OAN’s Brooke Mallory
12:53 PM – Thursday, August 10, 2023
Senator Rand Paul is urging Dr. Anthony Fauci to be investigated for allegedly lying to Congress about his knowledge of U.S.-funded coronavirus research in Wuhan, China, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Monday, Paul (R-Ky.) asked U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves to explore options for prosecuting Fauci for making false claims regarding government funds for gain-of-function research in Wuhan laboratories during a Senate hearing in May 2021.
Last month, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic published fresh emails in which the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) acknowledged the risky research taking place.
“Dr. Fauci testified that ‘the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,’” Paul told Graves in a letter.
“In a subsequent hearing, I warned Dr. Fauci of the criminal implications of lying to Congress and offered him an opportunity to recant his previous statements,” the libertarian-leaning conservative senator said.
“In response, Dr. Fauci stated that he had ‘never lied before the Congress’ and ‘did not retract that statement.’ Dr. Fauci’s testimony is inconsistent with facts that have since come to light,” he continued.
The letter, originally obtained by DailyMail.com, comes only weeks after Paul referred Fauci to the DOJ for lying under oath on the subject.
Officials of the government who are found guilty of lying before Congress risk up to five years in jail as well as additional criminal fines.
According to an aide in Paul’s office, Attorney General Merrick Garland has not responded to the lawmaker’s request.
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci voiced worry over how “scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection,” according to an email sent on February 1st, 2020.
On a conference call, he also expressed concerns to experts affiliated with the National Institutes of Health due to findings that showed “mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.”
Among the scientists involved in the conference call were the authors of a contentious publication spurred by Fauci to dispute the so-called “lab leak theory” of COVID-19 origins, as well as then-NIH Director Francis Collins.
More than 8,000 pages of private correspondence from Fauci and other government scientists were obtained by the House COVID-19 panel, revealing a stunning attempt to conceal proof that COVID-19 was engineered in a lab.
“Tony doesn’t want his fingerprints on origin stories,” an NIH official said in a July 29th, 2021, email released by the subcommittee.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the NIH and the U.S. Agency for International Development provided $2,168,345 in grant money to Chinese research organizations such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and Wuhan University between 2014 and 2021.
In his letter, Paul also mentioned an NIAID grant for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which led to a document titled “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.”
“Before Congress, Dr. Fauci denied funding gain-of-function research, to the press he claims to have a dispassionate view on the lab leak hypothesis, and in private he acknowledges gain-of-function research at WIV to his colleagues,” wrote Paul.
“A congressional hearing, however, is not the place for a public servant to play political games, especially when the health and well-being of American citizens is on the line,” he continued.
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