Two years after the COVID pandemic began, Dr. Anthony Fauci is still fighting to fund “Chinese colleagues” that may have been responsible for the origins of the novel coronavirus.
During Senate testimony Thursday, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases revealed that he would not stop funding biomedical research in China when asked by GOP Sen. Roger Marshall.
Referencing the “productive, peer-reviewed, highly regarded research projects” with Chinese virologists, Fauci said, “I don’t think I’d be able to tell you that we are going to stop funding [the] Chinese,” the Washington Examiner reported.
Marshall further questioned Fauci on whether the public has access to all records and studies from EcoHealth Alliance’s research in China.
The Biden administration’s chief medical adviser said that “we have access to an extraordinary amount of information that has gone there,” but he did admit that no one completely knows “everything that’s going on in China.”
Fauci also told the Senate committee last week that COVID most likely originated as a “natural occurrence,” continuing to dispel the notion that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“This is very, very likely a jumping species from an animal host, perhaps through an intermediate host, into a human species, which then spread throughout the human population, certainly, almost certainly, originating in China in Wuhan,” Fauci said.
If the midterm elections go well for them, Republicans are prepared to investigate why Fauci and other scientists backtracked on the origins of COVID-19, according to the Examiner.
In a video posted to his YouTube channel on Monday, Marshall talked with GOP Rep. Jim Jordan about “the Fauci COVID Cover Up.”
“I’m hoping the Senate is going to be in Republican hands. We’re hoping the House is going to be that way as well. And we’re already talking about a joint-type of investigation we can do because the country deserves the truth,” Jordan said.
Marshall and Jordan discussed scientists’ responses to the lab-leak theory, particularly the 11 virologists who had a conference call with Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins on Feb. 1, 2020.
Collins was the head of the National Institutes of Health before retiring in 2021.
If the GOP wins the Senate and House in November, Jordan said getting the 11 scientists, Fauci and Collins to give sworn testimony would be on the table.
“We want to find out what exactly Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins may have had to say on that particular phone call. So that’s how you start investigations,” Jordan said. “You don’t bring in Fauci for a deposition right away. You start by looking at these folks who were on the call, get all the documents you can in unredacted form – so that’s something that needs to happen.”
After reading the emails and correspondence before and after the call, Jordan believed that Fauci, Collins and the 11 scientists knew that the lab-leak theory was plausible.
“The key is, we know or we’re convinced that Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and others knew right from the get-go that this thing most likely came from the lab, and I think they took real concerted steps to make sure the country didn’t get that information,” Jordan said.
Most of the scientists agreed that COVID was a naturally-occurring virus after the conference call. Many signed a much-publicized letter to that effect. After that, the lab-leak hypothesis was deemed a conspiracy theory.
However, the notes Jordan and Marshall have reviewed from the participants in the phone call indicate some had initially expressed serious reservations as to whether the virus could have developed naturally.
As they pursue their investigation, the senators hope to be able to discover whether financial pressure might have been put upon the scientists — university professors whose work is dependent upon government research grants — to set aside their professional skepticism and get on board publicly with the theory of natural origin for the COVID-19 virus.
“Marshall wrote in February that the authors of those letters have collectively received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, arguing that ‘a failure to carry water for Collins and Fauci certainly could have resulted in new grants being reduced or even pulled back,’” the Examiner noted.
