Q. Is it true that federal agents arrested Harvard professor Charles Lieber for creating the coronavirus?
A: No. Lieber, a nanoscientist, was charged for lying about his participation in a Chinese recruitment program and his affiliation with a Chinese university. He is not accused of being a spy and has no connection to the new coronavirus.
FULL QUESTION
Did Charles Lieber and two Chinese students get arrested for creating the virus?
Did Dr. Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University’s Dept of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, get caught lying to the Dept of Defense about paying money to China surrounding the Coronavirus?
Is the story about federal agents arresting Dr. Charles Lieberman true? It also alleges the Coronavirus started at the location of a biological warfare development lab in China. Is that true?
FULL ANSWER
We’ve received more than a dozen inquiries asking about the veracity of social media posts and memes that tell the story of Charles Lieber, a prominent Harvard scientist who was charged by the Department of Justice on Jan. 28 for repeatedly making false statements about his ties to China.
The posts, some of which have been shared upwards of 6,500 times on Facebook and are accompanied by a photo of Lieber, make a series of statements that falsely suggest the Harvard scientist is linked to the COVID-19 outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.
Facebook post: In case you missed it, yesterday, Federal Agents arrested Dr. Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, with lying to the Department of Defense about secret monthly payments of $50,000.00 paid by China and receipt of millions more to help set up a chemical/biological “Research” laboratory in China. Also arrested were two Chinese “Students” working as research assistants, one of whom was actually a lieutenant in the Chinese Army, the other captured at Logan Airport as he tried to catch a flight to China – smuggling 21 vials of “Sensitive Biological Samples” according to the FBI.
Oh, almost forgot. The research lab the good professor had helped set up? It’s located at the Wuhan University of Technology. Wuhan China is ground zero to the potentially global pandemic known as the “Coronavirus”which is both spreading rapidly and killing people.
This is Stephen Coonts international spy novel stuff happening in real life – and it has barely made the news.
While each individual statement of the post is largely accurate, the main takeaway — that Lieber, possibly working with two students, had something to do with the new coronavirus — is false.
In fact, neither Lieber nor the two other individuals, each of whom were charged in separate cases in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China, have any known link to the new virus. And as we have written before, there is no evidence that the novel coronavirus was engineered in a lab.
