock, meaning working through the night and 24 hour shifts.

it wasn't surprising for those of us that have worked in elections or work in states like i have in colorado that is an all-male-ballot states where the bulk, and on election day, you are processing them through the night in the next morning, it is not unusual to see a shift. does not mean there are fraud -- there is fraud. host: republicans dealing pennsylvania claiming the democratic governor changed election roles -- rules using the pandemic and us -- as an excuse to have early voting, which was not the case prior to 2020. that argument, which did face litigation, what is your response? guest: again, i don't have all of the information to weigh in on what is or isn't happening in pennsylvania, but they were responding, just like every other state was, to covid.

they were considering how to ensure everybody had access to vote in a way that was safe. part of that was opening up satellite offices to help individuals apply for and receive a mail ballot. host: a couple of tweets -- republicans must yell fraud even though they won more seats in 2020. it is what they do to end a democratic republic. this is from --please explain absentee ballots get counted last. this is from jan saying let's audit south carolina and kentucky. todd. republican line. good morning. todd, are you with us? host: we go on to andrew, miami, florida. go ahead, please. caller: basically, i am independent or whatever, but i

definitely feel like it is what it is, they should've everything on the green screen, even nancy pelosi him, madame speaker pelosi got up and said in october there is no way trump is going to win. they said he -- they were going to win and they said it, declared it, and they did it and i was joking around telling people democrats will have people running around dropping off all types of ballots. i know it is not funny, but a spade is a spade. i don't know what the future holds, but may jesus be with us all. everything that is going on, hunter biden should be put in jail. joe biden should be put in jail. israel is apartheid -- host: you will leave it there. democrats line. caller: i am so glad i finally

got on after many years. i like to say that i watched the elections all night, the counting, the recounting, election it, i stayed awake. i have been building since i was 18. nothing is any different than it was when i was a little girl going up to 72. trump's put this in people's minds, played the game, and people actually believed that it was going to be rigged. it is what is in everyone's mind. i can see it. one other thing i would like to mention is i saw nothing wrong with the election. i feel in my heart that because a lot of african-americans and other people got out and finally voted, and people are so angry about that, that is why we are having this problem right now. from 18, high school, up until now, i still feel that way. just a bunch of people that hate the fact that people of color, all caller, -- all colors got

out and voted. host: jennifer, what are you hearing from our viewers and listeners? what stands out? guest: i think it is this bigger issue of trust, and it is a challenging issue. i wish i could take everyone of your viewers, listeners, and have them go sit down with what i feel our trusted sources of information, and that is the state and local officials who have raised their hand, taken a note to conduct the election in accordance -- both to conduct the election in accordance with the loss of their state, constitution, and sit down, listen, and walk through how the process works. i think the misinformation, information that is put out to cause harm, has been done so

intentionally, and i don't know how we walk ourselves back from that. i don't know how we as a country move back to a place where we feel confident about our local officials, and i think it is an important challenge we need to tackle. i think auditing is one part of that. i certainly think there is communication and information as well that we need to tackle, and whether that is going back to specifics, education, thinking about how we can share information -- i think it is an important issue to reckon with, certainly when i am going to be focused on. i want everyone to feel confident of every party of how the election was conducted, and more importantly, how the outcome of our election -- host: let me follow up -- what would it take to get there -- to restore the trust? what has to happen that has not occurred so far? guest: i think we need more of

our leaders speaking out against the conspiracy theories. i think their endorsement of those is one of the most dangerous parts of this. it gives credibility to that. i think the media has done a pretty awesome job -- most of the media has done a great job understanding how the election works last november, trying to inform voters of that. we have a responsibility as citizens to learn how the process works, to assure one another that it has been conducted fairly and accurately. election administrators have a responsibility as well. there are some doing a phenomenal job with all of these things that i mentioned, the testing, security, auditing, and there are others that make some improvements. we all have some work to do. host: we are talking with jennifer morrell, a partner from the elections group joining us from salt lake city.

