Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Hearing on Anthony Fauci Testimony - 7/29/26

[4:53] The committee will now come to order. One million Americans died from COVID-19. Some estimate as [5:23] many as 15 million people died worldwide from COVID-19. Publicly, Anthony Fauci promoted the [5:30] theory that the virus arose naturally, while privately he was well aware of a mountain of [5:35] evidence suggesting the virus originated in the lab. The American people deserve answers. The [5:40] American people deserve to know why dangerous research was funded by NIAID in a totalitarian [5:46] country in a lab that lacked acceptable safety standards. The decision to fund dangerous gain [5:53] of function research in Wuhan, China will likely go down in history as perhaps one of the worst [5:58] public health decisions. Frankly, the American people deserve an apology. I hope today Dr. Fauci [6:06] will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China, admit that the risk [6:12] of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits. Ask forgiveness and pledge to help our [6:18] government devise safeguards so a man-made epidemic never happens again. Instead of an apology, you [6:25] have for years avoided responsibility. Regarding the lockdowns, you argue that you did not personally [6:31] issue every lockdown order, close every school, or impose every mandate. But officials across the [6:37] country invoked your authority to justify these decisions. And you presented your recommendations [6:43] not as judgments open to debate, but as dictates of science itself. Your own words demonstrate that [6:50] you understood the influence you exercised. On March 14, 2020, you wrote that the task force [6:58] recommendations were driven by me, yourself, Deb, and CDC. The next day you wrote that you had convinced [7:05] Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the New York City schools. So you were involved. That same night, [7:12] Governor Gavin Newsom's chief of staff told you that the governor had decided to close California [7:17] schools, bars, and restaurants after watching you on television. Presidents, governors, mayors, [7:23] school boards, corporations, and Congress all bear responsibility for the decisions they made. [7:29] The COVID lockdown, however, could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime. [7:35] Children lost years of education. Small businesses built over a lifetime disappeared. Patients delayed [7:42] cancer screenings and other medical care. Families were separated from dying relatives. Workers were [7:48] ordered to accept a medical procedure or lose their jobs. Worship assembly, employment, education, [7:54] and travel were restricted in the name of science. While you did not impose every restriction, [7:59] you used your public authority to justify them. While you concluded publicly that COVID occurred [8:06] naturally, your private record tells a different story. In early 2020, your hand-picked virologist [8:13] warned that the virus appeared to have been manipulated in the lab. In a conference call concerning the [8:18] origin of the virus, all but two of the participants believed deliberate insertion was possible. Your concern [8:25] was not merely theoretical. That same week, you led an urgent effort to determine whether your own agency [8:31] had funded the research related to these experiments that were now under suspicion. Hours later, your [8:37] assistant reported that the Wuhan experiments had indeed been reviewed and approved by the NIH. Those were [8:44] not the actions of officials who believed that a research-related origin was an absurd conspiracy theory. [8:50] They were the actions of officials urgently trying to determine whether their agency funding was [8:57] connected to the research under discussion, connected to the pandemic. You could not hide that your agency [9:04] had funded the Wuhan research or your long history of defending gain-of-function research. The only alternative [9:11] left was to argue that COVID-19 did not originate in the Wuhan lab. You were not a detached observer. You had an [9:20] institutional interest in the public believing that federally funded research had nothing to do with [9:25] the pandemic. It was a conflict of interest from the very beginning. The authors of the proximal origin [9:31] of SARS-CoV-2 privately had serious doubts about a natural origin. Within days, though, they flipped and they [9:40] all wrote in proximal origin that the virus was almost certainly not a laboratory construct. That paper was then [9:47] used used by the government and the media and you to discredit Americans who were asking the same [9:53] questions that you and the authors were asking yourselves privately. You even cited proximal origin from the [10:00] White House podium. You held it out as evidence that the virus could not have been engineered, but you didn't [10:06] disclose your role in the discussions that preceded the writing of the paper. You did not disclose the author's original [10:12] concerns. You did not concern, you did not reveal that you had been part of the paper, that you had read and [10:20] offered editorial comments on the paper before it was published, before you began using it as evidence [10:26] that it couldn't have originated in the lab. You did not disclose that you had immediately investigated [10:31] yourself whether NIAID funding might be connected to the research. You did not tell the American people [10:37] the full story. Duly released private messages indicate that the doubts with the authors and others [10:44] didn't disappear after the publication. So while this was being waived at the White House to show that it [10:50] couldn't come from the lab, the authors were still privately continuing to assign a meaningful probability [10:57] to a laboratory origin. One thing in public and another in private. Some of the same scientists discussed [11:05] avoiding email and carefully managing communications that might eventually be obtained under the Freedom [11:10] of Information Act. The pattern is straightforward. Privately there was alarm, then an immediate inquiry [11:18] to see if NIAID's possible exposure to funding, then a rapid public declaration of certainty, continued private [11:26] doubt, and then years of resistance to disclosure. The question is why? The only logical answer is that [11:33] your primary concern was avoiding culpability. Your primary concern was hiding the fact that you had [11:39] approved the funding for this dangerous research. Your support of gain-of-function research is extensive [11:46] and long-standing. In 2011, your agency funded Ron Fuchier's laboratory when it mutated the avian flu [11:54] until it could spread through the air between mammals. This was the the tipping point. This is when others [12:01] became worried. You funded this. You advocated for this. The federal government's own biosecurity board, [12:07] though, recommended withholding the details of these experiments because of the danger the research posed. [12:14] People were concerned that publishing it was publishing a road map to creating bioweapons around [12:20] the world. But you sided with the gain-of-function scientist Fuchier and argued that the benefits of publishing the [12:27] research far outweighed the risks. You defended this avian flu transmissibility experiments as critical [12:35] research. You wrote that even if a scientist became infected and triggered a pandemic, the benefits of [12:42] the gain-of-function experiments outweighed the risk. In 2014, your agency, NIAID, began funding the Wuhan bat [12:51] coronavirus work. In 2015, Ralph Baric and the Chinese scientist Xi Zhengli published NIAID-supported research [13:01] combining a bat coronavirus spike protein with a SARS backbone. The resulting virus could infect human [13:09] airway cells. It's a novel virus that now can infect human cells. It gained transmissibility. It gained [13:17] a different function. In 2018, the same group of scientists, EcoHealth, Baric, Xi, and their collaborators [13:25] submitted the diffuse proposal, diffuse proposal, which involved the insertion of a furin cleavage [13:32] site into the coronavirus. DARPA rejected it as too dangerous. When COVID was sequenced, though, early on [13:38] in January of 2020, within days, scientists discovered that, lo and behold, it had a novel furin cleavage site, [13:47] just as had been proposed in the diffuse project. This was either an extraordinary coincidence [13:53] or a smoking gun, evidence that the Chinese had created COVID-19. It made the laboratory origin [14:01] question more legitimate, and it made your categorical public denials indefensible. On May 11, 2021, [14:08] you told the Senate, the NIH has never, ever, and does not now, fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, [14:16] in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. When I gave you the opportunity to correct the record, [14:20] to reconsider the statement, you responded that you had never before lied to Congress. [14:25] We were then told that only the government's narrowest regulation of definition counted here, [14:31] that you could define gain-of-function in one way in which this wasn't gain-of-function, [14:36] in which all of the common sense of the world would be thrown out, all of the idea that the mice were dying, [14:41] and the virus was more transmissible. It didn't matter because you had a technical definition [14:46] that allowed you to fund it. But the real question is, was it dangerous? Was it a wise decision to fund [14:52] this? And you haven't deviated from that. You've never admitted that it could have been a mistake, [14:57] funding this research in China. The American people weren't asking for a semantics debate over [15:03] what is gain-of-function. They were asking, does common sense say this research was dangerous in [15:09] Wuhan? They wanted to know whether their money-funded experiments in Wuhan that made bat coronaviruses [15:15] better able to infect humans? The answer is yes. They wanted to know whether NIAID adequately supervised [15:23] their work. The answer is no. When you defended this research, you described its benefits in the [15:28] broadest terms. But when Congress demanded accountability, you hid behind the narrowest [15:33] possible definition. You can't have it both ways. Your conduct concerning federal records raises [15:40] further questions. It is a crime to destroy federal records. Yet our investigation reveals your [15:46] assistant diligently reported that she deleted tons of emails. In 2024, you testified that you did not [15:54] delete federal records. Who's telling the truth? You or your assistant? The committee has obtained [16:00] repeated instructions from you telling federal officials to delete communications. On February 2, [16:06] 2020, one day after Origins' call, you told Francis Collins, please delete this email after you read it. [16:14] The committee asked for your voluntary cooperation to come today. Your appearance had to be compelled by [16:20] subpoena. You're here today under duress. You were here today because of the court ordering it. President [16:26] Biden issued you a sweeping pardon extending back to 2014, the same pardon he gave to his son Hunter. [16:34] A pardon may protect a person from criminal prosecution doesn't rewrite history. It does not erase documents. [16:42] It does not convert a misleading statement into a truthful one. And it does not prevent Congress from [16:47] establishing what happened. There will be another pandemic. There will be another crisis. And there [16:53] will again be officials who insist that uncertainty must be hidden for the public's own good. They will [16:59] demand obedience. They will invoke science. I am the science as though it were a commandment. They will argue [17:06] that government officials cannot be questioned because questioning them would undermine public trust. [17:11] They have it backwards. It is secrecy that destroys trust. It is arrogance that destroys trust. [17:18] It is censorship that destroys trust. And it is the refusal to admit error that destroys trust. [17:25] That loss of trust may be your most damaging legacy. Trust can't be ordered. It has to be earned. [17:32] No scientist is above scrutiny. No government official is beyond accountability. And no public servant has [17:40] the right to treat the suffering of millions of Americans as a footnote to his preferred version of history. [17:46] I now recognize, uh, Senator Peters for his opening remarks. [17:52] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The, uh, Senate, uh, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee [17:58] has a, a long and a very proud history of conducting serious oversight on behalf of the American people. [18:07] When this committee, uh, has been at its best, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to investigate complicated issues, [18:16] to follow the facts wherever they may lead and produce recommendations that actually strengthen our nation's [18:23] security and improve government functions. That bipartisan tradition has produced meaningful work [18:31] following Hurricane Katrina, the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol failures at the Secret Service [18:39] and countless other matters. Unfortunately, today's hearing is the latest step in the chairman's sharp [18:47] departure from that long tradition. This hearing appears to be a culmination of months of biased and [18:54] selected efforts by the majority under the guise of a committee investigation to basically legitimize a [19:02] predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago. In 2021, the chairman has called for today's witness [19:10] to be fired, to be arrested, accused him of leading cover-ups and conspiracies. He has even featured the [19:18] witness prominently in fundraising emails and on the cover of his book. He has also called for the [19:26] cancellation of the witness's security detail, despite the fact the witness and his family have received [19:33] numerous credible death threats. When I served as chairman, Senator Paul and I launched a bipartisan [19:41] biosecurity investigation that included oversight of risky research and the origins of COVID-19, because we [19:49] agreed that the committee's work would be stronger if we did it in a bipartisan manner and just followed [19:55] the facts. That was and continues to be an area of legitimate and certainly needed oversight. As chairman, [20:03] Senator Paul has taken the opposite approach. He has abandoned long-standing practice by blocking minority [20:11] participation in committee oversight actions and has chosen to selectively release committee records [20:18] that the minority has never had any access to in order to support his pre-drawn conclusions. [20:26] The chairman has repeatedly excluded committee's minority and withheld documents and evidence from [20:32] members that are entitled to receive them, disregarding long-standing Senate rules and committee [20:39] precedent that have preserved the credibility of our oversight in this committee for decades. I have [20:46] raised these concerns directly with the chairman because it's not just what we investigate that matters, [20:53] but how we conduct that investigation. That also matters. One-sided investigations designed to validate [21:01] predetermined conclusions do not serve the American people who sent us to actually undercover the truth and [21:08] solve problems. I wrote to the chairman requesting that he adhere to committee rules. But instead of [21:15] addressing concerns that I raised, he removed part of the committee's website from the public view. [21:21] This move not only prevented the public from being able to view those list of concerns, [21:26] it adds serious questions about the desire for transparency and legitimate oversight of this matter. [21:33] But what makes today's hearing particularly disappointing is not simply the chairman's actions, [21:40] but what we could be using this committee's true and time oversight responsibilities to accomplish. [21:49] This committee has not held its annual threats hearing at all in this Congress. [21:54] We have not held a budget hearing for the Department of Homeland Security. There are important hearings that [21:59] we would have the opportunity to discuss as to how to strengthen our homeland security across the board. [22:05] No hearings on those topics. Instead of focusing on the national security challenges that we are facing [22:11] in our country right now, today's hearing looks backwards. Revisiting questions this committee has [22:19] already examined, including through bipartisan work that Senator Paul and I conducted together when I served as [22:26] chairman of this committee. But rather than building on that work to strengthen our preparedness against [22:32] future disasters, we are instead relitigating the past. COVID-19 exposed serious deficiencies in our [22:41] nation's public health infrastructure. We know that. More than one million Americans lost their lives, [22:47] and this committee should absolutely continue to examine how we can better prepare our nation against future [22:53] biological threats. Those are the kinds of forward looking life saving questions that will help our nation be [23:00] better prepared to protect the health and the safety of Americans when the next emergency occurs. [23:08] Unfortunately, at this precise moment, we should be strengthening our capabilities. The Trump administration [23:15] seems to be doing everything in their power to actually weaken our capabilities. The administration has hollowed out the [23:22] the public health workforce. They have fired, pushed out and cut funding for public health personnel, [23:29] shrinking the CDC workforce by a quarter. Thousands of experienced scientists have left government service [23:36] and with them has gone critical institutional knowledge that cannot be easily replaced, certainly not quickly replaced. [23:44] The administration, thanks to political operatives like Russell Vogt, has slashed or illegally withheld funding for [23:51] life saving medicines and cutting edge technologies that let us rapidly develop them during an emergency. [23:57] Mr. Vogt is now further politicizing the federal grant making process, proposing to subject all federal grants, [24:04] including those for disaster relief, housing development and cancer research to the whims of political appointees, [24:12] not nonpartisan experts. All of this has left the American people more vulnerable to infectious disease threats, [24:20] and we are already tragically seeing the consequences. Staffing and funding cuts have slowed the federal, [24:28] state and local response to ongoing outbreak of a foodborne parasite which has sickened