"In implementing this legislation, my administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security*," Biden said in a statement.
* There's the out
The bill sailed through the Senate and House of Representatives without opposition before being sent to the White House.
The law Biden signed set a 90 day deadline to release the relevant documents which means they should have been released by Sunday June 18. Given that Sunday wasn’t a work day for most government employees you would think the documents would have been released last week. In fact, Sen. Josh Hawley and Mike Braun sent a letter to Biden last Thursday asking him to comply with the deadline. The letter read in part:
As you know, the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 requires the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to "declassify any and all information" relating to links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of COVID-19 within 90 days of the law’s enactment. That deadline, June 18, 2023, is fast approaching. Your Administration has not yet provided any indication of when the relevant material will be declassified.
For reasons that aren’t clear, the Biden administration seems to have decided to give itself some extra time and plans to finally release the documents this week instead. In anticipation of that release the NY Times has a story up suggesting that there’s a reason the CIA and other intel agencies are sitting on the fence about the origin question.