pamela. auburn, washington. republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. i am curious on the elections -- the gentleman from new jersey said trump, during the day was up, but at night was down. it is like the graveyard shift. my question is what are you doing about the people that have been deceased, the dead coming back to vote? are those people removed from the list of voters, or were there ballots counted? host: thank you, pamela. guest: so there is a fantastic effort that has been underway for years now called the electronic registration and information center. a majority of states now are members of that. they get regular updates from the social security

organization. also from vital records within their own states notifying them when someone is deceased and removing them from the records. it is not -- it is probable that there might be individuals that due to the timing of their death may not have been pulled out in time. that is why we have other, sort of, safeguards in place, especially around male ballots, such as signature verification, and things like that, to try and ensure that people do not take their ballot and vote on their behalf but i would say you can rest at ease with that. most states do a great job. certainly, your state, the state of washington, is a leader there -- they do a fantastic job -- one of the best in the country in maintaining voter rolls. host: this is from libby james, a tweet saying an independent

caller say it was "the big lie" is supported that speaker pelosi said trump won't win, then on-q bringing up hunter and hillary. democrats line. vermont. good morning. caller: good morning. i think people fail to remember that prior to november 3, at trump's behest, he insisted that the male -- mail-in ballots do not get counted until after november 3, and he pressed that issue to the extent of which there are many state legislatures, i know pennsylvania is one of them, pretty sure georgia is one of them -- where they were not

allowed to count the ballots until after the popular, the physical vote, if you will, on november 3 occurred. that is where the numbers changed. now, biden won the popular vote by 7 million. so, with the argument that the right has now, one could argue that in 2016, when hillary won the popular vote by 3 million, that in theory, if they want to use this argument, that trump stole the boat from hillary. if i am wrong in any of my points, please correct me. two i very much. -- thank you very much. host: timothy, thank you, from vermont. jennifer morrell. guest: i guess i can address the timing question. the caller is correct. there are some states that do

not allow any processing of those male ballots until election day. kilo they start in the morning could the important thing for listeners and viewers -- they start in the morning of the same day. the important thing is they have a return that prevents them from counting more than one valid and they go through a verification process. that might mean signature verification. states have different requirements. it might mean filling out the affidavit correctly, or having a witness to whatever the requirements are in the state. once it has gone through that process, it has to move to be open and the ballots separated from the identifying information on the envelope. those are scanned and throughout the process they are tracked and accounted for. all of that takes time. when you don't get to start until election day, and you have more than half of your votes, as

was the case in large jurisdictions like philadelphia, not coming in until election day, that is going to take days to get through all of the processing that has to be done, and we do it because that is the way we ensure fraudulent ballots are not sent in. so, in states like washington, colorado, where they are predominantly male ballots, --mail ballots, some of those are not tabular to come the checking in, the voting, that is allowed to be done prior to election day and then on election day we simply run the tally. that changes the time factor considerably, and for those states going from 10% of their electorate voting and absentee ballots to 50%, 60, 70%, but not a lot to start counting or

processing until election day, we knew that would put them behind the curve, and they did a phenomenal job. they all got through that much faster, i think, than most of us anticipated, but we knew that there were going to be ballots coming in later, changing the results. host: our next caller is from arizona. carol from chandler, arizona. democrats along -- line. caller: good morning. i am calling because i feel like arizona is in a state of shame right now. this audit, i feel like republican's have their hands on my valid, and access to the machines that could be used in future election where they have already had audits that say the election is good. right now there are voter suppression laws that republicans are trying to get through the state. they are attacking katie hobbs, kathy hoffman, they have already

attacked flake and mccain, and i voted for flake and mccain, but now there is no way the republicans have people in their trying to do their do their dirty deeds. actually, one of these people doing the balloting check was a person who was at the insurrection, and they know it. host: we will get a response, thank you for the call. guest: i appreciate that comment and i think it is important for citizens like yourself to remind your legislature to remind the senate that you voted to put your trust in your secretary of she -- of state, katie hobbs. they voted to put their trust in the current clerk. who, happens to be a republican. i think we need to focus on this less of a political issue and more as we voted our vote of

trust in the election authority and in our state and jurisdiction and they did so in accordance with the law and they did so with transparency and integrity. they did some audits and then some and i think citizens need to petition the senate for this to stop. host: the website is election groups.com. jennifer morel joining us from salt weight -- salt lake city. thank you for being with us on this thursday. the houses in recess for the next couple of weeks although there are congressional hearings. you can check them out at c-span.org as well as a networks. the big debate today is the january 6 commission, unlikely that the democrats will get the 10 votes they need, which would scuttle the commission. you can watch the senate live on c-span2.