thousands [24:34] in my home state of Michigan as well as across the country. At the same time, the administration cuts to [24:40] global health programs and international partnerships have greatly reduced our ability to contain dangerous [24:46] diseases like Ebola before they spread to our shores. We should be examining whether our federal health [24:53] agencies have the personnel and the resources they need to effectively prevent, detect and respond to these [25:02] threats. We should be asking how to strengthen our biodefense efforts to deter our adversaries and prevent [25:09] biological attacks against our country and how our government can better coordinate and communicate during [25:15] public health emergencies. These are the kinds of forward looking matters that are worthy are worthy of this [25:23] committee's time. Instead, we are here continuing the chairman's year long focus on one individual. [25:32] History tells us. Unfortunately, another pandemic is all but inevitable. The question is whether Congress [25:41] and this committee will work to better prepare our country for it or continue looking backward. [25:49] Why our public health infrastructure crumbles around us. That is the hearing that we should be having [25:57] today. Unfortunately, I fear the intent of this hearing is only meant to further a purely partisan agenda [26:04] and will not. It will not make Americans safer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [26:12] The accusation that the committee has denied access to the minority to records is categorically false. [26:18] This is the most transparent investigation in the history of Congress. We actually created a website [26:24] and we put all of the information on the website. It continues to operate. The reason it hasn't been [26:29] accessed is no Democrat ever signed up for it. Not one Democrat. We told them the access. They never asked [26:36] for the access code. They haven't been on the website because they have not cared about the investigation. [26:41] It's a practice of this committee to swear in the witness. Dr. Fauci, please stand and raise your right hand. [26:49] Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, [26:53] and nothing but the truth? So help you God. Dr. Anthony Fauci, you are recognized for five [27:01] minutes for your opening statement. [27:08] Member Peters, members of the committee, I served at the NIH for over 54 years, 38 of those as director of [27:17] the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Over that period, I proved that I believe in [27:25] and respect the value of legitimate Congressional oversight. In fact, I testified before and or briefed [27:34] Senate and House committees well over 200 times over those 38 years. During and after the COVID pandemic, [27:49] I have appeared multiple times for hearings in the Senate and the House, usually under oath, [27:56] and sat for several days-long transcribed sworn interviews, answering questions about the very issues [28:07] that are now the subject of this hearing. However, given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, [28:20] his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary [28:32] aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is [28:43] calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated [28:53] public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote. Any reasonable person who has [29:03] followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. Therefore, although it pains me to do so, [29:15] because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record [29:25] of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth [29:33] Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions. Thank you. [29:39] We will now begin a round of questioning. Dr. Fausti, your testimony today is compelled by a lawful [29:49] subpoena. As you know, it's a crime under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 to knowingly make a material false [29:56] statement to Congress, with a penalty up to five years of imprisonment. Understanding that you are under [30:03] oath, the American people would like to understand your reasoning, your rationale for why you chose to [30:14] fund the research in Wuhan. There have been, you know, intelligence agencies, the CIA, the FBI, the DOE, [30:24] have all come to the conclusion that, more likely than not, the virus came from the lab in Wuhan. And so, [30:30] we'd like to know what was the rationale? What was the discussion? How, you know, what went behind the [30:35] decision to fund the research in Wuhan? How did you come to the conclusion that a totalitarian [30:42] country would be capable of doing this in a BSL-2 lab, a lab that lacked the security? What was the [30:48] reasoning? And are you are you sorry, basically, for making the decision? Would you, you know, like given [30:53] another chance, say, well, gosh, circumstances now, as I know it, maybe it wasn't a wise thing? Can you [30:59] explain to the committee why you chose to fund this dangerous research in China? On the advice of [31:06] counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the [31:12] Constitution. In the red folder on your table is a copy of Section 192 of Title II of the U.S. Code. [31:22] Your counsel has been provided a copy as well. That section makes it a crime for a witness appearing [31:28] under subpoena to refuse to answer any questions pertinent to the question under inquiry. Do you [31:34] have that in front of you? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my [31:42] rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. Let the record record that the witness has refused [31:48] to answer whether there's a folder in front of him based on his Fifth Amendment right. It is true that [31:55] you're appearing under direction of our subpoena to provide testimony on matters under consideration by [32:01] the committee, including the origins of COVID-19, risky life sciences research, and your tenure as a [32:07] federal government employee. Additionally, you've been provided a full and unconditional pardon, [32:14] dated January 19, 2025, for any offenses against the United States which may have been committed or [32:21] taken part from January 1, 2014 through the date of the pardon for a 10-year period, arising from or in [32:31] any manner related to your service as Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious [32:36] Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, [32:42] or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President. Have you refused this pardon, or do you have any reason to [32:49] believe this full and unconditional pardon, this grant of immunity, would somehow require you to plead the Fifth Amendment? [32:59] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights, under the Fifth [33:04] Amendment of the Constitution. Based on the facts presented, I'm going to direct you to answer the [33:10] questions. The committee has issued a valid subpoena. They have requested your presence here. The questions [33:17] are very pertinent to your decision-making as head of NIAID, as well as as a Chief Advisor to the President. [33:25] Do you still refuse to answer the questions? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, [33:33] based upon my rights, under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. [33:39] Dr. Fauci, were you ever made aware of gain-of-function research on monkeypox being conducted at the National [33:53] Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center and back at Fort Dedrick? On the advice of counsel, [34:02] I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights, under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. [34:09] Dr. Fauci, did the CIA ever transfer funds to NIH under an interagency agreement? On the advice of [34:20] counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights, under the Fifth Amendment of the [34:26] Constitution. Dr. Fauci, did the NIH ever conduct research for or in coordination with any element of [34:39] the intelligence community, CIA, ODNI? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, [34:49] based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [34:54] The reason why these questions are important is, you know, President Trump has done a ban, [34:59] and we're glad that he did a ban on gain-of-function research. So we're better off than we were [35:04] when we had an advocate serving as head of NIAID, an advocate for gain-of-function research. [35:10] There is still, though, a question, though, whether or not the intelligence community [35:14] is adhering to that order. There's a question of whether or not gain-of-function research is still [35:19] ongoing. And these are important questions the American people deserve to know. Dr. Fauci, have you [35:26] been read into any classified Department of Homeland Security program, any prospective special access [35:31] program concerning gain-of-function research? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, [35:39] based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. [35:47] When we look at the research in China, the gain-of-function research that you've denied was gain-of-function, [35:54] one of the things that startled the scientists when they saw COVID in the first couple of weeks was [35:59] when they looked at the sequence of it, they said, oh, my God, there's a furin cleavage site in it. [36:04] And in this particular family of coronaviruses, the sarvicoviruses, they'd never seen this before. [36:10] They were also startled to look at it and see how it was coded for, what the codons were, [36:16] and to discover that the codons used, out of 36 different possibilities, turned out to be the [36:21] one that was commonly used in gene manipulation by scientists. Dr. Fauci, were the scientists at the [36:29] Wuhan Institute of Virology capable of inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus? [36:34] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights, [36:41] under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. [36:45] So one of the experiments that was pretty common was they would take the backbone [36:50] of a SARS virus. And this would be a SARS virus that the backbone itself wasn't that dangerous. [36:56] But then they would dig through guano, 300 feet underground, bat guano. They'd find other viruses, [37:03] unknown viruses. They'd take the S protein off of an unknown virus and stick it on a backbone. [37:08] And then they would infect mice that have humanized cells. And they were trying to discover if they [37:14] could create a virus that infects humans. Now, many people would say, well, gosh, [37:18] that doesn't sound like a really good idea to create viruses that don't exist in nature to see [37:24] if they'll infect human cells. What if one escaped? What if you keep infecting this and do serial passage? [37:30] You actually adapt the virus to be infectious to humans. So the question is, is whether or not, [37:38] Dr. Fauci, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was combining an S protein with one virus, [37:42] with the backbone of others. And could this lead to a virus? Maybe it wasn't even predicted, [37:48] but could it lead to viruses that gained in function and then could lead to a pandemic? [37:53] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights, [38:01] under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. One of the arguments that you and others have made [38:08] against this virus coming from the lab is it couldn't have come from the viruses that have [38:13] been published. And nobody's really arguing that. I think from the very beginning, people acknowledged [38:19] that the viruses that have been published are too far evolutionarily distant from a virus that could [38:25] have become COVID-19. But what has never been acknowledged by the side who tries to call [38:32] the other side a conspiracy theory, which is really something you don't usually see in a scientific [38:36] debate. This is the first time I've ever seen an article printed in Lancet by your friends who called [38:42] this a conspiracy theory. You know, these are the kind of things you see as a screed on a political [38:47] you know, website. You don't really see this in science. But when they they released this as being a [38:52] conspiracy theory, you know, we're wondering that when you do this, when you combine these viruses [39:00] and are able to grow them in humanized cells, whether or not this kind of risky research, whether [39:09] or not whether you call it gain of function or not, whether you use the definition of gain of function, [39:13] whether this kind of research should have had more scrutiny. I think in your house testimony you [39:17] testified that you never traveled to China and that you were unaware that anybody at NIH ever [39:23] examined the labs, that you trusted the Chinese scientists. I think you've said that even [39:27] recently, that with your discretion, you trusted the Chinese scientists. The problem is, is that [39:34] even in our country, we trust our scientists. They're good American scientists, probably doing the right [39:40] thing for America. But at the same time, we oversight to make sure it's not dangerous research, but we also [39:44] investigate the lab. I believe Fort Detrick was one of our main labs was closed down in the last year or two [39:50] because of, you know, a research institute, a research incident that was dangerous with dangerous [39:57] pathogens. And so the American people would want to know how could you approve this dangerous research [40:04] in China, say that you trusted the Chinese scientists, and then in the end you had to admit that you'd never [40:11] been there. None of your inspectors had ever been there. Dr. Fauci, had any of the labs where this dangerous [40:16] research was occurring, were any American lab oversight or lab investigators, did they ever [40:24] appear in these labs to make sure that they were safe labs? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully [40:31] declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. So one of the main [40:38] theories for those who have looked at, you know, this being created in the lab was the idea that it could [40:44] have come from a virus not previously published. Dr. Fauci, are you aware that Dr. Xi, who worked for the Wuhan [40:50] Institute of Virology, was said to, and I think in her own words, to have over a hundred viruses [40:57] that had not been previously published that could have been a close enough relative to create COVID-19? [41:02] Are you aware of that? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights [41:11] under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Under your testimony previously, when you denied ever [41:18] having funded gain of function in China, it was it was so adamant as to to be striking to leave no room [41:25] for any interpretation of what is or isn't gain of function research. But there's another important [41:30] question. Did you fund gain of function research in other bio labs around the world? On the advice of [41:39] counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [41:46] The one research project that we do know you did fund is the one that Ron Fuchier did. It's important [41:53] to talk about because this sort of was the beginning of the debate over gain of function. This wasn't just [41:58] me. I wasn't even aware of the debate 10 years ago. This was other scientists, over 200 scientists at the [42:03] Cambridge Working Group signed a protest because they didn't think you should fund the research and they [42:08] didn't think it should even be published because it was sort of a road map as to how to make a bioweapon. [42:13] So what they did was the avian flu. And this is important. It may be the most important question [42:18] we get to here today. The avian flu has about 50 percent mortality for humans. The good news, [42:24] though, about animal viruses is they don't affect humans very well. It will infect humans, [42:28] but doesn't go human to human very well. Ron Fuchier, with the money that you provided to him, [42:35] did an experiment where he caused purposeful mutations to create a new virus, an avian flu that [42:41] didn't just infect birds well, but actually infected mammals well, went ferret to ferret in an aerosolized [42:47] manner. People saw this and were aghast, you know, at the decision making process that you decided to fund [42:54] this. But this is when, you know, the debate came about and you wrote in support of this in the [42:59] Washington Post. And you said, even if a scientist is bitten, even if a pandemic should occur, [43:05] the knowledge is worth the risks. Do you still stand by that? Would you like to qualify at all [43:11] whether or not the knowledge of gain of function is worth the risks, particularly in this case, [43:16] since we now know 15 million people died worldwide? Many people believe this came from the lab. Do you [43:22] think that the risks really are worth the benefits for gain of function research? [43:26] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights, [43:33] under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [43:35] All right. We're going to finish with this question. And it's based really on that statement, [43:44] that general statement in your support for gain of function, the idea that the benefits outweigh the [43:49] risks. So there are many other people who disagree, and they aren't politicians or not. I don't know what [43:54] party they're in. David Relman is probably one of the most esteemed. And he is a scientist at Stanford. [44:02] He, I think, has classified clearance. He's been a consultant to our government probably for a decade or [44:08] more. And he's written about this publicly. He says the opposite. He said that the risks of this research [44:15] do not outweigh the benefits. He said there is. We shouldn't do it. Richard Ebright, who's been involved [44:22] in this debate for two decades, says the same thing. Does he really, we really shouldn't be doing this [44:27] at all? There's a quote also by the Kevin Esfeldt quote. Is that at the very end? Kevin Esfeldt, [44:48] who's a CRISPR scientist at MIT, also wrote about this gain of function. I implore every scientist, [44:57] funder, and nation working in the field, please stop. No more trying to discover or make pandemic [45:04] capable viruses. No more experiments likely to disseminate blueprints for plagues. Dr. Fauci, [45:11] would you like to at least answer this one question for us today and let us know whether [45:15] or not you've changed your mind on whether or not the benefits of gain of function research outweigh [45:21] the risks? