The Government Accountability Office revealed that U.S. taxpayer money was paid to Chinese entities for coronavirus research prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The watchdog found that taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Agency for International Development were used to fund labs, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Fox News obtained the first report that listed Wuhan University as well as the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

Mike Turner, Ohio Republican Rep. and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Brad Wenstrup, led the charge to demand that the GAO examine the funds between January 2014 and December 2021.

A joint statement was released by the two on Wednesday, highlighting the findings of the report. The motivation for the release was the growing acceptance among the U.S. Intelligence Community that COVID-19 had been leaked from a Chinese laboratory.

Turner and Wenstrup, who spoke to Fox, said: “This revelation is extremely concerning because of the increased attention on the ‘lab leaked’ theory which suggests that virus may have been a result of the Wuhan lab rather than by natural means.”

They added, “We have long argued the American people deserve to know the truth about the origin of COVID-19 and we continue to take concrete steps to declassify information related to the pandemic.”

The NIH reportedly provided $200,000 to Wuhan University between March 2018 and February 2020. In addition, the university received “first-tier awards” along with two other entities.

The GAO reported that the Wuhan Institute, when adding up subawards received between June 2014 and may 2020, had received more than $1.4 million from U.S. tax payer funds.

NIH appears to have also aided EcoHealth Alliance. This alliance then provided $598.611 to Wuhan Institute between June 2014 and May 2019. The money was used to assess the transmission of bat-coronaviruses from bats to humans.

Wuhan Institute also received a portion of USAID’s grant to the University of California Davis — about $815,000. This was between October 2014 and September 2019. Wuhan University also received thousands in 2016.

In an April Fox statement, a spokesperson for the NIH defended funding by the agency. The spokesperson argued that the research was “needed to understand the behavior and spread of coronaviruses in bats.”