Sen. Rand Paul has been right all along
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic transcripts with Dr. Anthony Fauci proved him right
Key takeaways from Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic transcripts of a two-day interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci have essentially vindicated Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) over masking, lockdowns, social distancing, and the origins of COVID-19.
“Dr. Fauci’s testimony today uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America’s public health systems. While leading the nation’s COVID-19 response and influencing public narratives, he simultaneously had no idea what was happening under his own jurisdiction at NIAID,” said Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio).
“Dr. Fauci signed off on all domestic and foreign research grants without reviewing the proposals and admitted that he was unaware if NIAID conducted oversight of the laboratories they fund,” Weinstrup said. “Clearly, the American people and the United States government are operating with completely different expectations about the responsibilities of our public health leaders and the accountability of our public health agencies.”
The Subcommittee interview with Fauci spanned 14 hours and in two press releases, the Subcommittee released the following details.
Dr. Fauci claimed he “did not recall” pertinent COVID-19 information or conversations more than 100 times.
Dr. Fauci profusely defended his previous Congressional testimony where he stated NIH does not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
He repeatedly played semantics with the definition of gain-of-function in an attempt to avoid conceding that NIH funded potentially dangerous research in China.
Dr. Fauci testified that he signed off on every foreign and domestic NIAID grant without reviewing the proposals.
A 2020 email, previously released by the Select Subcommittee, proved Dr. Fauci was aware of dangerous gain-of-function research occurring in Wuhan, China. Today, he backtracked by arguing he should not have stated that as “fact.”
Dr. Fauci was unable to confirm if NIAID has ANY mechanisms to conduct oversight of the foreign laboratories they fund.
Dr. Fauci claimed that the “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation promoted by federal health officials was likely not based on any data. He characterized the development of the guidance by stating “it sort of just appeared.”
Dr. Fauci acknowledged that the lab leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory. This comes nearly four years after prompting the publication of the now infamous “Proximal Origin” paper that attempted to vilify and disprove the lab leak hypothesis.
Dr. Fauci admitted that America’s vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future. Previously, Dr. Fauci advocated for “making it hard for people in their lives “so they drop their ideological bullshit and get vaccinated.”
When American universities approached Dr. Fauci, he advised them to impose vaccine mandates on their students.
Dr. Fauci denies allegations that he visited the CIA during the pandemic or influenced the CIA’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
Dr. Fauci played semantics with the definition of a “lab-leak” in an attempt to cover-up the inaccurate conclusions of “Proximal Origin.” It is impossible for Dr. Fauci to defend the conclusion of this publication while simultaneously acknowledging that a lab-leak is possible.
“After two days of testimony and 14 hours of questioning, many things became evident. During his interview today, Dr. Fauci claimed that the policies and mandates he promoted may unfortunately increase vaccine hesitancy for years to come. He testified that the lab leak hypothesis — which was often suppressed — was, in fact, not a conspiracy theory,” Weinstrup said after the release of the Day Two details. “Further, the social distancing recommendations forced on Americans ‘sort of just appeared’ and were likely not based on scientific data.”
“Dr. Fauci’s transcribed interview revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority,” said Weinstrup. “It is clear that dissenting opinions were often not considered or suppressed completely. Should a future pandemic arise, America’s response must be guided by scientific facts and conclusive data.”
Despite vast amounts of data and evidence that lockdowns resulted in dramatic learning loss for K-12 students, another Subcommittee member, Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) told the NY Post that Fauci “says he’s still not convinced that there was learning loss — that in his view, that’s still really open for discussion.”
More To The Story
Fauci’s interview with the Subcommittee lays bare that government lockdowns, mask mandates, and the like were more about controlling the populace than about “following the science.”
As one may recall, Fauci asserted in 2021 that any attack on the “science” was an attack on him.
“Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science. All of the things I have spoken about, consistently, from the very beginning, have been fundamentally based on science. Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people.” - Dr. Fauci, June 2021.
Given his Subcommittee testimony, the attacks - most of which were suppressed by media outlets, social media platforms, and an endless line of “fact checks,” - arguably were deserved.
"The one thing that’s consistent about Anthony Fauci is that what he says in private is largely true, what he says in public is largely a lie," said Paul last week on Fox News' Ingraham Angle.
"When asked by a fellow co-worker, Sylvia Burwell, he told her the truth. He said the masks don’t work because the pores are bigger than the virus… but then in public he wears three masks and in private he tells his colleagues you don’t need to wear one,” Paul said.
It’s the same with immunity, it’s the same with the vaccines, and it's really the same with gain of function," said Paul. “In basic terms, the point of gain-of-function research is to make a virus more dangerous and supporters argue that the research can prepare scientists to handle it if one day the virus were to mutate naturally.”