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the [45:28] Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed [45:38] you to answer, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege despite the existence of the pardon. [45:44] The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken [45:48] against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so. It's against the law [45:53] to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today. [46:00] Senator Peters. You're not recognized. You're not recognized. If you are unruly, you will be removed [46:14] from the proceeding. You are not recognized, and you are not recognized, sir. Sir, you are not recognized. [46:22] You are not recognized. Security, we'll hold off. But you will respect these proceedings. You were told [46:33] not to sit at the table. You insist on sitting at the table. And we told you you would not be recognized. [46:39] You are not invited here for testimony, sir. You are being disruptive. Would you behave this way in a [46:46] courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can't do that today, but I can have you escorted [46:52] from the premises. So I would say, sir, sit quietly and don't say another word. I said, sit quietly. You [46:58] are not recognized. Another word and you're gone. So, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to hear what the attorney [47:10] has to say. He is not recognized by the committee or the chair. If he speaks again, he will be removed [47:17] from the room. This testimony is from Anthony Fauci. This is not a game with his lawyers. He can advise. [47:24] His lawyers can give him advice. He's got a half dozen here. They're all allowed to talk to him. Yes. [47:30] All right. But the attorneys are not recognized. In fact, the attorney was told not to sit at the [47:35] table and he's not obeying that recommendation. There's a row behind you, sir. That's where you were [47:40] told to sit and you're not. And now you're disrupting the proceedings. And so, look, this is the way [47:46] Anthony Fauci wants to be remembered for a lawyer not listening to the rules. That's the way you want [47:50] to be remembered. And that's what you're going to do. You are not recognized, sir. Security, [47:57] please remove him from the room. Let the record state that Dr. Fauci will still have the advice [48:35] of the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today. Senator Peters. [48:40] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first or the last public health crisis [48:51] to impact our nation. In December 2022, I released a report that identified significant failures in our [48:59] federal government's preparedness and initial response to COVID-19. This report contained 17 key [49:08] findings. It's a very large report, which I have right here. It contains 17 key findings and corresponding [49:14] recommendations, including the need to invest in sustainable domestic manufacturing capabilities for [49:21] critical medical supplies, build the infrastructure needed to surge testing capacity for infectious diseases [49:28] and robustly fund public health emergency preparedness and responses across all levels of government. [49:36] Unfortunately, multiple administrations, including the current Trump administration, have failed to fund [49:43] or to reform our health preparedness. This is something that I would hope the committee in the future [49:49] would investigate. It needs to be taken a look at. It also feels like a new public health threat [49:57] is hitting us every month. There's a foodborne parasite affecting thousands of people in Michigan [50:03] and across the country. And our federal agencies still haven't fully pinned down the source of that outbreak. [50:12] Measle cases in this country are the highest they've been in 35 years. More children are getting sick and even hospitalized [50:20] from this preventable disease. Over 1000 people have died from the Ebola virus in Africa. And we don't know [50:29] how widespread this crisis actually is. We have a Hunter virus scare on a cruise ship. And though it hasn't [50:36] made headlines in the way that the screw worm threatening our food security has, I remain concerned about bird flu [50:43] that is also spreading and could one day cause a pandemic. This is also something this committee should be [50:49] investigating and holding hearings on. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has taken a number [50:56] of actions to drastically weaken our ability to fight infectious diseases and biological threats that [51:02] endanger Americans. These actions are both incomprehensible and are also inexcusable. They include [51:09] slashing funding for public health and infectious disease research, cancelling contracts for cutting edge [51:15] vaccine technology, shutting agencies responsible for tackling infectious diseases around the world, firing [51:23] thousands of federal employees with keeping our communities and our medicines and our food supply safe, and [51:29] injecting political appointees in what should be non-political grant making functions. That is something this [51:36] committee should be looking at. I could go on. I could go on on all the topics that we need to be looking at moving forward to [51:41] protect this country. We're not doing that in this committee. That's what this committee was designed to [51:45] do. It's what it has done throughout history. It has done it in a bipartisan way. We should get back to that [51:51] and think about the future of this country and keeping this country safe. When a crisis like COVID-19 strikes, [51:58] we have an obligation to examine what went right and what went wrong to provide accountability for the [52:04] American people. Congress certainly has done that. Between the House and Senate, nearly 20 different committees, [52:11] 20 different committees, including this committee, as I mentioned, have conducted oversight of the COVID-19 [52:17] pandemic, conducting transcribed interviews, holding dozens of hearings, and released more than 10 [52:22] reports. Today's exercise, unfortunately, is a stark departure from those largely bipartisan, legitimate [52:31] efforts. The chairman has shut the minority out of participating equally in these efforts, withheld [52:36] information, selectively released documents, actions that completely undermine the credibility of this [52:42] investigation. I will enter a record without objection, Mr. Chairman, a letter that I sent to you [52:47] that detailed all of those areas that we have concern with and where we were shut out. [52:51] Without objection. We'll provide other details as well. [52:54] I think today's hearing, unfortunately, does real damage. It's turning, [53:00] tempting to turn one person into the scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across [53:05] both the Trump and the Biden administration were responsible for handling. And it does so in a way that it, [53:13] people that are facing death threats. This is only going to unfortunately deter other scientific [53:20] experts from public service to understand that this is what they would have to go through as they [53:25] provide their advice to us. We're not going to make our nation safer, and I hope that we can restore [53:31] the by doing these kinds of activities. And I hope that we can restore our legitimate bipartisan [53:37] oversight that's going to help strengthen our public health and pandemic preparedness and other homeland [53:42] priorities. That's what this committee needs to focus on. It hasn't the last year and a half. Let's [53:49] hope it does in the future. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [53:57] Dr. Fauci, I hope the American people listen very carefully to Chairman Paul's opening statement. [54:04] I think it's a stunning indictment of the actions you've taken that have been so destructive [54:12] to global health. I certainly understand why you needed a pardon. I certainly understand why, [54:22] on the advice of counsel, you're not answering any questions, because I think it would be almost [54:27] impossible for you to answer the questions truthfully without really demonstrating what you did, [54:39] your culpability, self-incriminating. We have, all of us has prepared a lot. I've been deluged with [54:53] questions to ask Dr. Anthony Fauci. There are so many legitimate questions that deserve answers and [55:01] now you're not willing to provide those answers. So with my limited time, I'm going to talk about [55:10] things that my investigation revealed that have not been adequately answered and quite honestly, [55:16] haven't been adequately covered by the legacy media. I'll kind of combine the questions into [55:23] kind of one, but you know, I certainly, let's put up the last COVID chart. I was warned pretty early on [55:32] about the dangers of the experimental gene therapy that you've called a vaccine, but it really falls [55:39] on the definition of gene therapy. So, I was going to ask you, I mean, were you carefully monitoring the [55:47] the safety surveillance systems like VAERS and V-SAFE that literally were deluged with complaints? [55:55] You know, currently, worldwide, there have been almost 1.7 million adverse events reported to the [56:03] VAERS system. Of those, over 39,000 were deaths and of those deaths, 24% occur on the day of vaccination [56:13] within one or two days. 24%, which by the way just happens to be the same percentage that a Rasmussen poll [56:19] pointed out, the American public believe they, 24% of the American public believe they know somebody who [56:24] died of the experimental gene therapy. So, again, I was certainly interested in asking you whether or [56:35] not you were following this as carefully as I was. It was not my responsibility to follow safety [56:42] surveillance systems, but I did. And by the way, when I published this, this is actual government [56:48] information. When I published it and people had me on their shows, they would be censored by Facebook. [56:54] They would be deplatformed, I think, largely at behest of the actions you took to make sure that [57:01] disinformation wasn't spread. This wasn't disinformation. This was the truth. So, I was [57:07] going to ask you whether you knew Dr. Marks. I think you do know him. He's the head of CBER. He's the [57:11] man who is in charge of approving vaccines and surveilling for the safety. My investigation shows [57:19] that on March 1st of 2021, less than three months after the emergency use authorizations, he was warned by [57:24] Dr. Anna Scharstman, data mining expert, that the algorithm they were using to analyze VAERS data was [57:31] going to hide and mask safety signals. 26 days later and three months consecutively after that, [57:38] they did data runs with a new algorithm that unmasked those safety signals. They showed dozens of safety [57:45] signals, including sudden cardiac death, cerebral artery occlusion, basal ganglia stroke, agonal rhythm, [57:54] bell's palsy, and pulmonary infarction. Your diaries now show that you actually suffered [58:05] pulmonary infarction in, I think, probably June 2021. I was just wondering, I was just wondering [58:12] whether it ever went through your mind that maybe that injection, all those boosts you took might have [58:20] caused that. And the question I was going to, and I'll ask this question, were you ever made aware of [58:24] the fact that Peter Marks was warned that the algorithm was going to hide the safety signals, [58:32] and were you told that senior FDA officials were given dozens, shown dozens of safety signals [58:40] associated with the COVID injection? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer [58:47] based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Next area I want to go through is, [58:56] in that same month of March 2021, an employee at NIH, Dr. Nath, led a team of researchers who were [59:06] diagnosing and treating individuals who'd never had COVID, but were severely injured by the genetic [59:15] therapy injections. Dr. Nath told those individuals, stay quiet. You know, we want to make sure that, [59:26] you know, we gather all the information and then release it to doctors so they can treat people like [59:30] yourself. There was a concerted effort, and I'll enter this in the record. It appears inside NIH to quash [59:39] Dr. Nath's publishing that study. It finally was put on a preprint server telling no one, [59:49] and I think about May of 2022. I think what's noteworthy about this is Dr. Nath told the injured [59:57] participants that early treatment, early intervention was crucial for them to be treated, and yet within [1:00:06] the NIH they were questioning what was Dr. Nath doing. They didn't want to publish that because, [1:00:12] and I want to take time searching for it, because publishing it would create vaccine hesitancy, [1:00:18] which is what we continue to hear time and time again, is the reason they didn't promote the, [1:00:25] they lied about the safety signals they were seeing. Throughout the pandemic, I always push early [1:00:31] treatment. You know, we've got things in here where, you know, you were really concerned about remdesivir, [1:00:40] because it was, it was untested, but hydroxychloroquine, yeah, it was an approved drug, [1:00:44] you know, maybe some safety issues, but we had a great deal of experience with it. All of a sudden, [1:00:49] you had the Surgisphere study, it was retracted within two weeks because it was completely false, [1:00:55] totally blew up the use of hydroxychloroquine, and then when it comes to ivermectin, which by the [1:01:01] way, because I had, I was contacted by so many people, I referred them to doctors who actually had [1:01:06] the courage and compassion to treat vaccine-injured individuals, it works. But I was going to ask you, [1:01:15] whether you were involved in the FDA attack on ivermectin. You had a interview on CNN on August [1:01:26] 29th of 2021, where again, I just don't want to take time to find the exact quote, but you know, [1:01:33] said there's no evidence, there's no evidence that ivermectin is helpful. On that exact same day, [1:01:41] and I've got the, I've got the studies right here, there was a website that was tracking the random [1:01:50] controlled studies. Here they are, showing 60, 70% efficacy of ivermectin. The same thing you say, [1:02:00] there's no evidence, there was all kinds of evidence. Loved ones had to go to hospitals, [1:02:09] had to sue hospitals, just would you try it? So I would want to know, you know, to what extent were [1:02:17] you involved in sabotaging hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and did you do that because you knew [1:02:25] the only way you could get emergency use authorization for these drugs, these experimental gene therapy, [1:02:32] was if there was no effective treatment, you couldn't get the emergency use authorization. So [1:02:38] is that, is that why you helped sabotage these cheap generic drugs in favor of remdesivir, which [1:02:44] by the way, nurses, are you aware of the fact that nurses called it run, death is near? On the advice [1:02:53] of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the [1:02:58] Constitution. Let me end on this note, because this just came to light. You know, we've got 11 [1:03:04] million pages of documents. We also have other people who are in the room, but now you actually [1:03:11] lied to your, you lied to your, you lied to your own diary. On March 27, 2020, you wrote in your diary, [1:03:19] to my surprise yesterday, the POTUS sent a letter to governors outlining a plan to reopen county by county [1:03:25] while monitoring the spread of virus in low-risk counties. This was half-baked and never [1:03:31] shown to Deb or I before it was sent out. So we have evidence that in fact, you're not, [1:03:39] you were fully aware of it and certainly approved if not authored it. So I was simply asking you, [1:03:45] I mean, is that, is that true? I mean, did you literally lie to your own diary? Did, did, did, [1:03:50] did you know of that letter sent out to governors about reopening county by county? Again, Mr. Chairman, [1:03:57] I'd ask you to ask the witness to just answer that one simple question. On the advice of counsel, [1:04:04] I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [1:04:09] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Hassan. Thank you. Um, Dr. Fauci, I want to start by thanking you for [1:04:20] more than 50 years of service to this country at the National Institutes of Health. And it is unfortunate [1:04:27] that you have been put in the position that you are in today. And it must be enormously frustrating to [1:04:33] know that this hearing is designed to entrap you. It must be very frustrating for your attorneys [1:04:40] to hear the chair's mischaracterization of the legal issues and posture that impact your decisions [1:04:47] at the witness table today. Meanwhile, I was going to ask you a series of questions about things that are [1:04:57] relevant right now to the people of the United States about the state of public health in this country. [1:05:07] Since President Trump took office in 2025, more than 4,500 cases of measles have been reported. [1:05:18] That is more cases in the year and a half since Donald Trump has been president than were reported [1:05:24] from 2000 to 2024 combined. Children are dying because there has been increased vaccine hesitancy, [1:05:36] fueled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and frankly, his entire [1:05:43] administration. Thousands of people in the United States of America have been sickened by a foodborne [1:05:52] parasite. And the outbreak is nowhere near under control, as staffing at the FDA and other critical [1:06:02] public health entities has been slashed by Russell Vogt and Elon Musk. Last year, the National Institutes of Health [1:06:13] awarded 200, I think it's 201 fewer grants compared to the previous years. 