Rand Paul Directly Accuses Fauci Of 'Funding The Wuhan Bat Coronavirus Work' Through NIAID

[0:00] come to order. One million Americans died from COVID-19. Some estimate as many as 15 million [0:30] people died worldwide from COVID-19. Publicly, Anthony Fauci promoted the theory that the virus [0:36] arose naturally, while privately he was well aware of a mountain of evidence suggesting the [0:42] virus originated in the lab. The American people deserve answers. The American people deserve to [0:47] know why dangerous research was funded by NIAID in a totalitarian country in a lab that lacked [0:54] acceptable safety standards. The decision to fund dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China [1:01] will likely go down in history as perhaps one of the worst public health decisions. Frankly, the [1:07] American people deserve an apology. I hope today Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to [1:14] fund dangerous research in China, admit that the risk of this dangerous research exceeded [1:19] any possible benefits, ask forgiveness, and pledge to help our government devise safeguards [1:26] so a man-made epidemic never happens again. Instead of an apology, you have for years avoided [1:32] responsibility. Regarding the lockdowns, you argue that you did not personally issue every [1:38] lockdown order, close every school, or impose every mandate. But officials across the country [1:44] invoked your authority to justify these decisions. And you presented your recommendations not as [1:50] judgments open to debate, but as dictates of science itself. Your own words demonstrate that [1:56] you understood the influence you exercised. On March 14, 2020, you wrote that the task force [2:03] recommendations were driven by me, yourself, Deb, and CDC. The next day you wrote that you had convinced [2:11] Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the New York City schools, so you were involved. That same night, [2:18] Governor Gavin Newsom's chief of staff told you that the governor had decided to close California [2:22] schools, bars, and restaurants after watching you on television. Presidents, governors, mayors, [2:29] school boards, corporations, and Congress all bear responsibility for the decisions they made. [2:34] The COVID lockdown, however, could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime. [2:40] Children lost years of education. Small businesses built over a lifetime disappeared. Patients delayed [2:48] cancer screenings and other medical care. Families were separated from dying relatives. Workers were [2:54] ordered to accept a medical procedure or lose their jobs. Worship assembly, employment, education, [3:00] and travel were restricted in the name of science. While you did not impose every restriction, [3:05] you used your public authority to justify them. While you concluded publicly that COVID occurred [3:12] naturally, your private record tells a different story. In early 2020, your hand-picked virologist [3:18] warned that the virus appeared to have been manipulated in the lab. In a conference call concerning the [3:24] origin of the virus, all but two of the participants believed deliberate insertion was possible. Your concern [3:30] was not merely theoretical. That same week, you led an urgent effort to determine whether your own agency [3:36] had funded the research related to these experiments that were now under suspicion. Hours later, your [3:43] assistant reported that the Wuhan experiments had indeed been reviewed and approved by the NIH. Those were not [3:50] the actions of officials who believed that a research-related origin was an absurd conspiracy theory. [3:56] They were the actions of officials urgently trying to determine whether their agency funding was [4:02] connected to the research under discussion, connected to the pandemic. You could not hide that your agency [4:09] had funded the Wuhan research or your long history of defending gain-of-function research. The only alternative [4:17] left was to argue that COVID-19 did not originate in the Wuhan lab. You were not a detached observer. You had an [4:26] institutional interest in the public believing that federally funded research had nothing to do with [4:31] the pandemic. It was a conflict of interest from the very beginning. The authors of the proximal origin [4:37] of SARS-CoV-2 privately had serious doubts about a natural origin. Within days, though, they flipped and [4:45] they all wrote in proximal origin that the virus was almost certainly not a laboratory construct. That paper was [4:52] then used by the government and the media and you to discredit Americans who were asking the same [4:59] questions that you and the authors were asking yourselves privately. You even cited [5:05] proximal origin from the White House podium. You held it out as evidence that the virus could not have been [5:10] engineered, but you didn't disclose your role in the discussions that preceded the writing of the paper. You did not disclose the [5:17] author's original concerns. You did not reveal that you had been part of the paper, that you had read and [5:26] offered editorial comments on the paper before it was published, before you began using it as evidence [5:32] that it couldn't have originated in the lab. You did not disclose that you had immediately investigated [5:36] yourself whether NIAID funding might be connected to the research. You did not tell the American people the full story. [5:43] Duly released private messages indicate that the doubts with the authors and others didn't disappear [5:50] after the publication. So while this was being waived at the White House to show that it couldn't come [5:56] from the lab, the authors were still privately continuing to assign a meaningful probability to a [6:03] laboratory origin. One thing in public and another in private. Some of the same scientists discussed avoiding [6:11] email and carefully managing communications that might eventually be obtained under the Freedom of [6:16] Information Act. The pattern is straightforward. Privately there was alarm, then an immediate inquiry to see [6:24] if NIAID's possible exposure to funding, then a rapid public declaration of certainty, continued private doubt, [6:32] and then years of resistance