Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lead adviser for the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, threw cold water on GOP accusations that he masterminded the cover-up of the virus’s origins.
Fauci on Monday called the claims “absolutely false and downright ridiculous” during a heated appearance before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, saying Republicans have rejected emails between himself and other scientists about the possibility that the virus emerged from a laboratory had been leaked, had been misrepresented.
“It is inconceivable that anyone reading this email could conclude that I was trying to cover up the possibility of a laboratory leak,” said Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly four decades before taking office. retired in 2022. , testified.
“We spend our lives identifying the causes of infectious diseases and stopping them to protect the American people,” he continued.
The panel’s Republicans have not presented any evidence that Fauci orchestrated a cover-up of lab leaks, but they continue to emphasize that the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance has received funding from Fauci’s office to conduct virus research in Wuhan, China — where COVID -19 was identified for the first time. They also came into contact with a senior official who worked under Fauci, who deleted messages and may have circumvented federal record-keeping laws while emailing EcoHealth Alliance officials.
“The office you led and those who served under your leadership chose to flout the law and bragged about it,” panel chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) told Fauci on Monday. “Why did you allow your office to be unaccountable to the American people?”
Fauci responded that he knew nothing of these violations and warned the official about his actions. Democrats, led by the panel’s top member, Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-California), endorsed him.
“After fifteen months, the Select Subcommittee does not have a shred of evidence to substantiate these extreme allegations that Republicans have leveled against Dr. for nearly four years. Fauci have expressed,” Ruiz said.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), another Republican member of the panel, went much further last year when the panel first launched.
“Covid-19 was not created by bats in a wet market,” she proclaimed on social media. “It was manufactured in a laboratory funded by Fauci. He tried to hide it.”
The laboratory leak theory also remains unproven. Most scientists favor the theory that the virus comes from animal-to-human transmission.
“When I read the papers written by an international group of highly respected evolutionary virologists,” Fauci testified Monday, “I have a much stronger impression that this is a natural event.”