207, I am corrected, [1:06:22] compared to previous years. As those grants were either canceled or delays, especially at the beginning of [1:06:30] the Trump administration. I can tell you, I can tell my colleagues what the impact was on people in New [1:06:36] Hampshire, on scientists in New Hampshire, on clinical trials in New Hampshire where people's cancer [1:06:42] treatment was interrupted because Elon Musk and Russell Vogt know better, they say, than the people at NIH [1:06:52] about what to fund. And because they did some sort of word search, it seems, for some of the grants. And boy, oh boy, [1:07:00] if you were studying rural health in New Hampshire and trying to understand how to better engage people [1:07:08] who need health care in rural America, that was off the table. America is losing researchers and scientists [1:07:21] to other countries because researchers and scientists, highly trained, highly qualified, [1:07:28] invested in often by the American taxpayer, are finding the hostility from this administration [1:07:37] so strong that it interferes with their science and they want to pursue science wherever that science [1:07:45] takes them. I also sit on the Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. We have had a number of [1:07:55] hearings with nominees recently to fill critical spots. One of those nominees is Dr. Erica Schwartz, [1:08:04] a brilliant woman, medical degree, biomedical engineering degree. I think she also told us she [1:08:11] has a law degree and a master's in public health. She was a two-star admiral in the United States Navy, [1:08:18] an experienced doctor. And yet, when I asked her if she would push back at Secretary Kennedy, [1:08:32] if he instructed her to suspend the promotion of the flu vaccine as he did at some point in the last [1:08:43] few months, there's an email to prove it, she couldn't answer that question. She either could not, [1:08:51] would not, or had been bullied into evading a question about whether she, as the director of CDC, [1:09:01] would stand up to Secretary Kennedy, the most unqualified Secretary of Health and Human Services [1:09:09] this country has ever seen, and more than unqualified, somebody who pursues conspiracy theories, [1:09:19] degrades people with disabilities, and continues to promote disproved science. That's the state of [1:09:29] health care and public health in this country right now, not to mention the trillion dollars or so of [1:09:36] cuts to the Medicaid program that is decimating health care in my state and decimating it around [1:09:41] the country, not to mention the refusal of my colleagues and this administration to extend critical [1:09:50] tax cuts for people who are trying to afford insurance on the Affordable Care Act. I just was at [1:09:57] one of my community health clinics and they are reporting fewer and fewer people coming in for [1:10:02] care, disrupting care because they can no longer afford health insurance and that is impacting of [1:10:10] course the revenue stream to the community health clinic, their ability to hire and pay people, [1:10:15] their ability to take care of their community. That's what I wish we were having hearings about [1:10:22] in this committee and in the health committee. That's what I wish we were trying to address in a [1:10:28] bipartisan way. But instead, we are here in an attempt to entrap you because you had a distinguished [1:10:43] career trying to put Americans public health first. With that, I yield Senator Lackford. [1:10:52] Mr Chairman, thank you. Thanks for coming today. I know you're invoking your Fifth Amendment right, [1:11:01] which you have the right to be able to do constitutionally. But thanks for coming and be a part of this. [1:11:06] There are a lot of issues and a lot of questions that have come up and hopefully in some [1:11:10] day in the future, we'll be able to get all this clarity to be able to pull together. [1:11:15] There were over a million Americans that died from COVID. You know that well, you were tracking [1:11:19] the numbers literally every single day. Those affected and those that died from the earliest days. [1:11:27] There are a lot of lessons that we've got to learn from this that we should put into history to be able [1:11:31] to determine what happens in the future. How do we respond in the future? How do we deal with something like this? [1:11:37] Again, it was uncharted territory for everyone. But I would tell you countless families, including my own, [1:11:46] watched a loved one die behind glass or through a screen because we couldn't get access to them. [1:11:50] Children couldn't get to school. People missed their prom or graduation ceremonies. [1:11:59] There are lots of things that happened that dramatically changed the future of the country. [1:12:04] The mental health issues that we have continued to deal with from the isolation have been profound. [1:12:09] Even something as simple as children that wore masks or around adults wearing masks for all that time [1:12:16] are slower and learning language now because they couldn't watch someone's lips moving. And so [1:12:20] they're slower than that. Amazingly enough, churches in places of worship were forced to be closed down. [1:12:27] There were even churches that met where the pastor preached in the parking lot and the congregants all met [1:12:33] in their cars with windows up and police came and scattered them and said, you can't be here. [1:12:41] The simple act of social distancing became an issue. As everyone guessed, what's the right distance to be [1:12:48] away from someone else? Literacy rates have declined. All these things are results, [1:12:55] not to mention the loss of lives and the health experiences that have been out there for many Americans. So there are legitimate questions. [1:13:00] I want to be able to raise some of those to be able to walk through some of this because it has been [1:13:05] very, very challenging as we've gone through some of your your notes and your diary and other things [1:13:11] that are out there. We're trying to be able to pull bits and pieces of things to be able to learn lessons. [1:13:16] On May the 6th 2020, you wrote at that time, I had a conversation with Robert Redfield, as you know well, [1:13:24] was then the director of CDC about the fact that greater than 1 million children worldwide have missed their [1:13:31] measles vaccination because of the shutdown. You stated this is terrible and needs to be addressed [1:13:39] since on that basis alone there would be far for far, far more excess deaths from measles among [1:13:46] children than coronavirus deaths among children. I need to bring this up to the TF, the task force. [1:13:53] Did you ever have an opportunity to bring up the potential of measles deaths among children and infection [1:14:00] rate going around the world from measles based on the fact that so many children would not get their [1:14:05] measles vaccine because of the shutdown? I'm sorry, Senator, but on the advice of counsel, [1:14:11] I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [1:14:17] That is your right to do. One of the big issues is really coming up is on the lab issue. This was greatly [1:14:25] discussed about whether this came from a lab or whether this came from nature. There are obvious issues and [1:14:30] differences between the two to be able to know this. You had a lot of conversation on this. Scientists [1:14:36] around the world were in conversation on this. There were different statements that you even made in [1:14:41] your private notes and your public notes on it. In January the 26th of 2020, this is before we had our [1:14:47] even our first tragic death of coronavirus in the United States, you wrote, it now appears using [1:14:53] epi data that the genomic data the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the [1:14:59] market, which was the big rumor that was out there. It was this wet market in China. [1:15:04] We know the market was not the source. It was the amplifier. On January the 31st, you wrote about [1:15:10] a phone call. You wrote, the people on the phone on the phone felt the mutations around the furin [1:15:15] cleavage site of the spike protein could not have occurred naturally since it would require an [1:15:19] evolutionary jump that they found nowhere in bat isolates. They bring up the possibility this could [1:15:25] have been deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or deliberately released [1:15:29] by a crazy person in the lab, the former being the most likely. February the 1st, same year 2020. [1:15:39] This is again still before our first death. There was not total agreement about the likelihood of [1:15:43] deliberate insertion. Ron said he was he was sure that this could occur naturally and we should not [1:15:49] waste our time and divert our effort to pursue this. This is expected of him since he was the original [1:15:54] gain of function person with Yoshi. Also Christian was withdrawn. The rest felt deliberate insertion [1:16:01] was possible and given the fact that Dr. Jing Ling Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for [1:16:07] years in gain of function in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human [1:16:13] ACE2 receptor, we could not let this go. That's a remarkable statement for February the 1st of 2020, [1:16:22] when there hadn't even been the first death here, but we knew something was moving. You knew well [1:16:26] that something was moving. You identified February the 1st, before any of us had ever heard of the [1:16:32] Wuhan lab, not only the Wuhan lab in the conversation, but literally the scientist that you named in your [1:16:38] own notes, the lead scientist that was there. It's interesting to me on that and the questions I was [1:16:43] going to ask you was just your background and knowledge about the Wuhan lab and Dr. Shi and [1:16:50] all the details. I'm aware of where you have been on trying to be able to plead your fifth minute right, [1:16:56] which is your right to be able to do, but also want to be able to find out some facts to be able [1:17:00] to help us for the future on this. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May of 2020 [1:17:07] put out a classified document that has only been recently unclassified on this that had this statement. [1:17:13] We assess all the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory modified [1:17:18] coronavirus, specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors, [1:17:23] were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid to late 2019. [1:17:29] Now, the question that I have for you is this is May the 27th of 2020. [1:17:34] This is the report that most people will see is this. I have I have clearance. I serve on the [1:17:40] Intelligence Committee. I've actually read this complete document unredacted. My concern is [1:17:47] were you given the ability to see this document unredacted based on your position? Were you able [1:17:53] to see this and to be able to get this information? I could I could see it and I know what's here. [1:17:58] Everybody else just has their conclusion at the beginning of it. Not this. My question to you was [1:18:04] going to be did you have access because it's important for the future that people in your [1:18:10] position do have access to this kind of information and insight. Is there any way you could answer that [1:18:16] question? Were you able to give access to this data on the advice of counsel? I respectfully decline [1:18:22] to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. You wrote on January [1:18:31] the 26th of 2020. We should be allowed to send our CDC epidemiologists to China to work with them so [1:18:39] you could so they could see the data firsthand. You you also wrote in February 12th 2020 that you had great [1:18:48] concerns about the World Health Organization because there depends greatly on China and as you stated [1:18:54] often bows to them. This is a really important issue that we've got to resolve for the future. It's not just our [1:19:01] cooperation with Chinese scientists. It's our acknowledgement that China covered up their data [1:19:08] wouldn't allow our scientists to be able to come in. They cleaned up the wet market. They cleaned up the [1:19:14] other areas. They wouldn't allow you to get access to all the other scientists there including their health [1:19:20] records. What happened to them or even all the sequencing that they had done in advance for the future of our [1:19:27] research and our cooperation with any scientists around the world. I think it's really important [1:19:33] that we resolve if we're going to fund research and cooperate with you we've got to have certain things [1:19:38] from you. If things go sideways we've got to have access to all information in all places. You were noting not [1:19:45] only that China was affecting the World Health Organization and that China was bending them to their [1:19:51] will and so the World Health Organization was putting out data that you saw at least at that point [1:19:57] as being from a Chinese perspective covering up what was going on but you also noted we weren't able to [1:20:02] get access to all this information. We've got to be able to figure this out for the future to be able to [1:20:07] make sure that research that is done we have access to all information if something goes sideways at some [1:20:12] point which clearly it did at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that being as was noted by many people the [1:20:19] only lab in the world that was doing research like this that had a lower standard of actually [1:20:25] their security standards there than many other labs around the world yet they were doing this very [1:20:30] dangerous research. What can we gain and what advice could you give us to say in a future setting we've [1:20:37] got to make sure that we actually get information from people and we can be guaranteed that we're going [1:20:41] to get that insight. Yes sir. On the advice of counsel I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [1:20:51] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. I yield back. Senator Blumenthal. [1:21:00] Thank you Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic. One of the darkest days [1:21:12] or times in our history hospitals were overflowing. Navy medical ships were docked in the Hudson River. [1:21:20] Emergency rooms were forced into unprecedented triaging during the worst week of the pandemic [1:21:28] which happens to have been the last week of President Trump's first term. More than 25,000 Americans [1:21:35] died of COVID-19. Easy to forget those dark days but for the past 18 months the Trump administration [1:21:45] has been engaged in a campaign to rewrite this history and today's proceeding I fear is part of [1:21:54] that effort. One of the darkest days in our Senate's history. The Trump administration has launched a [1:22:03] baseless set of smears against vaccines that help pull us out of that public health crisis. Vaccines that are [1:22:11] undoubtedly President Trump's greatest accomplishment. It has slashed funding to local public health [1:22:19] departments that were on the front lines of the pandemic and those health care workers are heroes. [1:22:29] It has disparaged those heroes as woke or wasteful and it has used a politicized Department of Justice [1:22:39] to target the researchers who helped us track and understand the novel virus. Today's hearing is another [1:22:47] page in that playbook, sadly, tragically. Dr. Fauci, you've spent five decades in public service, [1:22:58] including nearly four decades in leadership at the National Institutes of Health, helping to conquer COVID-19, [1:23:07] but also HIV, swine flu, Zika, Ebola, and other epidemics with real life results saving human lives. [1:23:20] Put aside all the flowery rhetoric that we hear in the United States Senate, Dr. Fauci has saved lives, [1:23:30] as have public health officials in the United States and throughout the world. And today we are demeaning [1:23:39] and degrading their life saving service. Republicans are eager to rebrand you as a villain in order to [1:23:50] distract from their own failure to protect Americans from soaring healthcare costs. They've been rising [1:23:57] astronomically in the last couple of years and from unsafe food, which has caused cyclospora to spread [1:24:09] and resurgent measles as a result of the anti-vaccine policy. This hearing is the culmination of a years-long [1:24:20] crusade, which started more than six years ago when Dr. Fauci dared to contradict President Trump. The [1:24:29] campaign to vilify you, Dr. Fauci, is just one part of this larger campaign against science and facts, a campaign [1:24:37] that has made Americans less safe. It is shameful that in a country like ours, a dedicated public service [1:24:45] like Dr. Fauci has experienced persistent threats to his life since the pandemic because of the lies that are told about him. [1:24:55] His attorney has been gagged, thrown out of this hearing room, but he has written a letter to the chairman [1:25:10] that is an explanation for the reasons why Dr. Fauci is, in fact, invoking his constitutional right. It is a right. [1:25:22] And I would ask that this letter from David Shurtler and Danny Onato be made a part of the record. [1:25:30] Without objection? [1:25:33] His attorney has also issued a statement within the last half hour, I believe, that sets forth, again, [1:25:42] the reasons that he is here to help protect his clients' rights. And I would ask that that statement [1:25:50] be made part of the record as well, Mr. Chairman. [1:25:52] Without objection? [1:25:54] Let's be very clear. The Fifth Amendment is a right of everyone appearing before an authority [1:26:03] like this one. It should be respected. And the reason that Dr. Fauci has invoked it in the words of [1:26:18] his attorney, quote, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Fauci appeared at least a dozen times [1:26:31] for congressional hearings in the Senate alone in answer to questions about the very issues [1:26:36] on which you purport to seek information. He has been thoroughly transparent and consistent in providing [1:26:42] factual information to Congress, and he is deeply familiar with the processes and protocols of sharing [1:26:47] information with the legislative branch. And then referring to the chairman, this years-long public [1:26:56] crusade against Dr. Fauci makes one thing clear. This is not a serious effort to seek information from Dr. [1:27:02] Fauci in a transcribed interview for a valid legislative purpose. You are single-mindedly [1:27:08] fixated on Dr. Fauci, seeing Dr. Fauci prosecuted for imaginary crimes, and you are so invested in that [1:27:17] outcome that you have created a personal brand around it. Those are the words of his attorney, and he [1:27:30] cites as well the statements of the chairman, which indicate a clear intent that the result of this [1:27:43] proceeding be a prosecution, quote, the power of some of us must be used for good, like putting Fauci [1:27:55] in jail. That's from December 23, 2025. I want to give him a subpoena and a jail cell, also from December [1:28:05] of 2025. The first was 2024. Those kinds of statements by the chairman of a committee in tweets [1:28:16] certainly provide a well-founded fear that the proceeding underway is simply an effort to trap [1:28:26] Dr. Fauci in some kind of criminal wrongdoing. That is not the purpose of a congressional hearing, [1:28:36] not the valid purpose of a congressional hearing. During some of the dark days in this body, under [1:28:46] Senator Joe McCarthy, it became standard operating procedure to seek that kind of prosecutorial [1:28:55] objective. We should not be part of a rerun of that kind of