to disclosure. The question is why? The only logical answer is that your [6:39] primary concern was avoiding culpability. Your primary concern was hiding the fact that you had approved [6:46] the funding for this dangerous research. Your support of gain-of-function research is extensive [6:52] and long-standing. In 2011, your agency funded Ron Fuchier's laboratory when it mutated the avian flu [6:59] until it could spread through the air between mammals. This was the the tipping point. This is when others [7:06] became worried. You funded this. You advocated for this. The federal government's own biosecurity board, [7:13] though, recommended withholding the details of these experiments because of the danger the research posed. [7:20] People were concerned that publishing it was publishing a road map to creating bioweapons around [7:26] the world. But you sided with the gain-of-function scientist Fuchier and argued that the benefits of [7:32] publishing the research far outweighed the risks. You defended this avian flu transmissibility experiments [7:40] as critical research. You wrote that even if a scientist became infected and triggered a pandemic, [7:47] the benefits of the gain-of-function experiments outweighed the risk. In 2014, your agency, NIAID, [7:55] began funding the Wuhan bat coronavirus work. In 2015, Ralph Barrick and the Chinese scientist, [8:03] Shi Zengli published NIAID-supported research combining a bat coronavirus spike protein with [8:10] a SARS backbone. The resulting virus could infect human airway cells. It's a novel virus that now [8:17] can infect human cells. It gained transmissibility. It gained function. In 2018, the same group of [8:26] scientists, EcoHealth, Barrick, Shi and their collaborators submitted the Diffuse proposal, [8:33] Diffuse proposal, which involved the insertion of a furin cleavage site into the coronavirus. [8:39] DARPA rejected it as too dangerous. When COVID was sequenced, though, early on in January of 2020, [8:45] within days, scientists discovered that, lo and behold, it had a novel furin cleavage site, [8:52] just as had been proposed in the Diffuse project. This was either an extraordinary coincidence [8:59] or a smoking gun, evidence that the Chinese had created COVID-19. It made the laboratory origin [9:06] question more legitimate, and it made your categorical public denials indefensible. On May 11, 2021, [9:14] you told the Senate, the NIH has never, ever, and does not now, fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, [9:21] in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. When I gave you the opportunity to correct the record, [9:26] to reconsider the statement, you responded that you had never before lied to Congress. [9:32] We were then told that only the government's narrowest regulation of definition counted here, [9:37] that you could define gain-of-function in one way in which this wasn't gain-of-function, [9:42] in which all of the common sense of the world would be thrown out, all of the idea that the mice were [9:47] dying and the virus was more transmissible didn't matter because you had a technical definition [9:52] that allowed you to fund it. But the real question is, was it dangerous? Was it a wise decision [9:57] to fund this? And you haven't deviated from that. You've never admitted that it could have been a [10:03] mistake funding this research in China. The American people weren't asking for a semantics debate over [10:09] what is gain-of-function. They were asking, does common sense say this research was dangerous in Wuhan? [10:16] They wanted to know whether their money-funded experiments in Wuhan that made bat coronaviruses better [10:21] able to infect humans. The answer is yes. They wanted to know whether NIAID adequately supervised [10:28] their work. The answer is no. When you defended this research, you described its benefits in the [10:34] broadest terms. But when Congress demanded accountability, you hid behind the narrowest possible [10:39] definition. You can't have it both ways. Your conduct concerning federal records raises further [10:46] questions. It is a crime to destroy federal records. Yet our investigation reveals your assistant [10:52] diligently reported that she deleted tons of emails. In 2024, you testified that you did not [11:00] delete federal records. Who's telling the truth? You or your assistant? The committee has obtained [11:06] repeated instructions from you telling federal officials to delete communications. On February 2, [11:12] 2020, one day after Origins call, you told Francis Collins, please delete this email after you read it. [11:20] The committee asked for your voluntary cooperation to come today. Your appearance had to be compelled [11:25] by subpoena. You're here today under duress. You're here today because of the court ordering it. President [11:32] Biden issued you a sweeping pardon extending back to 2014, the same pardon he gave to his son Hunter. A pardon [11:40] may protect a person from criminal prosecution doesn't rewrite history. It does not erase documents. It does not [11:48] convert a misleading statement into a truthful one, and it does not prevent Congress from establishing [11:53] what happened. There will be another pandemic. There will be another crisis. And there will again [12:00] be officials who insist that uncertainty must be hidden for the public's own good. They will demand [12:05] obedience. They will invoke science. I am the science as though it were a commandment. They will argue [12:12] that government officials cannot be questioned because questioning them would undermine public trust. [12:17] They have it backwards. It is secrecy that destroys trust. It is arrogance that destroys trust. It is [12:25] censorship that destroys trust. And it is the refusal to admit error that destroys trust. That loss of trust [12:32] may be your most damaging legacy. Trust can't be ordered. It has to be earned. No scientist is above [12:39] scrutiny. No government official is beyond accountability. And no public servant has the right to treat the suffering [12:47] of millions of Americans as a footnote to his preferred version of history. I now recognize Senator Peters for [12:57] his opening remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.