Originally published July 18, 2023 2:00 pm PDT
Republican Senator Rand Paul is calling for an investigation into whether Dr. Anthony Fauci committed perjury during his 2021 Senate testimony.
Allegations are surfacing that Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), falsely claimed his organization never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Previously, Dr. Fauci, in his July 2021 testimony, stated that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
However, documents recently brought to light suggest a different narrative.
These newly-released emails dated February 1, 2020, display Dr. Fauci’s knowledge of gain-of-function experiments at Wuhan University, an institution implicated as the starting point of the COVID pandemic.
One of the disclosed emails from Dr. Fauci details concerns among scientists that COVID might have been genetically engineered.
The concerns intensified knowing that gain-of-function research, a method of increasing a virus’s infectivity or lethality, was in progress in Wuhan prior to the pandemic.
Senator Paul, in his written appeal to Attorney General Merrick Garland, pointed out that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed last month that the WIV and Wuhan University did receive NIH funding.
Paul cites an example of a paper published by WIV scientists detailing the creation of a “chimeric” coronavirus, or a man-altered virus, which is the definition of gain-of-function.
The paper also acknowledged NIH as a funding source.
Dr. Shi Zhengli, a top virologist at the WIV known as the “bat lady,” conducted extensive research on bat coronaviruses.
Despite denials from her and Beijing about the possibility that COVID originated from lab experiments, Paul argues that the paper’s content “explicitly matches the definition of gain-of-function research.”
Yet, Fauci disputed this, insisting that the paper was reviewed by qualified staff and determined as not being gain-of-function.
It is noteworthy that Dr. Fauci acknowledged the work conducted by scientists at Wuhan University as “gain-of-function experiments” in the recently disclosed emails.
Fauci, in his tenure as NIH head, managed the distribution of grants for virus-enhancing research at WIV before the pandemic’s advent.
A federal watchdog found that the NIH inadequately supervised these experiments or assessed their pandemic risk potential.
However, there’s a persistent division among officials due to the lack of direct evidence supporting either a natural or synthetic origin of the virus.
Some government entities, including the Energy Department and FBI, as well as multiple government committees, consider a lab leak as the probable cause.
They cite coincidental elements and indirect evidence, such as several security and infection control breaches at the WIV prior to the pandemic.
Conversely, other intelligence agencies believe that the virus transferred from animals to humans naturally, pointing to an early case cluster at a local animal market located near the WIV.
Perjury, if proven, could lead to a maximum of five years imprisonment.
The alleged discrepancy between Fauci’s Senate testimony and his email correspondences might hold the key to this case.