effort. This attempt to rebrand one of the [1:29:06] most challenging times in our nation's history is a short-sighted act of desperation that will leave us [1:29:13] less prepared for the next pandemic. It is an insult to the memory of more than one million Americans [1:29:23] who died from COVID-19. If there are valid scientific questions about the origins of this pandemic, [1:29:34] COVID-19, about the kinds of steps that were taken to counter it, about the need for more preparation, [1:29:44] they should certainly be addressed, but not in a show trial, not as part of a continuing vendetta against [1:29:53] a single individual. And unfortunately, I fear that is what we are seeing today. America deserves better. [1:30:03] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In no courtroom in America can you have your witness plead the Fifth Amendment, [1:30:10] then your attorney gets to testify. That's what that letter is. The attorney's complaining and testifying, [1:30:15] saying he didn't do it. The prosecution's unfair. You don't get to do that. That's one thing you give up. [1:30:20] When you take the Fifth Amendment, you say, I'm not going to testify. I'm not going to give you any [1:30:24] information. You don't then get to put your lawyer forward to justify it. He can do it in the press, [1:30:30] but you can't come and testify. He was not invited to testify, and he was out of order, [1:30:35] and it was appropriate to have him injected. Senator. Chairman Paul, thank you for doing this. [1:30:42] I think I know in my state people have been asking questions about Dr. Fauci for years. So Dr. Fauci, [1:30:50] your entry has made clear that you love being a hero, a celebrity, and here having the eyes of the world [1:30:56] upon you. You loved every newspaper profile, every photo shoot, every fancy dinner with the elites. [1:31:01] To many Americans who lost family members, who lost trust in our federal government, [1:31:06] you're not a hero. Unfortunately, you're a villain. You made yourself the story and abandoned the [1:31:12] American people to serve your own ego. To begin, I'd like to talk about your relationship with David [1:31:17] Moritz. He was the senior advisor in the NIAID Office of the Director, your office for 16 years. [1:31:24] He was your friend. He was a frequent guest at your house. You reportedly co-offered over 50 [1:31:30] scientific articles with him. You turned to him first, right after COVID-19 first occurred. [1:31:36] Earlier this year, the Department of Justice charged him with conspiracy against the United States, [1:31:41] in addition to other charges as part of a conspiracy to conceal information and falsify records to [1:31:47] suppress alternative theories about the origins of COVID-19. Now, you've publicly ticked this man to the [1:31:53] curb saying, Dr. Moritz was not an advisor to me on institute policy or other substantive issues. [1:32:01] So, let's start with the use of personal Gmail accounts and Dave Moritz's relationship with Peter [1:32:06] Dasik. Dave Moritz tells Peter Dasik, President of Equal Alliance, and you've got this in front of you, [1:32:12] it's Exhibit 1, and it's already in the record as part of this. It says, quote, [1:32:17] P.S. I forgot to say that there is no worry about FOIA. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private [1:32:25] Gmail or hand it to him at work or as house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that [1:32:33] could cause trouble. Dr. Fauci, did Dr. Moritz's relationship with Peter Dasik concern you? Yes or no? [1:32:42] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to [1:32:48] the Constitution. Did Dave Moritz ever bring documents to your house? On the advice of counsel, [1:32:55] I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [1:33:00] Did you ever receive a text about your work at NIAID to your personal cell phone? On the advice of [1:33:07] counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [1:33:14] Did any text about your work at NIAID that went to your personal cell phone ever become part of [1:33:19] the federal records? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [1:33:25] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Did you maintain a personal email account while [1:33:30] serving as director? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [1:33:37] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Did you ever receive work related communications on [1:33:42] that gmail account from David Moritz? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon [1:33:49] my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution did you preserve any work-related [1:33:54] communications on that gmail account from david morans on the advice of counsel i respectfully [1:34:00] declined to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution did david [1:34:05] morans ever provide you with documents outside of those two ways that would violate nih policy [1:34:09] for four-year compliance on the advice of counsel i respectfully declined to answer based upon my [1:34:17] rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution now let's look at two other communications you [1:34:24] emailed david morans on january 26 2020 quote it is important that i speak with you tonight please [1:34:30] call me at home this is the part of exhibit two that you have in front of you this email is sent [1:34:36] the same day the exact same day you write in an internal document quote now we know the market was [1:34:43] not the source it was the amplifier unquote would you call the origins of covet 19 a substantive issue [1:34:53] on the advice of counsel i respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth [1:34:58] amendment to the constitution did you discuss code 19 origins with demorans on this phone on this phone [1:35:04] call on the advice of counsel i respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth [1:35:12] amendment to the constitution now let's take a closer look at the last time you testified before congress [1:35:18] this is part of what you have in front of you is exhibit four which is part of the record in june [1:35:23] 2024 you testified to dr morans quote was not an advisor to me on institute policy or other [1:35:30] substantive issues furthermore his office is located in a different building from that of the niaid [1:35:36] director unquote is that still your testimony today on the advice of counsel i respectfully decline [1:35:43] to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution so today under oath your [1:35:49] testimony remains that dr morans was not an advisor to you on institute policy or substantive matters [1:35:56] on the advice of counsel i respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth [1:36:00] amendment to the constitution i've got exhibit five which you have in front of you on october 24 2021 [1:36:07] david morans texted you to provide information about an advocate for the controversial eco health [1:36:12] alliance grant you thank him and tell him you will check the information would you agree that this [1:36:18] shows an advisory relationship between david morans and yourself on the advice of counsel i respectfully [1:36:25] decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution do you agree [1:36:30] that you two were discussing a substantive issue on the advice of counsel i respectfully decline to answer [1:36:38] based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution if documentary evidence establishes [1:36:44] that dr morans advise you regarding eco health alliance covet origins or grant policy then your june [1:36:49] 20 24 a testimony would have been inaccurate correct on the advice of counsel i respectfully decline to [1:36:56] answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution is there any document in your [1:37:01] position today that would contradict your prior congressional testimony on the advice of counsel i [1:37:07] respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution [1:37:12] have you deleted destroyed or instructed anyone to destroy records after learning congress [1:37:16] investigating these matters? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer [1:37:22] based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Are you aware of anyone [1:37:27] who did? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under [1:37:34] the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. As you know, Dr. Morantz now faces charges [1:37:38] related to destroying records while you distance yourself from him. Is that fair to a decades-long [1:37:43] friend? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under [1:37:49] the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. When is the last time you spoke to him? On the advice of [1:37:57] counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the [1:38:02] Constitution. In hindsight, are you disappointed how you handled COVID? Do you have any regrets? [1:38:09] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth [1:38:13] Amendment to the Constitution. Dr. Fauci, I want to close with this. Here's how you impacted my family [1:38:20] people close to me. I have daughters with children. You can't imagine the questions they had around [1:38:24] vaccines for their kids and themselves, and the pressure, the unbelievable pressure, to make the [1:38:30] right decision for their health. I can tell you pregnant women who worked with me were so scared [1:38:35] because every time they went to the doctor, they were told something different about taking the [1:38:39] vaccine, and you caused this. Imagine being a mom trying to protect their kids, or an expectant mother [1:38:45] trying to figure out what to do. Every three weeks, a doctor tells you a new set of guidance on a vaccine. [1:38:50] The haphazard information you released and pushed on the American people with little research is [1:38:56] appalling, and why there is so much distrust in our institutions today. That trust is crucial to [1:39:03] public health, and you, more than any person or event in my lifetime, have destroyed that trust for [1:39:08] millions of Americans. You lied to hundreds of millions of people amid the worst public health [1:39:14] crisis in its century. You failed to follow your own guidance. You forced people to watch their loved [1:39:19] ones die alone over the phone. It's disgusting. You destroyed the federal government's credibility [1:39:23] when it comes to public health. We have entire generations of Americans who rightfully so do not [1:39:29] trust our institution to keep people safe because of you. This has destroyed decades of progress and [1:39:35] lifetimes of work because you wanted to fuel your own ego and be the center of attention. [1:39:40] What would you do differently knowing what you know today, Dr. Fauci? [1:39:44] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the [1:39:50] Constitution. All the evidence is right here, and you still can't bring yourself to tell the truth [1:39:55] or apologize because you received an auto-pinned pardon from a staffer in the Biden White House. [1:40:00] If we have another pandemic tomorrow, millions could die because of what you did, what you did to make [1:40:04] Americans lose trust in their government when it comes to medicine and health care. How many families [1:40:10] have you apologized to had to watch their loved ones die alone? You breached up public trust, and now you're [1:40:16] hiding behind a fraudulent pardon. Your legacy will not be as a man who has saved America from [1:40:21] COVID, but as a man who destroyed the public trust in America's public health institutions [1:40:25] in exchange for five minutes of fame. This is how history will remember you. I yield back. [1:40:31] Senator Kim. [1:40:38] Thank you, Dr. Fauci, for coming on out in front of this committee. I know it's not what you would want. [1:40:46] It's not what you deserve. I just want to say and start by just saying thank you to you for your [1:40:55] service to this nation. I didn't know much about you prior to the pandemic. I came to learn about you [1:41:05] from how many Americans did, but I also had the opportunity to talk to you and engage with you as [1:41:10] someone who is a member of the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis over in the House of Representatives. [1:41:16] When I learned about your background, 38 years as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and [1:41:24] Infectious Disease, appointed by President Reagan, served under seven presidents, four Republicans and [1:41:32] three Democrats, I admire that greatly. I myself had a chance to serve in the executive branch serving [1:41:41] government under both a Republican president and a Democratic president, and I believe that we need [1:41:48] more of that, more of that type of work, a place where we can understand our jobs not as coming [1:41:56] from a place of partisanship and politics, but that of just public service. And right now, I feel the [1:42:05] hyper-partisanship growing in this country in dangerous ways. I feel it much more present here on [1:42:10] the Hill than I did back when I served as a nonpartisan career public servant at the State Department. [1:42:16] And I worry about it. I worry about what kind of trajectory we're on as a country and what this [1:42:23] causes when it comes next for public service and those willing to step up for our nation. [1:42:29] And it's not just in the attacks, but we see it brought out with the cuts to funding, to the firing of [1:42:39] federal workers, to the demonization of their motivations, people calling our public servants [1:42:46] criminals, thinking that they are there solely to undermine others that are trying to engage. [1:42:53] I look at it right now. You know, it's not just that the people are being attacked, our public [1:43:02] servants being attacked, but that it's undermining the very nature of the work of governance. You know, [1:43:08] these cuts to HHS funding, to NIH funding, to the grants, cuts to the researchers doing the critical work [1:43:16] to find cures and medicines. These firing, these cuts, they're creating a chilling effect. Honestly, [1:43:24] a chilling effect for the next generation of people who might consider stepping up to serve our nation, [1:43:31] to be the next generation of researchers who now are wondering whether or not this is the right thing [1:43:37] for them to do at a time when they see some of their colleagues or those that they looked up to [1:43:43] being attacked, their funding being cut. Researchers that I talked to who are now either leaving the [1:43:51] country or considering leaving the country to do their work because of the sheer unpredictability [1:43:56] of America, that this nation so great, so powerful has now been crippled with this sense of unpredictability [1:44:06] and unreliability. That is not the type of country that I hope we strive to be. I've raised this because [1:44:14] these attacks upon Dr. Fauci, it's not just about him. It's sending signals to others, others who are [1:44:22] thinking about serving our country, our scientists, our doctors, our healthcare professionals, our [1:44:27] researchers, trying to show to them that if you don't get in line with the politics, that you will [1:44:34] also potentially be subject to attacks. And from the work that he has done from HIV AIDS to Ebola to COVID, [1:44:45] you know, we've seen him try to engage in these crises. They're not easy, especially when it's a novel disease, [1:44:52] when you don't know what comes next. A lot of unknowns, having to make decisions without the full [1:44:57] breadth of knowledge we always wish we had in hindsight. But there is nothing perfect, no perfect [1:45:03] clarity when it comes to pandemics, when it comes to crises. I worked in national security and wars and [1:45:11] crises. I made judgment calls, gave my best advice to generals, to ambassadors, even to a president. [1:45:17] Did I get it all right? No. Did I do my best? I did everything I thought I could with the information [1:45:24] that I had. The public servants, they do this work because they love this country and that they strive [1:45:33] to improve it. It's not an easy job, but it is because there's so much at stake in our country. But these [1:45:42] public servants do it because they are in the arena. I just want to end by just reading a portion of [1:45:49] this because I think it's important as we're thinking about how to be able to treat public [1:45:55] servants through this country to think through this. And in the words of Teddy Roosevelt saying, [1:46:00] it's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the [1:46:06] doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, [1:46:12] whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strive valiantly, who errors but comes short [1:46:19] again and again, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs [1:46:25] of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, [1:46:31] so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory [1:46:37] nor defeat. Thank you for your service, Dr. Fauci. I yield back. Senator Hawley. [1:46:42] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, nothing says honesty like taking the fifth, huh, Doc? [1:46:48] Let's try something. What day of the week is it today? [1:46:52] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth [1:47:02] Amendment to the Constitution. What color tie are you wearing? [1:47:04] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the [1:47:12] Constitution. What color is the carpet in front of you? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline [1:47:21] to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Let's just get one [1:47:26] thing straight. You don't have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you've been pardoned, [1:47:29] as you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more. Brown versus Walker, [1:47:34] 1896. When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege. You know that. Your lawyers [1:47:42] sitting behind you now shifting nervously in their chairs. They know it. This isn't about the Constitution. [1:47:46] This isn't about the law. This is about contempt, contempt for this body and contempt for the [1:47:51] American people. But I think I know why you're doing it. It's because you don't want to answer [1:47:56] questions. It's because you did all kinds of terrible things. It's because during the pandemic, [1:48:02] you got rich, didn't you? You got rich while people were dying, hundreds of thousands of Americans, [1:48:09] over a million in the end. And you were getting rich. And not only were you doing that, you were using [1:48:14] federal employees with taxpayer money to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you personally. [1:48:23] Cash prizes totaling over a million dollars. You did all of that during the pandemic, didn't you? [1:48:31] That's a question. