An investigation by a Chinese defector claiming that Covid-19 was manufactured in a lab was published by groups founded by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and a billionaire in exile in Beijing.

The scientific paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, claims that the disease originated from joining the genetic material of two bat coronaviruses and that a spike protein has been modified to improve its ability to attach to human cells .

Scientists have dismissed the report published Monday as ‘baseless’, saying it ‘cannot gain any credibility’.

The study was conducted by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, sister organizations Bannon, 66, founded with 50-year-old Chinese fugitive Guo Wengui.

US President Donald Trump (left) congratulates Steve Bannon at the swearing-in of senior staff in the East Room of the White House on January 22, 2017 in Washington, DC

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon (left) and Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui at a press conference on Nov.20, 2018 in New York

The report from the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation was written by Li-Meng Yan (who gave an interview to British TV last week), who claims to be a former researcher at the Hong Kong School of Public Health.

The P4 laboratory (C) of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in the central province of Hubei in China on April 17, 2020. There are numerous theories that the virus has spread from this laboratory

The study was written by Li-Meng Yan, who claims to be a former researcher at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, and recently appeared on Fox News in the US and ITV in the UK.

Ms. Yan’s report has received wide public attention and has been viewed more than 150,000 times since it was posted on the Zenodo website, which is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research to promote open scientific data.

Documents posted to the Rule of Law Society’s website last year showed that Bannon was the chairman of the New York-based group, The Daily Beast reported.

Neither the Rule of Law Society nor the Rule of Law Foundation appear to have published scientific or medical research before.

Guo, a real estate magnate and member of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, pledged $ 100 million to the Rule of Law Society led by Bannon. The pair announced the pursuit in 2018, and Bannon told the New York Times he would not be taking pay.

The charities’ stated mission is: “To expose the corruption, obstruction, illegality, brutality, false incarceration, excessive punishment, intimidation and inhumanity that are ubiquitous in China’s political, legal, business and financial systems.”

Bannon and Guo have also collaborated on G News, which publishes anti-communist Part articles in both English and Chinese, and which promotes the theory that the coronavirus was manufactured in a laboratory.

The theory was widely reported earlier this year, and Trump suggested he since had intelligence reports to back up the claims.

Trump went on to make the allusions, despite the US National Intelligence Office saying in April that the virus was “ not man-made or genetically modified. ”

The White House chief coronavirus strategist Dr. Anthony Fauci has also stated emphatically that the virus was not manufactured.

Bannon on Guo’s $ 35 million yacht off Connecticut before being arrested last month

Billionaire Guo Wengui poses in his New York City apartment on Nov. 28, 2017

Bannon and Guo Wengui (aka Miles Kwok) appear at a press conference in New York, New York, USA, November 20, 2018

In July, Bannon told The Mail on Sunday that spies were building a case against Beijing on the basis that the pandemic was caused by a leak from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan and that the subsequent cover-up was tantamount to “ pre-mediated murder. ‘. . ‘

But the timing of the Bannon-backed scientific study comes months after Mike Pompeo retired from the lab idea.

The Secretary of State told Breitbart that “we know it started in Wuhan, but we don’t know where or from whom, and those are important things.”

He had previously said there was ‘enormous evidence’ and ‘considerable evidence’ that the virus originated in a laboratory.

In her research, Ms. Yan abandons the theory that the coronavirus evolved in the wild and then passed to humans, claiming that it “lacks substantial support.”

“SARS-CoV-2 exhibits biological features inconsistent with a naturally occurring virus,” she wrote.

The evidence shows that [the virus] should be a laboratory product made by using bat coronaviruses ZC45 and / or ZXC21 as a template and / or backbone. ‘

She claims the virus ‘should’ have been built using stores of these bat viruses, which she claims are kept in Hong Kong and China.

Ms. Yan also claims her work shows that the virus can be built in just six months in the summary of the report, but she does not return to the topic later in the paper.

Dr. Andrew Preston, an expert in microbial pathogenesis at the University of Bath, described her report as “reminiscent of a conspiracy theory.”

“The author is affiliated with the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation, New York,” he said.

‘On their website, this organization’s vision is’ to allow the people of China to live under a national system based on the rule of law, independent of the political system of the People’s Republic of China’ …

“Given the baseless claims in the publication, which has not been peer-reviewed, the report as it stands cannot be viewed with any credibility.”

It is claimed that the coronavirus was developed in the Wuhan laboratory in China, pictured above. However, there is no evidence to support this claim

Dr. Michael Head, a global health expert at the University of Southampton, said the conspiracy theory disseminated by the report is “ making the rounds during the pandemic. ”

“Ultimately, it could be detrimental to public health if it is reported non-critically without looking at the broader evidence,” he said.

If people are exposed to and then believe in conspiracy theories, it will likely negatively impact efforts to keep Covid-19 cases down and so there will be more deaths and illnesses than necessary.

The genomics of the virus have been disentangled before, for example in a peer-reviewed article in Nature which states: ‘Our analyzes clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory engineered or a deliberately manipulated virus’.

Other evidence also shows that this type of coronavirus has been common in bats for decades. This new manuscript is not peer-reviewed and, of course, does not provide data beyond previous research. ‘

Ms. Yan wrote in her paper that theories that the virus comes from nature and that the meat market in Wuhan is a ‘smokescreen’, claiming that she was told this by CDC scientists working in China.

She has previously accused Beijing of lying when it learned of the deadly infection and was guilty of an elaborate cover up.

Ms. Yan claims she fled to Hong Kong and fled to America in April to raise awareness of the pandemic.

Bannon leaves Manhattan court on Aug. 20, flags of the New Federal State of China, founded by Guo, fly after him

Bannon is surrounded by journalists when he leaves the Manhattan court last month

She claims she worked at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, a reference laboratory for the World Health Organization, but was cut off after trying to warn people about human-to-human transmission of the virus in December.

She also claims that before she left China, her information was erased from the government database.

The lab has denied that Ms. Yan ever “researched human-to-human transmission” and said her claims have “no scientific basis.”

Bannon, 66, was arrested on August 20 on Guo’s yacht off the coast of Connecticut.

In a suit with three others, Bannon is accused of illegally raising more than $ 25 million for the We Build The Wall campaign.

He pleaded not guilty and was released on bail.

As he left the courthouse he shouted, “This whole fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall.”