Twitter CEO Elon Musk has suggested that he is planning to release a batch of “Twitter Files” focusing on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a leading expert on infectious diseases in the U.S.
In a tweet on Sunday, Musk said: “Hope you’re having a great day 1 2023! One thing’s for sure, it won’t be boring.”
When asked by a user about the “Fauci Files,” Musk replied: “Later this week.”
Musk has previously criticized Fauci, who led the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic under both the Trump and Biden administrations.
Last month, he suggested that Fauci should be prosecuted for allegedly lying under oath about the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab in China.
Gain-of-function research involves taking a virus that could infect humans and making it more transmissible.
In September, The Intercept published documents showing that the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had funneled funds to the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that invested in experiments with bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 originated.
When pressed on the issue by Republican lawmakers in May 2021, Fauci said that the NIAID and the NIH “categorically” reject funding gain-of-function research. In response to Musk’s accusations, the White House described his comments as “disgusting” and “divorced from reality,” and said that Fauci’s “work on infectious disease, from HIV/AIDS to COVID, has saved countless lives.”
Musk released several packages of “Twitter Files” after he completed a $44 billion deal to buy the social media company in October.
The documents provided an insider’s view into censorship efforts at the platform and detailed Twitter’s alleged attempts to suppress information damaging to Biden’s election campaign and its apparent collusion with the FBI to remove content deemed undesirable by the US government.
It is not clear what the “Fauci Files” will contain or how they will be released.
