NEWS: Rand Paul Calls Out Dr. Fauci At COVID-19 Whistleblower Hearing

[0:00] The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the most consequential events of our lifetime. [0:05] And to this day, the American people have never received a full accounting [0:08] of where it came from, what our government knew, and why they had to fight their own government [0:13] to find out. Today, the committee will hear from an intelligence community whistleblower about [0:18] these questions. The witness will testify that the CIA scientific analysts repeatedly concluded [0:25] that a laboratory leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19, and that those conclusions were buried, [0:31] softened, or withheld from Congress while the public was told to trust a different story. [0:37] For years, Americans were told to trust the experts, trust the agencies, trust the intelligence [0:43] community, and trust the officials who assured us that they were following the science. But the [0:49] evidence before the committee tells a very different story. Today, we will expose a system in which a [0:55] small circle of officials, scientists, grantees, and intelligence advisors move from agencies to [1:02] agency, meeting to meeting, briefing to briefing, reviewing one another's work and shaping one [1:09] another's conclusions and presenting those conclusions to Congress and the public as if they [1:14] were independent conclusions. Only it was not independent, it was a circle. One part of that circle [1:21] is a body most Americans have never heard of, the Biological Sciences Expert Group, known as BSEG, [1:28] or the B Group. BSEG operates under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. [1:34] Its stated purpose is to give the intelligence community access to outside scientific experts [1:40] on biological threats. Sounds reasonable, but not if those experts are not independent. For example, [1:48] Dr. Ralph Baric collaborated with Dr. Zhengli, Shi, and Wu Han to create gain-of-function coronaviruses. [1:55] But Dr. Baric was also part of BSEG and an active consultant to intelligence agencies on the origins of [2:02] COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, Peter Daszak received hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. [2:09] government and worked with Dr. Shi also on these gain-of-function experiments. Daszak was even sent to [2:16] China with the WHO to investigate the origins of COVID. So the very scientists that were commissioned [2:23] to investigate COVID were, in some cases, the very scientists who were complicit in the origins of the [2:30] gain-of-function experiments that may well have created COVID. In essence, the intelligence community [2:37] pays researchers to review work and write papers. NIH funds their grants. The CIA then consults them and [2:44] gives them access to classified information. The national academies publish their work. Policymakers [2:51] then cite the result as a consensus. But it's a circle. At the center of the government side of this [2:57] circle was Dr. Anthony Fauci. For years, Dr. Fauci was not merely a public health official speaking from [3:04] the NIH. He had a long-standing relationship with the national security and intelligence apparatus on [3:10] biological threats, dangerous pathogens, classified life sciences researches, pandemic preparedness, [3:17] and COVID origins. Again and again, documents show him being brought into national security discussions [3:24] far beyond ordinary public health messaging. During COVID, intelligence officials arranged for Dr. [3:31] Fauci to review highly classified intelligence assessments that could not even be sent outside the [3:36] White House complex. But how can Anthony Fauci objectively comment on a discussion of COVID origins when he [3:44] approved the very funding that may have caused the pandemic virus? From the outset of the pandemic, Dr. [3:52] Fauci shaped the conclusions. Dozens of times, he referred to the idea that the pandemic originating in the [4:00] lab was a conspiracy, that it was a conspiracy theory. Dr. Fauci convened the now infamous February [4:07] first 2020 call. Some scientists on that call privately raised serious concerns about a laboratory [4:14] origin. Yet ironically, those same scientists later co-authored the proximal origin paper, which publicly [4:21] dismissed the lab leak hypothesis. One author received a $9 million grant from Dr. Fauci's own agency [4:29] after he changed his opinion from lab leak on the private phone call to natural origin in public. At the [4:36] same time, Dr. Fauci coordinated with the national academies on coronavirus origins and public-facing [4:42] messaging. These were not independent experts reaching a consensus. They were part of the same machine [4:50] designed to reach the same conclusion. The question is not whether the government may consult experts. The [4:57] question is whether those experts were independent, whether conflicts were disclosed, whether dissenting views [5:04] were preserved, whether the lab leak possibility was fairly evaluated, and whether Congress and the [5:11] American people received the truth or a curated result. When Congress asked these questions, government [5:18] officials lied to our face. They classified the documents. They suppressed the information. They changed [5:24] the definitions. They invoked sources and methods. They told Congress only what they wanted Congress to know. [5:31] In 2023, John Radcliffe, the former director of national intelligence, testified before Congress with a [5:38] stark warning. He said a lab leak was the only explanation credibly supported by intelligence, science, [5:45] and common sense. He warned that partisan politics and analyst disagreement with Trump administration [5:52] policy, Trump derangement syndrome, had created illegitimate roadblocks to the truth. I agree. He said that [6:00] the COVID-19 Origin Act, which Congress passed unanimously, should finally make intelligence on [6:06] COVID's origins public. I couldn't agree more. Despite a unanimously passed law, though, requiring the [6:14] declassification of all information related to COVID origins, the deep state still resists this [6:20] congressional mandate. Our witness today will explain what happened inside the CIA. According to his [6:27] testimonies, CIA scientific analysts concluded multiple times between 2021 and 2023 that a lab leak was the [6:36] most likely origin of COVID-19. Yet those conclusions never shaped the official narrative, never made the [6:43] intelligence report. Congress was never told. It was not until after the 2024 election that the outgoing Biden [6:50] administration directed the CIA to issue an assessment, not because of new intelligence, but so officials [6:58] could walk out of the door claiming there was nothing left to find. That is not analysis. That is a cleanup [7:04] operation. This hearing is about more than one witness, one assessment, or one agency. It's about a federal [7:13] apparatus that told the American people to trust the science while hiding the machinery that shaped the science. [7:19] It's about an intelligence community that relied on outside experts whose conflicts were never disclosed. [7:27] It's about public health officials with access to intelligence that Congress has struggled to obtain. [7:34] It's about researchers and advisors cycling through grants, contracts, classified briefings, federal service [7:40] and advisory committees, and presenting the results as independent, even though they weren't. The cover-up is not [7:47] just about protecting one research grant. It's about protecting an entire network of labs, grants, [7:53] intermediaries, and bureaucratic architecture, quietly engineered to outlast any moratorium, any [8:00] congressional inquiry, and any election. After millions died, children lost years of learning, small [8:08] businesses were destroyed, civil liberties were restricted, and dissenting Americans were censored and [8:14] smeared. The government owes its people the evidence. Our witness is testifying publicly today at great [8:21] personal risk. He and other brave whistleblowers have come forward because the truth was being buried, [8:27] because government secrecy cannot become government impunity. I want to acknowledge the Trump [8:33] administration officials who made good on their commitment to transparency and cooperated with this [8:39] investigation, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Director of NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, [8:46] Director of the National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and former Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. [8:53] They set a standard. I expect the rest of the administration to meet it. We owe the American people [8:59] a complete record. We owe every family harmed by this pandemic a government that does not hide behind secrecy, [9:07] conflicts, and curated science when the stakes are life and death in public starting today.