Rion is pushing a debunked conspiracy theory. It circulated last week in Britain’s Express tabloid, after which experts repeatedly debunked it and the Express even ran a correction. The Express’ source was a guest on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show, Francis Boyle, who alleged that the coronavirus was a bioweapon created in Wuhan.

While Boyle, Steve Bannon, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), and others have pushed a conspiracy theory that the virus was a bioweapon that originated in a facility in Wuhan, Rion went in a slightly different direction. She cited a 2015 study from the National Institutes of Health, titled “SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronavirus pose threat for human emergence,” and used its links to the University of North Carolina to suggest that the novel coronavirus was created there.

After Rion mentioned the study, she named authors who purportedly have links to Wuhan. While there are no audio issues elsewhere in the special, on both the Saturday and Sunday airings of this special, Rion’s voice is muted when saying the names, though the authors list for the 2015 study does include the names of two scientists, Zheng-Li Shi and Xing-Ye Ge, who have worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (Conspiracy theories about these scientists go back to at least January 26.)

On OAN, Rion also cited Greg Rubini as an expert. Rubini had tweeted the conspiracy theory at Rion the day before the special aired, in a thread still pinned to his Twitter profile at the time this piece was published. Before that, Rubini had also previously tweeted that the virus was created in a North Carolina lab. While never explicitly citing this study, on February 25, Rubini tweeted at former Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini: “this VIRUS is a BIO-WEAPON - genetically engineered in a North Carolina Lab, and brought to Wuhan by a Chinese scientist. … I have the documents. be advised.”

While Rion cited Rubini’s conspiracy theory that the virus was created in North Carolina, she concluded by implying that Chinese scientists, after purportedly helping to create the virus in North Carolina in 2015, then released it from a laboratory in Wuhan near the end of 2019. This is more in line with the Bannon and Cotton conspiracy theory than with Rubini’s even more deranged notion.

Rubini posits that the “deep state” sent the virus from North Carolina to China, Italy, and then back to the United States. He is also convinced that Anthony Fauci personally funded its creation.