Rand Paul condemns Bill Gates’ ties to funding gain-of-function research

OAN’s Brooke Mallory
3:18 PM – Sunday, June 18, 2023

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul demanded responsibility from both the United States and China’s roles in unleashing havoc on the planet by allegedly nurturing an environment for the COVID-19 virus to hop species and spread globally.

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During an exclusive interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, Paul advocated for a reduction in gain-of-function research and reiterated his assertions that the COVID-19 virus originated in a Wuhan, China facility via research financed by U.S. officials.

“The blame equally should go not only to Chinese authorities, but to Anthony Fauci and all those who advocated for this,” he said. “Look, Bill Gates has been over there recently. Bill Gates is the largest funder of trying to find these viruses in remote caves and bring them to big cities. What happened in China is they went 8 to 10 hours south of Wuhan, 2 to 300 feet deep into a cave, found viruses and took them back to a city of 15 million.”

On Sunday, the Kentucky senator, who has openly criticized former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, widened his attack to Bill Gates, stating that while he may possibly be “well-intended,” he also may be sponsoring “the greatest danger to mankind.”

“[Many scientists think] we don’t need to be searching for viruses that may never interact with man, and it’s worse than that,” Paul said. “They bring viruses that we may never interact with. They bring them back to the lab, but then they manipulate them by combining them with other viruses to create viruses that don’t exist in nature.”

“This has largely been funded by Bill Gates, who funds the W.H.O. more than most countries do. So there’s a responsibility there,” he added.

Returning to his criticism of Fauci, he claimed that he played a role in a “elaborate cover-up” involving gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is said to be financed by the National Institutes of Health.

“He knew from the very beginning not only was he funding the Wuhan research, but he was going around the regulatory apparatus to let it happen, even though the rules said it shouldn’t have happened without more scrutiny,” he said. “This is a man, Anthony Fauci, who said in 2012 that this kind of research to create new viruses was so important that even if a pandemic should take place, that it’d be worth the knowledge. I think there’s several million people, particularly a million Americans, who would question whether that was good judgment or not.”

To put a stop to gain-of-function research, Paul called on a “international consortium of countries” to agree to limit the practice, warning that if they do not, the next pandemic might be far worse.

“There are people estimating that the next time this happens, the next time we have a leak from a lab, that between five and 50% of the population could die from another manmade virus. So this is very, very serious,” he maintained. “This is up there with nuclear arms control. This is up there with the danger of nuclear war. But this is much more insidious. It’s harder to trace. But still, millions of people can die from a manmade virus.”