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights [1:48:37] under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Your chief of staff is the answer. Do you remember [1:48:52] Patricia Conrad? Who was that? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based [1:48:58] upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Uh-huh. She was your personal [1:49:02] assistant. And what were these individuals doing in the depth of the pandemic in November of 2020, [1:49:08] when millions of Americans were suffering from COVID? What were they doing? I tell you what they're [1:49:12] doing. Fulkers was on your behalf soliciting and gathering information for a cash award. Let's look [1:49:20] at it. We've got his email right here, right over my shoulder. Fulker says, I'm working on this [1:49:25] nomination for the Dan David Award for Fauci. We need to beef up the COVID part. Do you have language [1:49:30] in the can that you can share that delineates how we responded in new ways to COVID? He sends this to [1:49:36] multiple federal employees. What was the Dan David Award? Do you remember, Doc? On the advice of [1:49:43] counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the [1:49:48] Constitution. It was a $900,000 cash award. $900,000 cash award. And he got it because he used federal [1:50:01] employees to get it. And this wasn't the only award, was it, Dr. Fauci? In fact, [1:50:06] you applied for and received at least eight other federal cash prizes on federal time using federal [1:50:13] employees and federal resources. Here they are over my shoulder. Besides the Dan David Award, you've [1:50:18] got the Partnership for Public Service. You've got the Adelson Prize. You've got the Smithsonian Award. [1:50:22] You've got the National Academy of Medicines Award. You've got the CDC Foundation. In fact, [1:50:27] you turned your staff into a full-time application machine. You actually wrote to people and said, [1:50:33] do you think maybe I'd qualify? And you got cash for all of this. And it wasn't just one or two [1:50:39] employees, was it? In fact, you used eight separate federal employees on federal time [1:50:45] using federal resources to solicit cash awards. Isn't that true? On the advice of counsel, [1:50:52] I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [1:50:57] Here they are right over my shoulder. Here's all of them. The people that you [1:51:01] use federal employees so that you could go and get cash money. And the most hilarious part is that [1:51:08] you weren't content to even dragoon them into applying for all of these cash awards. [1:51:13] You then have them go out to the ethics agencies and ethics watchdogs and demand that you be able to [1:51:19] get the money. That's right. We've got it in your emails. Your staff and employees on federal time [1:51:28] using federal resources being paid with federal dollars are soliciting cash for you. And then [1:51:33] they're turning around and saying to the agency, we don't want just an answer. We want to get to yes. [1:51:38] Because Fauci wants the money. He wants it. We want to get to yes. And yes takes time. [1:51:45] This is your chief of staff again, using federal email to pressure the agency's own ethics people [1:51:53] so that you could get money so that you could get rich. And it violated the law, didn't it, Dr. Fauci? [1:52:02] Didn't it? It violated the law, didn't it? It is a question you can answer. Go ahead. [1:52:10] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth [1:52:15] Amendment to the Constitution. Federal law, as you very well know, prohibits the solicitation [1:52:20] of cash awards or other personal benefits for federal employees. And it certainly prohibits using [1:52:27] your own employees to do this. 5 CFR section 2635 205 B. It says it right there in black and white. [1:52:37] You cannot use federal resources, federal dollars, federal employees, federal offices, federal email, [1:52:45] federal time to solicit cash awards. And you did all of it. And the worst part is thousands of people [1:52:51] were dying while you were doing it. You were supposed to be the nation's doctor and you're playing one on TV. [1:52:56] But this is what you were doing with your time. Isn't that true? [1:53:00] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth [1:53:08] Amendment to the Constitution. Yeah. Yeah, I can see why. I can certainly see why. [1:53:14] You know what I can't quite figure out is that why you were so obsessed with it, [1:53:17] because you're already rich. I mean, and your your scheme worked here. I mean, [1:53:21] you're not worth now is north of $12 million. You got over a million dollars in cash awards during [1:53:29] COVID during a 12 month, 24 month span during COVID. A million bucks you knocked down in cash [1:53:37] money using federal resources. Now you're worth more than $12 million. You've got a pension that [1:53:42] in its first year paid out north of $400,000 a year. A million people dead, you're getting rich. [1:53:50] A million people dead, you're using federal employees to get cash awards for you. A million people dead, [1:53:56] and you're here taking the fifth because you don't want to admit that what really happened in all that [1:54:01] time was a multi-month, multi-year course of self-dealing. Isn't that true, Dr. Fauci? [1:54:10] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth [1:54:15] Amendment to the Constitution. Yeah, we'll silence his admission. And here's the real thing. At the end [1:54:21] of the day, it wasn't just about the money, really, was it? It was really about a power trip. I mean, [1:54:26] through all of this, you want to be the most famous scientist in the world. You were so focused [1:54:31] on getting every award and every drop of cash that you could, all because you wanted to be on TV. [1:54:37] You wanted to be the sun god of science. You wanted to be the guy who was in charge of it all. You [1:54:42] wanted to blambass Trump. You wanted to make sure that nobody else stole your spotlight. You wanted to [1:54:47] be the guy. You had time to sit for InStyle magazine. Here's what you were doing with your time. [1:54:54] You could sit for InStyle magazine, but you can't answer questions for the American people. [1:55:00] You could sit for InStyle magazine, but you're here taking the fifth. You could sit for InStyle [1:55:05] magazine and get a million bucks in cash awards. But now the cat's got your tongue. I bet he does. [1:55:12] I tell you what, here's my conclusion from all of this. This was really all about you the whole time. [1:55:17] Somewhere along the way, you lost your way. You may have been a good public servant at one time. I don't [1:55:23] know. But I can tell you from reading your emails now, from looking at what you did, how you used [1:55:28] your employees, somewhere along the line, it became all about you. You became a narcissist [1:55:34] and a megalomaniac and a liar. And you've lied to the American people. And you've lied to this body. [1:55:40] And you've disgraced your profession by doing it. You called yourself the most famous scientist in the [1:55:44] world. You've done more to harm science than anybody in my lifetime. And I hope you'll go home and write [1:55:50] that in your diary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Fetterman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [1:56:00] Dr. Fauci, I'm not here to perhaps attack you or defend or anything. It's really just just more [1:56:08] honestly. I'm just want to acknowledge I have had members of my family die from COVID. And now I also [1:56:16] grieve for people that I've met that have lost their business through the pandemic and they'll never been the [1:56:24] same as during the pandemic. I was the lieutenant governor. So we were in the middle of of all of [1:56:32] that maelstrom trying to find the right balance between protect life and protect the economics [1:56:39] and for all of it. And I'm not sure if we got it all right or wrong. But without a doubt, I can [1:56:46] continue to question myself. But one that I it's not about much more your regrets, but I have one. [1:56:53] And and that is early on that there was the theory that the virus could have emerged from the lab. [1:57:03] And early on, that became like a right wing kinds of theory. And I thought it seemed to make sense. [1:57:10] Now, there was a really advanced lab that was close by. And then you have this unknown virus [1:57:17] out. So but that became a very partisan thing. And now it seems now it's more and more emerging theory [1:57:27] that that would have come from from the lab. Now, you know, I hope I think that the next time our nation's [1:57:35] facing something like this, we are not become, you know, as I might have been blinded by the partisan [1:57:41] idea that maybe the truth might come from a side that's different than than you are. But I think we should [1:57:47] really be willing to pursue truth, no matter where that may have emerged, you know, after for all of that. [1:57:55] So and I now see the the remain back to the chair. Thank you, Senator Moreno. [1:58:02] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'll echo Senator Johnson's comments about your opening statement, [1:58:07] Mr. Chairman. I think it was it was dead on. Very, very well done. Mr. Fauci, do you know who David [1:58:13] Schertler is on the advice of counsel? I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the [1:58:21] Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. [1:58:28] What does the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution say? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully [1:58:41] decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. [1:58:46] No, I'm just asking you what it says. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer [1:58:51] based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. I'm going to give the Constitution [1:58:57] to my aide. He'll bring it over to you so you can have it for future reference. I think it's [1:59:02] something that every American should know what the Constitution says. Do you know who wrote [1:59:05] the Fifth Amendment? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [1:59:11] rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. So you're invoking a right that you don't know [1:59:15] who wrote it or what it says. Is that correct? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to [1:59:21] answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Wow. All right, [1:59:26] let me tell you who David Schertler is for the audience because he was ejected by the chairman. [1:59:31] He's a high-profile criminal attorney. He's represented some really great people, [1:59:37] like Senator Bob Menendez. Maybe that's somebody who my Democrat colleagues may remember, took gold [1:59:44] bars as bribes from the Egyptians. And there's an article here in the Washington Free Beacon that [1:59:52] talks about why you would hire Guy Lake-Divers Schertler. And the comment is, if you're in deep [1:59:57] shit, that's who you call. Do you feel like you're in deep shit? On the advice of counsel, [2:00:04] I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:00:11] Clearly, what you think today is that somehow you're above reproach. Somehow you feel like you [2:00:21] don't need to be treated like a normal American. Can you do me a favor in the audience and stand up if [2:00:32] during the time of the COVID pandemic, you were called a racist for calling the virus a Wuhan virus or [2:00:40] the China virus? If you thought the six-foot rule was total crap, if you thought the vaccine wasn't [2:00:47] something that you should take, if you thought it was outrageous the way the mass policy was rolled out, [2:00:52] if you were fired from your job for not taking that vaccine, including members of the military, [2:00:59] if you thought closing schools was catastrophically stupid, and that you thought that during these [2:01:05] times saying these things made you somehow a lesser human being. Dr. Frederick, can you just turn around [2:01:16] and look at the people behind you? You're not willing to do that? Is that a question? It's not a question [2:01:26] to your lawyers, not a question. It's a request. All you have to do is look up from your lawyers and look [2:01:33] at the people who were absolutely shamed for saying what we know now to be the truth. You can't even [2:01:42] look at them? That's a question. Are you able to look at them? You can sit down in the audience. [2:01:49] There was a mom in Ohio during the depth of the coronavirus pandemic, decided to go to her high [2:02:07] school football game for her son. They hadn't been out much. The kids had been learning at school, [2:02:14] and then the school got shut down. They hadn't really gotten much out of that education. As any [2:02:22] parent knew, that remote learning was no learning at all. But it was a Friday night. Her son wanted to [2:02:29] go watch a buddy go play football. So they went to the stadium. They sat alone, far from everybody else, [2:02:38] just a mom, a dad, a few kids. They didn't feel they needed to wear masks because it was stupid, [2:02:48] because they were outside. They all live together. They're not near anybody. Dr. Fauci, do you know [2:02:57] what happened to that mom and that family? That's a question. On the advice of counsel, [2:03:04] I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:03:10] They were dragged out of that stadium and arrested. Those policies were put in place because you had [2:03:25] moronic politicians that listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met [2:03:34] a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people. And that is you. Your advice to communities [2:03:46] like that, to idiotic politicians who enforce those rules, arrested that mom for watching a football game [2:03:56] with her own family outside. When that story broke, I said to myself, I cannot stand Ilee on the side [2:04:08] and watch this happen. It was about six years ago today that I decided I'm going to give up my [2:04:14] businesses, sell them all, run for office, run for the United States Senate. Here I am sitting in front [2:04:21] of you six years later saying, who the fuck do you think you were for doing that? It is a total disgrace [2:04:30] what you did to this country. And if my Democrat colleagues are standing there defending you, [2:04:34] I hope the voters of the United States of America watch the clips of every one of you doting on a guy [2:04:42] who was more interested in being a celebrity than saving American people. I will make it my mission [2:04:51] to make certain that every single one of those republic Democrats who did that will see that clip [2:04:58] over and over and over again because defending there is no defense of what you did. You may have had [2:05:10] a 50 plus year legacy of public service, but it ends in total and complete disgrace. [2:05:19] So let me ask you an opportunity to answer one question. Will you apologize, just apologize to the [2:05:29] people who you harmed through your actions? Will you say, do you have the dignity to just say you're sorry? [2:05:38] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth [2:05:47] Amendment to the Constitution. So you won't apologize to the military members who Joe Biden [2:05:52] is summerly dismissed from the military for not taking the vaccine? On the advice of counsel, [2:05:59] I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:06:03] Will you apologize to the business owners that lost their business, [2:06:07] shattered their lives, and they'll never recover? On the advice of counsel, [2:06:12] I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:06:17] Will you apologize to the moms who had to force their infant children, [2:06:22] two-, three-, four-year-olds, to put masks on and what that did and how that traumatized those kids? [2:06:27] Under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Will you apologize to the family members [2:06:38] of the people who died because they took your advice and not only got the first vaccine, [2:06:43] but the five, six other boosters that they did not need? To answer based upon my rights under the [2:06:54] Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Will you apologize to that mom from Ohio for being arrested [2:06:59] for watching a football game with her family? The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:07:13] So you didn't know who wrote the Fifth Amendment? It's James Madison. [2:07:18] Lived in this town. I can only wonder what he would think of somebody like you invoking [2:07:27] his writings to shield culpability for the actions that you took. It's no secret why you have to [2:07:38] hire the biggest dirtbag attorney on the planet because of what you did. I hope you're paying [2:07:45] him well, and I hope that one way or the other, somewhere, sometime, you answer for your crimes. [2:07:56] Senator Ernst. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing today. [2:08:03] Dr. Fauci, Americans haven't forgotten the tragic stories of people who lost loved ones during COVID [2:08:13] and those that were denied a chance to say goodbye to their family members that were in hospitals or [2:08:22] residing in nursing homes because of the COVID-19 protocols. Americans haven't forgotten the mandates, [2:08:30] the adverse reactions to vaccines, the government misinformation, social media censorship, [2:08:40] hotlines to tattle on their neighbors, the forced school closures, the tragic rise in suicides, [2:08:53] or those businesses that were forced to close during lockdowns. Americans haven't forgotten the [2:09:02] hundreds of billions of dollars spent by taxpayers for COVID relief stolen by fraudsters who bought [2:09:13] Royals, excuse me, Rolls Royces and yachts. These were taxpayer dollars. Americans have lost trust in [2:09:24] science and government after the COVID response, trust which will be incredibly difficult for us to gain [2:09:32] back. Dr. Fauci, you said that the science was evolving and that your recommendations evolved with it. [2:09:41] But Americans remember you as the public face of the coronavirus response. As one of the nation's most [2:09:53] trusted voices, you urged policies you said were absolutely necessary, even when those policies came at an [2:10:03] enormous human and economic cost. And Americans deserve answers about reports that you may have worked with [2:10:14] others to pressure press the president into adopting the slow the spread strategy and why you later sought an [2:10:25] unconditional pardon for crimes you may have committed dating back to 2014. Dr. Fauci, in 2022, you had a taxpayer [2:10:37] funded salary of $480,000 a year. You were in fact the highest paid federal employee in the entire [2:10:46] federal government, even making more than the NIH director and the president of the United States. According to now [2:10:56] public documents, that was due in large part to your work on biodefense. Unreported is how NIAID spent over [2:11:07] $1 billion from 2009 to 2026 in biodefense and influence of federal contracts and subcontracts. [2:11:19] My office uncovered records on USAspending.gov that show from 2015 to 2020 NIAID paid out $515,418 [2:11:32] in subcontracts to Harbin Veterinary Institute in Harbin, China, including $100,000 a few days after it opened a BSL-4 [2:11:45] biolab in 2018. That very same institute was criticized for doing gain-of-function bird flu research in 2013. [2:11:56] And yet you were funding them for years after that, sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to China. [2:12:05] These contracts, which we also traced to NIAID, show U.S. taxpayers funded gain-of-function researchers [2:12:13] in the Netherlands and in Wisconsin, funding the same folks whose controversial work led President Obama [2:12:20] to pause this exact type of dangerous pandemic research. Dr. Fauci, did you know that the NIH's [2:12:31] billion-dollar Sears contract programs were funding gain-of-function researchers in China, the U.S., [2:12:40] and in the Netherlands? