(Republican Leader) – Just last week, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding an investigation be launched into whether or not Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director for the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the head of the White House response to the coronavirus pandemic, committed perjury by lying during testimony provided before a Senate committee in 2021.
According to a piece published by the Daily Mail, in July of that same year, Fauci found himself in a back-and-forth battle with Republicans, particularly Sen. Paul, as he testified that the former department he worked for “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Well, as it turned out, that was not 100 percent accurate.
“Dr Fauci was the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until the end of 2022 and was responsible for signing off on research grants. Yet newly released emails dated February 1, 2020 show Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan,'” the Daily Mail said.
Perjury is a very serious crime. Those who are found guilty can face up to five years in prison. While the emails in question do show that Fauci was well aware of the gain-of-function trials happening at the lab, he never admits in them that they were NIH funded. However, the ironically named Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruled last month that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, along with Wuhan University, did indeed receive NIH funding, Kentucky Republican Sen. Paul disclosed in his letter to the attorney general last week.
🚨BREAKING🚨
New emails reveal that Dr. Fauci was aware of risky gain-of-function research occurring in Wuhan, China prior to the emergence of COVID-19.
Why didn’t he tell the American people?@COVIDSelect is demanding answers👇 pic.twitter.com/pvxtaCRB5s
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) July 13, 2023
“On July 13, 2023 the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released the emails sent by Dr Fauci about a conference call regarding the origins of Covid attended by Dr Fauci, Dr Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and other researchers. In one email, Dr Fauci admits the scientists had concerns that Covid might have been genetically engineered and that these were worsened by the fact that gain-of-function research was taking place in Wuhan before the pandemic,” the Daily Mail continued.
For those unfamiliar with gain-of-function research, it occurs when a group of scientists genetically alter a virus in order to make it either more deadly, stronger, or in many cases both, in an attempt to get ahead of natural mutations that could potentially occur down the road. It’s extremely dangerous and human beings should not be messing around with it.
During a hearing held in July, Fauci “stated that the NIH has never and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Paul remarked.
“And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute by Doctor Shi [Zhengli] and was funded by the NIH,” he continued. The senator then cited a paper written by WIV scientists that was called, “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.”
In the paper, its authors discuss ongoing efforts to help make a “chimeric” coronavirus, which means that the illness had been altered by man in a “gain-of-function” project. It also goes on to provide details about how it was funded, in part, by the NIH to conduct that research.
Sen. Paul made the case that the research written about in the paper “explicitly matches the definition of gain-of-function research.”
“This paper was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function,” Fauci declared in response. However, the newly released emails show Fauci making references to this same research by scientists at Wuhan University, calling it “gain-of-function experiments.”
“Dr Shi Zhengli, also known as ‘bat lady’, a leading virologist based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, spent years researching bat coronaviruses with the aim of identifying those with the potential to infect people. Both she and Beijing itself have vehemently and publicly denied the possibility that Covid could have emerged from experiments carried out at the lab. Dr Zhengli graduated from Wuhan University in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in genetics and received her master’s degree from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 1990,” the Daily Mail divulged.
“The report noted that NIH funded the WIV’s project ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence’ and included ‘genetic experiments to combine naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in hybridized coronavirus strains,'” the letter to Garland detailed. “GAO also found that NIH funded the Wuhan University’s collaboration with WIV on viral detection in the Yunnan province.”
As head of the NIH, Fauci was the individual responsible for allocating taxpayer dollars for the various grants and projects that were conducted at WIV.
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