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Where Things Stand: Stark Contrasts At DOJ 
By now you’ve read the New York Times bombshell report: the Trump administration Justice Department seized records from Apple for metadata from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), in 2017 and 2018.
From TPM Reader AJ …
While in general I agree with your take on the Lab Leak hypothesis, I would point out that the evidence is not as balanced as you suggest.
There are strong empirical suggestions that this is a natural event – specifically to do with genetic structure and the distribution of initial cases.
From TPM Reader MT …
I have been following your conversations on the lab leak theory for Covid, and how the perception has changed in the near absence of the facts changing. I am a biomedical scientist (soon to be retired!) and my reaction to the lab leak possibility when I first heard about it early during the pandemic was to dismiss it out of hand. But I quickly changed my mind when I realized what the Wuhan labs had been doing with bat viruses and that the Chinese government was, at best, not being forthcoming with information.
From TPM Reader DA …
I think your analysis is penetrating and dead-on in your argument about the self-criticism by “liberals” concerning the Wuhan Lab leak issue. I believe we have seen this same error crop up in another context concerning Covid.
From TPM Reader HC …
I’ve been reading your posts on the lab leak, and while I agree with your assessment that the “media failure” has been overblown, I think you overstate a few things yourself and perhaps aren’t comparing the lab leak and natural spillover theories on an equal basis. Couple points:
1. You say several times that there is “no evidence” for the leak theory. That’s true, at least in public. But the Chinese government has sealed all the records of the lab in question! So there’s kind of a situation where we know that any evidence that would be there isn’t available to us. It also raises suspicion, rightly or wrongly.
Lab Leaks, Contrarians and the Semiotics of Lying Your Ass Off
Probably unwisely, I have waded back into the ‘media got it wrong about a lab leak’ debate with my friends Matt Yglesias and and Jon Chait. They’re not the worst on this. But as is often the case in life you’re most ticked by people you think should know better but apparently don’t. As I’ve noted, it’s a complicated question because the informed consensus has shifted a bit. Just not that much. The best informed discussion of the state of play is here.
To the extent there’s a problem with the media coverage on this topic from last year it’s that some commentators went from saying this was a claim with zero evidence, that actual experts didn’t agree with it, that it was very unlikely to calling it a ‘conspiracy theory’ which had been ‘debunked’. These aren’t the same things. But they aren’t terribly far apart either. That is especially so when the people making the claims have a history of being chronic liars.
Still, they’re not precisely the same.
There’s a great trend piece to be written on how most of the big wig journalism organizations got bamboozled into thinking it’s more or less certain that COVID originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. Here’s yet another example from The Washington Post, emphasizing how it’s essentially a media story about how journalists too quickly dismissed the wild claims of Donald Trump and Tom Cotton which included no evidence and transparently political motivation.
Where Things Stand: Biden Greeted By Significantly Friendlier Faces Overseas
We didn’t need a poll to tell us that the globe at large is likely relieved that Donald Trump is no longer the U.S. president.
But a new Pew Research survey reveals that the U.S.’s image overseas has improved substantially and at record speed since President Biden took office.
I wanted to make sure you saw this piece yesterday on the Park Police Inspector General’s report about the clearing of Lafayette Square on that critical day last year in Washington DC. The big takeaway from most accounts – and what folks on the right have gone to town about – is that the decision to clear the park doesn’t seem to have been immediately tied to President Trump’s bible press op a short time later. It’s one of those stories where a closer look shows more chaos than intentionality.