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights [2:12:48] under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Dr. Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx wrote in her book [2:12:57] that you and President Obama's former CDC director were at a Saturday, March 14th, [2:13:05] were at a Saturday, March 14th, yes, 2020 meeting at her home two days before the President [2:13:13] announced his 15 days to slow the spread effort. Your now-release diaries said the meeting was a week [2:13:20] before that. Dr. Birx said you all were trying to trap the President into having no other options. [2:13:28] She wrote, your plan was to, quote, block any of the President's escape routes. So, quote, [2:13:36] he'd have no choice but to agree to our flatten-the-curve measures. Yes or no, Dr. Fauci, [2:13:43] did you try to block or trap President Trump into the slow-the-spread, flatten-the-curve measures [2:13:51] in March 2020? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [2:13:57] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. When the COVID-19 virus broke out in Wuhan, China, [2:14:04] you, Dr. Fauci, knew pretty much right away that NIH had funded Chinese labs, including those doing [2:14:11] coronavirus research. There's email traffic from early January 2020 where your staff was flagging for [2:14:18] you that NIH funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab through EcoHealth Alliance. Yet few Americans [2:14:26] knew we funded the Wuhan lab because the funding went through a sub-award and was not reported to the [2:14:33] public database like USAspending.gov as it should have been. Also, EcoHealth violated federal law by [2:14:41] failing to report in its research papers how much taxpayer funding it spent on that research. At my request, [2:14:50] the Government Accountability Office helped track down that $1.4 million of U.S. taxpayer money that was [2:14:57] sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, both by you, Dr. Fauci, and through USAID. But first, it passed [2:15:05] through EcoHealth Alliance, which I helped to get defunded through the NDAA. Dr. Fauci, did you [2:15:12] intentionally use sub-award funding to obscure NIH funding of Chinese bio labs and coronavirus research? [2:15:21] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth [2:15:28] Amendment to the Constitution. NIAID awarded multi-million dollar grants to a number of scientists [2:15:35] shortly after they wrote publicly in the Proximal Origins paper that the COVID virus likely came from [2:15:42] nature. Though documents Chairman Paul released last week show in private, those same scientists were much [2:15:50] more open to the virus being from a lab. In 2023, Representative Jordan insinuated that you basically [2:15:58] gave a $9 million bribe in the form of an NIH grant to NIH-funded virologists to say the virus likely was [2:16:10] from nature. Dr. Fauci, yes or no, did you reward the Proximal Origin authors by giving them NIAID grants or contracts? [2:16:19] I completely decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:16:29] Dr. Fauci, we have learned that U.S. coronavirus researchers at UNC shipped, quote, [2:16:36] humanized or transgenic mice to China by around 2017 for use in their dangerous coronavirus work. [2:16:44] Under your NIAID coronavirus, researchers also used aborted baby body parts in mice research, [2:16:55] and taxpayers paid for them to do that. NIH-funded coronavirus researcher Dr. Ralph Baric and his [2:17:04] colleagues at UNC put parts of livers, thymoses, and chunks of human fetal lung that they got from aborted, [2:17:14] almost five-month-old human babies. They put those parts in their research mice. [2:17:20] They disgustingly named them BLT-L mice and wrote they had created a, quote, sandwich of aborted body [2:17:32] parts in the mice. Get it, folks? BLT. A BLT sandwich. Your RML lab employees in Montana also ordered and used [2:17:43] aborted baby body parts in their taxpayer-funded research. An email show how they planned to use those [2:17:51] mice for post-COVID work. NIH-funded putting aborted babies' fingers and scalps off the heads of aborted [2:18:02] babies and putting them into the backs of research mice. The scalps later grew fine baby hair in the mice. [2:18:10] They even included those disgusting photos in their research paper that you funded. Not all of those [2:18:19] were research on coronaviruses, but some were. Thankfully, the current NIH director has said, [2:18:26] no more of this. Dr. Fauci, yes or no? Do you think that human aborted parts should be put into mice [2:18:36] for coronavirus research? The advice of counsel I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [2:18:44] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Chairman, would you direct the witness to [2:18:50] answer the questions that we have been asking? You probably would if he was here, but I can direct it, [2:18:57] but I think we understand his answer. We do understand that. Americans are asking for [2:19:04] accountability, Dr. Fauci, and your silence is very telling. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator Moody. [2:19:10] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, I'm the most junior member of the Senate here, [2:19:18] showing from where I sit. I just got here last year. Many of you may remember I was the Attorney [2:19:25] General in Florida who fought back against the lockdowns, the school closures, the church closures, [2:19:32] the everything to embrace sanity and science. We fought back. We got ridiculed for it. And we didn't [2:19:43] just call people names. We actually impaneled a grand jury of people of all walks of life, [2:19:53] all political persuasions. So that's how I came here, fighting for a free state amongst states that [2:20:05] had locked their own people down. We are now called the Free State of Florida. And I believe our [2:20:11] responsibility here is to make sure that government remembers the people are our bosses, that we [2:20:20] report to them, that we're accountable to them. Government shouldn't operate for itself. Government [2:20:27] operates on behalf of and for the American people. And anytime we get close to reporting back to our [2:20:35] bosses about what government has done or how it's been abused or how individuals that are employed by [2:20:41] the government had acted in their own self-interest or against the interests of the American people, [2:20:45] every time we get close, if we start uncovering outrageous fraud, we'll have a hearing. And the [2:20:54] tactics have been to not show up. So you'll have all of us over here trying to drill down on why we've [2:20:59] been given money that actually works against American citizens, and no one shows up. Today, there's, well, [2:21:08] nobody's here at the moment. Today, there seems to be a difficult, a different tactic. Today, we have [2:21:15] Democrats showing up and trying to spin why we shouldn't even be having this hearing, [2:21:19] to report back to our bosses. One said, today's hearing does damage, it will deter others from [2:21:25] public service. Another said, this hearing is designed to entrap you. Another said, [2:21:32] one fell all over himself flattering you, thanking you for your service multiple times, quoting man in [2:21:38] the marina. Another said that we are demeaning first responders, and today is a sad play in a [2:21:50] repeated playbook, or we're going after one man. I mean, all of their time was used on why we should [2:21:57] not be having the hearing to report back to our bosses and give the people accountability. So I would [2:22:07] like to talk about that because I believe that trust, the trust the American people place in our public [2:22:13] health institutions, and what happened to that trust during COVID is important. Because in a public health [2:22:19] emergency, they are asked to make extraordinary sacrifices based on advice given to them by the [2:22:26] government that is supposed to be working for them. And for that system to work, the public has to be [2:22:33] able to trust them, trust the people giving them instructions. That trust depends on candor. Would you [2:22:39] agree with that, Dr. Fauci? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights [2:22:48] under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. And when the evidence is uncertain, officials need to [2:22:53] say so. When recommendations are based on assumptions rather than hard data, they need to say so. And when [2:23:00] they get something wrong, they need to own it. And when the trust is lost and the consequences extend far [2:23:06] beyond any single pandemic, the next time public health officials genuinely need Americans to listen, [2:23:14] millions of people may simply ignore them or not believe them. And Dr. Fauci, you were undeniably the face of [2:23:21] the federal government's COVID response. You said so yourself in your diary. You said it's not [2:23:26] hyperbole to say I've become the most famous and talked about person in the country. So I want to [2:23:33] understand how we got here. Let's start at the beginning. On March 8th, 2020, you appeared on 60 [2:23:43] minutes to discuss the spread of COVID-19. You're specifically asked to clear up the confusion and [2:23:47] misinformation surrounding masks. You told the American people right now in the United States, people should not [2:23:53] be walking around with a mask. The interviewer immediately stopped you and said, are you sure [2:23:58] of it? Because people are listening really closely to this. And instead of walking back or qualifying your [2:24:04] statement in any way, you doubled down. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're [2:24:09] in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little better. It might even block [2:24:13] a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think it is. And often there are [2:24:18] unintended consequences. People keep fiddling with their masks. They keep touching their face. Just [2:24:23] a few weeks later, the CDC released its guidance recommending that Americans wear masks in public. [2:24:29] You were asked to explain your original recommendation. You emphasized a very different [2:24:34] consideration. You said, well, back then the critical issue was to save the masks for the people who [2:24:40] really needed them because it was felt there was a shortage of masks. So I want everybody to sit with [2:24:46] that. The critical issue driving your initial recommendation to the American public was scarcity, [2:24:53] logistics, not medical evidence. So when you told the American people there was no reason to wear a mask, [2:25:02] what was your principal objective? Giving them an honest assessment of the medical evidence or [2:25:06] discouraging them from consuming a scarce supply of masks? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully [2:25:15] decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Well, unfortunately, [2:25:21] that was just the beginning of a broader pattern. Let's talk about the six-foot distancing rule. [2:25:26] In April 5th, 2020, an interview on CBS said, every time I get to that podium in the White House [2:25:31] briefing room, I always essentially plead with people, please take a look at those very simple [2:25:36] guidelines of physical separation. And they're very, very clear. Physically separate six feet away. [2:25:42] Yet when Congress finally asked you in 2024 what science supported that evidence, six-foot distance rule [2:25:47] for COVID? You admitted you were not aware of any studies supporting it. Incredibly, you said the six-foot [2:25:54] rule sort of just appeared and described it as an empiric decision that wasn't based on data. And that rule [2:26:03] had real consequences. Schools didn't open back up. Businesses didn't open back up. Churches didn't open [2:26:11] back up. I could go on and on and on. And Americans were kept physically separated from one another during the [2:26:19] most difficult moments of their lives. Many lost loved ones during that time. So, Dr. Fauci, [2:26:28] did you have any evidence to support a six-foot separation rule when you gave that advice to [2:26:33] Americans? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the [2:26:41] Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. All right. Well, let's look at the lockdowns then. By 2022, [2:26:45] the consequences of prolonged COVID lockdowns on our children were clear from delayed development to [2:26:50] social isolation, which is probably why you were asked in July 2022 whether you would recommend [2:26:56] locking down schools again. And you said, first of all, I didn't recommend locking anything down, [2:27:03] but now we have your diary. And it tells a very different story from the one you told the public. [2:27:10] And I will quote, I spoke with Bill de Blasio, the mayor of NYC, and convinced him based on what I was [2:27:15] saying publicly in my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools, he had already decided based on what I was [2:27:20] saying on TV. I went on to tell him he should close the bars and restaurants in NYC, and he said he would [2:27:26] do this based on my recommendation. You even said that you told the president we should shut the whole [2:27:32] country down. So, Dr. Fauci, how do you square telling the American people publicly that you didn't [2:27:39] recommend locking anything down with your own diary entry kept on federal government equipment, [2:27:45] saying that your recommendation is what convinced the mayor and the president to lock things down? [2:27:54] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth [2:27:59] Amendment to the Constitution. Now, I just want to make clear that when in Florida we were pleading [2:28:05] with people to give us advice based on scientific evidence, that we were getting these conflicting [2:28:17] statements by you that didn't match scientific data. And in fact, when we impaneled a grand jury, [2:28:25] the grand jury's conclusion, not surprising to anyone. And by the way, we're still the only state [2:28:31] to have impaneled a grand jury. I was the only attorney general to do this. We did this in 2023. [2:28:37] That conclusion was the lockdown mask and social distancing advice ministered by federal agencies [2:28:43] and implemented by certain local state and federal agencies was not based on the best available [2:28:48] scientific data. In fact, many recommendations and their accompanying mandates departed significantly [2:28:53] from available research. Again, people from all walks of life, all political persuasions, [2:29:03] that is what they found. And yet during that time, while you were giving those statements, [2:29:08] knowing there was no scientific basis for it, and we know now you knew it because we have your diary entries, [2:29:15] you called the governor that I worked with to fight to keep Washington and D.C. out of our state, [2:29:24] so that we could indeed respect the rights of our citizens. You called our governor, [2:29:31] Governor DeSantis, and I'm going to quote this so I get it right, right out of your journals, [2:29:36] a total jerk, that he is a complete disgrace, that he is blocking local authorities from mandating masks [2:29:45] in various locations, including schools. And you were very concerned and upset that we were actively, [2:29:53] and I'm going to quote, criticizing you. And we talked virtually every day about being wrong on [2:29:59] everything. And what is astounding is that you wrote, you feared because of that, because we were [2:30:07] questioning our government, because we were fighting back for the truth from our government, [2:30:13] from scientifically based recommendations, because we were pushing for that. You said, [2:30:19] you feared that our democracy is in dire danger. Thank goodness we have people up here that I work [2:30:29] with that understand our role, which is to report to our bosses, the people, because they are in charge, [2:30:39] calling for our government to be honest with us and transparent with us and accountable to us. [2:30:48] That is a democracy. What you did is the opposite. And I cannot believe I have to explain this to someone [2:30:59] who represented our government and some of the most important issues for so long. [2:31:03] And before I conclude, if I can just put up our pardon, this is the pardon you have heard so much [2:31:10] about. And Dr. Fauci, the only other person that got a pardon like this, I believe, had a last name [2:31:17] of Biden. This pardon goes back to, and if you'll see, January the 1st of 2014. Did you talk to [2:31:26] President Biden and ask for this pardon? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based [2:31:34] upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Who did you talk to in the White [2:31:38] House about this pardon? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my [2:31:44] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Did you specifically ask that it be dated back [2:31:49] to the beginning of 2014? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my [2:31:56] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Did you do that so that you would be given [2:32:02] immunity going back to the beginning of 2014? