Kentucky’s Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul is going on the attack over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic with an expose on what he said are the U.S. government agencies that conspired with labs in Wuhan, China, to engineer a “highly transmissible” form of the virus.
Sen. Paul took to his X account on Tuesday to bring attention to his charges, taking particular aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the now-former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“Newly obtained documents confirm yet again Fauci lied about COVID,” Paul wrote on X.
“Fauci’s NIH lab was a partner with Wuhan on a proposal to engineer a highly transmissible coronavirus in 2018. But he wasn’t alone, 15 government agencies knew about it and said nothing.”
“Americans deserve answers,” he concluded.
Newly obtained documents confirm yet again Fauci lied about COVID. Fauci’s NIH lab was a partner with Wuhan on a proposal to engineer a highly transmissible coronavirus in 2018. But he wasn’t alone, 15 government agencies knew about it and said nothing. Americans deserve answers.…
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 9, 2024
Paul, who tangled repeatedly with Fauci while Fauci was the public face of the government’s response to COVID, also published a commentary piece Tuesday on Fox News laying out more specifics.
The bare-knuckle headline showed it wasn’t going to pull punches: “The Great COVID Cover-up: Shocking truth about Wuhan and 15 federal agencies.”
Do you think COVID was created in a lab?
In the piece, Paul wrote that “my investigation has recently discovered government officials from 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus like COVID-19.” He wrote that it was called the DEFUSE project.
“Disturbingly, not one of these 15 agencies spoke up to warn us that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been pitching this research,” Paul wrote. “Not one of these agencies warned anyone that this Chinese lab had already put together plans to create such a virus.”
Even worse, Paul wrote that officials at the agencies are stonewalling and that the “15 agencies with knowledge of this project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research.”
“For years, I have been fighting to obtain records from dozens of federal agencies relating to the origins of COVID-19 and the DEFUSE project. Under duress, the administration finally released documents that show that the DEFUSE project was pitched to at least 15 agencies in January 2018,” Paul wrote.
He further stated that not one of these agencies warned the American public of the work being done at the Chinese lab in Wuhan and went on to say that none of the federal agencies warned that the research into a man-made virus could result in a virus that was able to “transmit freely among humans.”
Worse, he wrote, Fauci was in on it all from the very beginning.
“Not surprising to some of us, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was not only briefed on Wuhan’s desire to create this virus, NIAID was actually listed as a participant in the initial DEFUSE pitch. Fauci’s Rocky Mountain Lab was named as a partner alongside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the proposal,” Paul wrote.
Paul also wrote that, “Millions of people died from COVID-19. We now know that over 15 government agencies, as well as the investigators Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric, Ian Lipkin and scientists at NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Lab, all knew of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s desire to create a coronavirus with a furin cleavage site, a virus pre-adapted for human transmission.”
Paul noted that it seems likely that literally hundreds of people in the U.S. government have known all these facts for years, yet, “every one of these people chose to keep quiet, to obscure, and ultimately to conceal information that might have saved lives by letting the world know this was no sleepy animal virus with poor transmission.”
To Paul it is clear that “all evidence suggests COVID-19 was a laboratory-enhanced virus purposefully adapted for human transmission.”
“Shame on all those who covered up the DEFUSE project!” he wrote. “Of course, they all should be punished but likely won’t.”
