The Heritage Foundation has sued the CIA for records related to allegations that the agency's COVID Discovery Team received 'monetary incentives' (bribes) to change their position on the origins of the virus, and refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Daily Caller reports.

"This is an action under the Freedom of Information Act ('FOIA'), 5 U.S.C. § 552, to compel production of CIA records relating to allegations that members of the CIA's COVID Discovery Team, a group of employees tasked with analyzing the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, received monetary incentives to change their position on the origins of the virus," reads the lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit seeks to compel the CIA to produce all non-exempt records under Heritage's original FOIA requests, and to cover costs incurred by the foundation.

The Herigage Foundation Oversight Project is a government accountability watchdog created by the conservative think tank. In September, they began looking into the alleged bribes after a current CIA officer-turned whistleblower alerted Congress to what he said was "a significant monetary incentive to change their position" - telling House committee leaders that his agency ' tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans,' according to a the committees.

"According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China," reads a letter from the House panel chairmen.

"The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.