Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has delivered on his statement last week that he will ask the Department of Justice (DoJ) for a criminal investigation of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical advisor to the president, for allegedly lying to Congress.
The Republican senator sent the criminal referral of Fauci Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, The Washington Examiner said in a report.
“I write to urge the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into testimony made to the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on May 11, 2021,” Paul said in the referral, according to the news outlet.
Paul also maintained in the referral that grants from the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance, which were eventually sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab for the purposes of conducting research on bat coronaviruses, “fits the definition of gain-of-function research” — although Fauci has earlier insisted they didn’t fund gain-of-function research at the said Chinese lab.
According to the Washington Examiner report, the Kentucky Republican senator also referred to comments by molecular biologist Dr. Richard Ebright, who said in May, that the research funded by the NIH “matches, indeed, epitomizes the definition of ‘gain-of-function research of concern’ for which federal funding was ‘paused’ in 2014-2017” in his referral to the Justice department.
