Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., made waves this week as he urged President Biden to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci for lying about gain-of-function research or “just for lack of judgment if nothing else.”
Paul told “Axios on HBO,” on Sunday that Fauci “probably never going to admit that he lied. He’s gonna continue to dissemble, and try to work around the truth, and massage the truth.”
In July, the Kentucky senator had a heated exchange with Dr. Anthony Fauci over whether Fauci’s agency funded gain-of-function research at the now infamous Wuhan Virology Lab.
Gain-of-function refers to a procedure by which strains of virus present in animals are manipulated to transmit to humans as well.
Paul asked Dr. Fauci under oath if he had lied to Congress about his involvement in that forbidden area of research. Fauci responded that Sen. Paul “didn’t know what he was talking about.”
However, a new letter published by a member of the National Institute of Health shows Fauci has some explaining to do.
Last week, biologist Richard H. Ebright posted a letter from the NIH “showing an NIH grand did fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, contrary to what Dr. Anthony Fauci testified to the Senate,” according to Breitbart.
The NIH’s letter to the House Oversight Committee detailed an NIH grant that was awarded to EcoHealth Alliance and then “sub-awarded to the Wuhan lab, funded a research project during 2018 and 2019 that tested if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.”
During the now-infamous congressional hearing exchange, Paul asked Fauci, “knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11 where you claim that the NIH never funded gain of function research in Wuhan?”
Responding to the senator, Fauci said “I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you are referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function.”
Dr. Fauci fired back at Sen. Paul over the weekend on ABC’s “This Week” stating “I obviously totally disagree with Senator Paul.”
“He’s absolutely incorrect. Neither I nor Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, lied or misled about what we’ve done,” said the doctor.
Paul is now calling for an ethics investigation to be held to determine whether Dr. Fauci is culpable in the funding of the Wuhan lab.