Paul added, “In private he said, yes, we’re suspicious that the virus was manipulated, looks manipulated and we know they’re doing gain of function in Wuhan. He describes it, that’s in a private email. In public, to this day, he still denies that they funded any gain of function research in Wuhan. It’s all an entire lie."
Let’s look at some of the other notable Fauci claims.
Given his shifting testimony and the Subcommittee interview, Fauci has repeatedly misled about the origin of COVID, namely denying that it came from the Wuhan Lab.
Fauci's own February 2020 emails show he acknowledged the lab leak theory and directed NIH director Francis Collins and others to downplay the idea. The Twitter Files showed that downplaying the lab leak theory turned into outright suppression of speech by the Biden administration.
“sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted. The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.”
Multiple government agencies and officials have shifted their thinking and now support the idea COVID came from the Wuhan lab.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last year.
During a May 2021 Senate hearing, Dr. Fauci testified under oath, “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’
During a hearing in July of that same year, Paul asked Fauci if he wanted to retract his previous testimony stating NIH did not fund gain-of-function research, to which Fauci replied, "Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement.
Remember, Fauci made that claim despite knowing his agency did fund the research in Wuhan and that in early February 2020, he had privately edited a paper called "Proximal Origins," which argued that COVID-19 was “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” Fauci would publicly defend that paper’s assertion for the next three years.
By June 2023, fairly clear evidence surfaced indicating "Patient Zero" for COVID-19 was three WIV scientists working on gain-of-function research; at least one of whom was ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019.
A month later, in July 2023, Paul submitted a criminal referral for Fauci to the Department of Justice. In August, Paul made some remarks on the referral:
“I don’t think there’s ever been a clearer case of perjury in the history of government testimony, and I don’t say that lightly. He said adamantly that the government never funded this gain-of-function research. We now have the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, has admitted that the funding came from the NIH. We have the acting director [Lawrence] Tabak, of the NIH, admitting it in writing that it came from the NIH. But now we have, really, the smoking gun, and that is Fauci in private saying the opposite of what he was saying in public when he was publicly telling me that absolutely, we do not fund gain-of-function research in China.
He says privately we are suspicious that the virus has been manipulated and we are suspicious because we know they are doing gain-of-function research,” the senator said. “He then goes on to describe the research, and it’s exactly the research that the NIH funded. So he’s caught dead to rights here, but we have an incredibly partisan Attorney General [Merrick] Garland, who is refusing to act, so I’ve taken the extraordinary step of actually going to the local U.S. attorney in D.C. to see if he will act.”
A letter uncovered by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that was revealed in Sept. 2023 showed Fauci had a secret meeting with the CIA about the origins of COVID.
“The information provided suggests that Dr. Fauci was escorted into Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarters—without a record of entry—and participated in the analysis to ‘influence’ the Agency’s review,” the subcommittee's letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services reads.
In Oct. 2023, in a letter to Rep. James Comer, Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director for NIH, directly contradicted Fauci's May 2021 testimony.
Not only did Tabak contradict Fauci, but in his letter he pointedly blamed EcoHealth Alliance's Peter Daszak for obfuscating its work results from NIH and not adhering to the grant agreement for the project titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
According to the Government Accountability Office, a minimum of $2 million in U.S. taxpayer funds went to the Wuhan lab between 2014 and 2021 through three channels: the National Institute of Health, the University of California, and EcoHealth Alliance.
Fauci also consistently told everyone to "mask up" during COVID but had told a colleague in February 2020 that they didn't need to wear a mask because masks were "too porous" to stop a virus like COVID.
Fauci's mask doctrine would evolve over the past few years from everyone should wear one all the time, to wearing multiple masks at one time and then to the idea it only protects the individual wearing the mask, and last September back to everyone should wear a mask - with all evidence to the contrary be damned.
For most of Fauci's mask edicts, children suffered the most as they were forced to wear one longer than any portion of the population; for over 8 hours a day each day on school buses and in classrooms across the country.
Fauci has flip-flopped often on various pandemic policies since 2020, including his role in lockdowns and shutting down the country.
In an Aug. 2022 interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News, when asked about it, Fauci denied he shut anything down.
“Do you regret the shutdown, the sweeping shutdown that some said made things worse?" Cavuto asked.
I think we need to make sure that your listeners understand, I didn’t shut down anything,” responded Fauci. “There was a lot of consideration among the White House task force that we were reaching a point where the hospitals such as in New York City and other places were being strained to the point of practically being overwhelmed.”
Fauci went on to say he didn't think lockdowns or school closures "irreparably damaged anyone," and suggested people "selectively edit" things he says.
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