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer [2:32:11] based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. I'm just very interested [2:32:16] why it was this date. Did it have anything to do with the fact that 2014 was also the year [2:32:21] that the NIAID or NIH began funding EcoHealth Alliance's Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus [2:32:29] Emergence Grant? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the [2:32:36] Fifth Amendment to the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. And this is the same grant that funded the work on bat [2:32:40] coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute on Virology. Millions of Americans are questioning what happened [2:32:51] during COVID, why we were getting given misleading information, misleading advice, why you gave conflicting [2:32:58] statements based on, I guess, how you were feeling that day. And Americans rightfully, we lost over a million [2:33:07] Americans. They should be insulted when the Democrats insult our chair that he's doing this because he is [2:33:14] on an obsessive mission to go after one man. Could his obsession, obsessive mission be to find out why [2:33:21] American, a million Americans died and who might be responsible for that and where that started? Could that [2:33:27] be his mission, Dr. Fauci? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the [2:33:38] Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. And after everything we have just walked through, can you [2:33:42] sit here today and tell the American people, our bosses, that you bear no responsibility for their [2:33:48] collapse in trust of their government? It's based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the [2:33:58] Constitution. Time has expired. We're going to do another quick round for those who remain. About five [2:34:05] minutes. Any questions that haven't come up that are pressing, let's try not to re-go over territory that's [2:34:12] already been done. I'll begin by asking unanimous consent to insert into the record documents show [2:34:17] that show that the CIA transferred funds to NIAID through interagency agreement. Hearing no objection, [2:34:24] so ordered. We had hoped to hear testimony from Anthony Fauci today. We haven't. But I think it's [2:34:30] important that we do hear from him. So we will have a video we'll play in a moment. For years, Anthony Fauci [2:34:39] has been the public face of saying this in all likelihood came from nature. He kept saying it's the [2:34:44] marketplace. It's the marketplace. It's a marketplace. He's been saying that on television up until [2:34:49] recently. But what we find is that what he was saying in public is different than what he was saying [2:34:54] in private. In January, in private, he wrote that looks like the wet market was a super spreader event. [2:35:01] It didn't originate there. We know that some of the earliest deaths and sickness came from somewhere else. [2:35:06] But then for years and years, we got dishonesty. So let's play the video so we can see a little [2:35:12] juxtaposition of the problem we're dealing with. Fauci's journal entries contradict what he said [2:35:21] publicly about the origins of COVID-19. Fauci admitted in January 2020 that the initial outbreak [2:35:28] of COVID did not occur at a wet market. Take a really good look at the animal-human [2:35:34] interface and the fact that animals from the wild are being brought into wet markets. You have animals [2:35:40] that come out of the wild that are sold at these open, what they call them, wet markets. [2:35:46] Wet markets, where you bring animals in from the wild who have these viruses. [2:35:51] The wet markets in Asia, where people bring animals from the forest into a market, [2:35:58] there are wet markets in Wuhan that are ample opportunity for a virus to jump from an animal. [2:36:06] The origin was from a bat to an intermediate host to a human, very likely in a wet market. [2:36:12] And those animals should not have been in the Wuhan market. They knew that those animals should not [2:36:17] have been in the market, and they immediately cleaned out the market, put restrictions on the [2:36:23] kinds of animals that come into these wet markets. I think they should shut down those things right away. [2:36:30] I mean, it just, it boggles my mind. So repeatedly saying in public different, [2:36:38] something different than what he believed in private. Now, this is interesting because, [2:36:42] you know, the first SARS outbreak in 2000-2003 was traced to a wet market to animals there. [2:36:48] But interestingly, they had evidence. They had evidence that the animals had the disease. [2:36:52] They also had evidence that the handlers had a disproportionately high [2:36:55] number of antibodies to the disease. So there was evidence, and the evidence was presented. [2:37:00] So when this came out, the same thing happened again. They did look at the wet market. [2:37:04] They looked at the wet market and tested, I think, 80,000 animals and didn't find any [2:37:08] animals that had COVID-19. When they did find COVID-19 and trace samples there, [2:37:13] they found that the DNA or the RNA was consistent with human spread. [2:37:19] This was known not later on, didn't take years to develop, was known in January of 2020. [2:37:24] And so Dr. Fauci says privately, he knows it's, it didn't come from the wet market. But as you saw, [2:37:29] those were over a multi-year period. One of the other discussions I've had with Dr. Fauci over the [2:37:34] years about natural immunity. So most infections, you get a degree of immunity, not perfect, [2:37:40] some fairly perfect. Smallpox, you just don't get again. George Washington knew this. He had his [2:37:45] wife get vaccinated, but he didn't because he'd already had smallpox. But there's one particular story [2:37:51] that a man came up to me and lost his wife to COVID. He said, we all got it. We all got sick. [2:37:57] And my wife ended up getting sick enough to go to the hospital. But they, we'd recovered two weeks. [2:38:02] She was still alive. Two to three weeks later, we'd all recovered and they wouldn't let us be with [2:38:06] her. And to this day, it's one of the saddest things. And it just, you know, I think all of us [2:38:11] should think about this. They were not allowed to visit their mom. He wasn't allowed to visit his wife [2:38:15] in the hospital. But based on this misunderstanding of natural immunity, that for some reason, [2:38:20] two weeks later, they were a problem. But this was all promulgated by you. We had the workers in [2:38:27] the, you know, the meat factories. They were essential. They had to keep working. Most of them got [2:38:31] COVID. They got it in the first couple of weeks. Most of them were younger. The reassurance should [2:38:35] have come from public health. The reassurance should have said, Congratulations, you've recovered. [2:38:40] It also should be acknowledged. What's the number one thing we can do if we get another pandemic [2:38:45] before we have a vaccine, before we have monoclonal antibodies? It would be to utilize natural [2:38:50] immunity. So instead of the advice you were giving to Cuomo and others in New York that led to the [2:38:55] deaths of hundreds of thousands of people or tens of thousands of people, you could have been saying, [2:39:00] well, maybe the nurses taking care of the elderly should be people who are two weeks out from COVID [2:39:05] infection. We could have used natural immunity as somewhat of a block of protection. Imperfect, [2:39:11] but the only protection we had and the only thing we could have done. Instead, the nursing homes were [2:39:16] seeded, seeded with people who had COVID. So I think the discussion of natural immunity is one where [2:39:22] there wasn't sufficient honesty, humility. There wasn't enough presentation to encourage people. [2:39:27] That was the only encouraging thing we had for a while is you've got it. You're very, very, if not [2:39:33] impossible, close to impossible chance that you'll die if you get it again. Everybody could have been [2:39:38] reassured. Nobody was reassured. It's like, well, we don't know. We just don't quite understand natural [2:39:42] immunity. My favorite quote from that is from Martin Koldor from Harvard. You called him one of the [2:39:48] people he had to take down, the fringe epidemiologist, which I've never, ever heard a scientist call [2:39:53] another scientist that. But he jokingly said on Twitter, he said, yeah, we knew about natural immunity [2:39:59] from 486 BC, from the time of the Athenian plague. We lost all knowledge of it in 2020. The good news is it's [2:40:09] slowly coming back 24 to 20, 2025. We're beginning to understand what natural immunity is again. [2:40:14] Not something perfect, but a useful tool that could have been used, but also something that could have [2:40:19] helped people by telling the public, my goodness, you're not going to die now. You have a chance. [2:40:24] If you've already had it, you're 85 years old, you're at risk for it. You're wanting to feed your wife [2:40:28] and they're telling you to wear four masks and not be around your wife when you've already had it. [2:40:32] It made no sense. I visited with a man whose mom was 83 and she was dying from COVID. They go to the [2:40:40] hospital in Orange County. They won't admit her to the hospital till she's vaccinated because we have [2:40:45] a policy that everybody in the hospital must be vaccinated. She's got COVID and they wanted to [2:40:50] vaccinate her again. At one point in time, the CDC understood this. They told people don't get [2:40:55] vaccinated if you've had COVID within three months. Why? Because it may give you a heightened immune [2:41:00] response when you've already got a heightened immune response. But giving a person very sick [2:41:05] and many of the people who died from COVID died from this storm of response, this immune storm, [2:41:13] the answer wouldn't be try to stir up their immune response more by giving them a vaccine. The answer [2:41:18] was actually steroids and good old fashioned steroids, 37% reduction in death. It turned out to be way more [2:41:24] valuable than remdesivir, way more valuable than any of the other treatments. But I don't remember ever [2:41:28] hearing a complimentary word on natural immunity or steroids or anything else. And, you know, [2:41:34] I wish we could have done more today. I would have been willing to accept an apology today. [2:41:39] I'm sorry I made mistakes. We all made mistakes. And, you know, at the time, I thought the gain of [2:41:43] function research was, you know, the risks of it were worth the benefits. But, but I've reassessed since [2:41:49] 15 million people died. People say, well, gosh, these things never happened. We know it happened in 1977. [2:41:55] We know with 100% certainty a virus escaped. In 1977, there's something called the Russian flu. [2:42:01] Nobody's exactly positive how it got out. But when they sequenced it, they found out that a flu in 1977 [2:42:07] had exactly the same RNA as a 1954 one that they had in the lab and they had created a vaccine for. In [2:42:14] fact, turns out anybody born before 1954 was immune. And the only people who got it were people who had [2:42:20] mourn between 1954 and 1977. But it was identical. The genetic sequence was identical to this vaccine [2:42:28] or the virus from 1954. And that doesn't happen because these respiratory viruses are always mutating. [2:42:33] To be identical means it had to have leaked from the lab proof positive that it had. So we know this happens. [2:42:41] Author by the name of Young wrote a book and said there was 1200 cases of significant accidents that have occurred. [2:42:48] We knew all of this, and yet it was completely discounted because I think you were worried [2:42:53] that if it was seen that you funded dangerous research to start the pandemic, you'd get blamed. [2:42:58] And it was a concerted effort. It wasn't just you. Anybody associated with the funding decided [2:43:04] we needed to protect ourselves. Senator Johnson. [2:43:06] Hey, Mr. Chairman. You mentioned that we lost knowledge of natural immunity. I didn't. [2:43:12] Dr. Fauci did. I suppose I had an asymptomatic case of COVID because of the very faulty PCR test. [2:43:19] I never got vaccinated or injected. There's no way I would have done that because I [2:43:23] found out enough about the mRNA gene therapy. But you also brought up the issue of hospital protocols. [2:43:31] I'm going to be holding a public event on hospital protocols. We've already received a couple hundred [2:43:35] testimonies. They are heart-wrenching. They are heart-wrenching. Here's an excerpt from the [2:43:43] testimony of a staff surgeon, very experienced, you know, doctor for decades, at Providence Regional [2:43:48] Medical Center, Everett, Washington. Quote, [2:43:50] After our hospital was given remdesivir by the CDC, we were provided misleading slash inaccurate [2:43:56] information about the drug biomedical leadership. When I had a young trauma patient who was a perfect [2:44:01] candidate for remdesivir, the infectious disease doctor on call told me to not give it to her [2:44:07] because, quote, she seemed like a nice girl. He concludes it was known early that remdesivir kills. [2:44:16] As I said, nurses referred to it as run, death is near. So again, I've always been, you know, [2:44:22] because it never made sense to me that we put all of our eggs in the experimental gene therapy. [2:44:29] If you knew anything about it, you would have avoided it like a plague. And we sabotaged early [2:44:35] treatment. But the only treatment we really approved, monoclonal antibodies, which I think [2:44:40] basically worked pretty well, but those weren't particularly available. They were denied an awful [2:44:44] lot of patients. It was all remdesivir. Based on a study that the NIH changed the endpoint from [2:44:51] mortality because it had no impact on mortality. Today's recovery, a drug that the WHO recommended [2:44:57] against its use in COVID in November of 2020, but a drug that cost over $3,000 for a course of [2:45:05] treatment versus things like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, who even Dr. Fauci, and I should [2:45:12] have got that one out because I want to take this time to enter things in the record, said, you know, [2:45:16] we need to have a very tight protocol on remdesivir because it's unknown. But hydroxychloroquine, [2:45:20] I mean, that's approved, some side effects, but we have a long history of it. Let's put up my latest [2:45:25] chart. Again, I was tracking adverse events on the experimental injection. But I use this chart [2:45:34] as a comparison. So we've got ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine. These are average, again, [2:45:40] doesn't improve causation, but there's correlation. It's there for safety signals. So ivermectin, [2:45:47] over 30 years of FDA reports, 17 deaths per year. Hydroxychloroquine, over 38 years of reporting, [2:45:54] 142 deaths per year. Remdesivir, over five and a half years, 546 deaths per year. [2:46:03] The COVID injection, almost 7,000 deaths per year. Which is safest? What did the FDA freak us out [2:46:11] about ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, when they turn a complete blind's eye toward the injections [2:46:17] injury? So I want to enter the quote from the surgeon. By the way, here's the answer. Sheryl [2:46:23] Atkinson, in an interview, said that when it comes to money, we check financial ties among experts on [2:46:27] the government panel devising coronavirus treatment guidelines, which had the effect [2:46:32] of dialing back hydroxychloroquine use and giving an edge to remdesivir. We found the 11 members [2:46:37] reporting links to a drug company. Nine of them named relationships to remdesivir's maker, Gilead. [2:46:42] Seven more, including two of the committee leaders, have ties to Gilead beyond the 11 months [2:46:47] they had to disclose. Two were on Gilead's advisory board. Others were paid consultants who received [2:46:52] research support and honoraria. By the way, within the study, I think one of the study participants [2:46:58] was an employee of Gilead. A bunch also had conflicts with Gilead. So, gee, I wonder why. You know, [2:47:04] their conflicts of interest, Gilead made billions of dollars off remdesivir and people died. [2:47:09] In terms of ignoring safety signals, you can probably put that down now, this has come to [2:47:15] light. This is Dr. Drew Weissman, who got the Nobel Prize for the mRNA platform. He wrote to Dr. [2:47:22] Fauci on February 8th of 2020. Tony, I wanted to alert you to some new data we generated with our [2:47:28] mRNA-LNP vaccine. Now, it was a higher fold dose, but that mRNA-LNP go to the placenta and fetus [2:47:37] measured by translation of the mRNA and cause of immune response in an amniotic fluid. So, that same [2:47:45] day, Dr. Fauci responds, it'd be interesting to see what human dose levels given intermuscular do. So, [2:47:56] about a month later, Dr. Weissman replies, he said, we still have some concerns over the data after [2:48:02] they tested it at IM. Now, again, there's more documentation in terms of the FDA blew it off. [2:48:07] It's like, ah, don't worry about that. That was the whole thing. That's what Peter Marks did when [2:48:12] he was shown that his algorithm was going to mask safety signals. The last thing I want to enter in [2:48:18] the record here is, and I want to make the point, you know, why is this important? That they buried the [2:48:27] treatment of severely injection injured. The fact that we haven't acknowledged these injection [2:48:32] injuries, these people can't get treatment. They're being gaslit by their doctors. So, [2:48:37] it's all in your head. The rate of the injection injured of suicides is increasing because they've [2:48:42] given up hope because our medical establishment and federal health agencies completely failed them, [2:48:47] failing to acknowledge it. So, again, Dr. Nath was treating, diagnosing and treating injection [2:48:52] injured in March of 2021. This concerned people. So, you had Dr. Walter Koroshetz writes Dr. Fauci, [2:49:03] one of the points he made, there's been a steady, slow stream of reports to me of post-vaccination [2:49:07] neurological conditions. Dr. Nath has been collecting a bunch. He has reports sent out to publish. Well, [2:49:15] that alarmed everybody. Boy, you can't let the public know what's actually happening. You can't [2:49:20] actually let the public know what the science is showing. So, on April 29th, an email from Francis [2:49:29] Collins, head of NIH, to Dr. Koroshetz says, I find this approach troubling and will have the main [2:49:36] consequence of feeding vaccine hesitancy and social media overreaction. Then Dr. Lawrence Tabek writes [2:49:45] to Francis Collins, I don't understand why Walter does not shut this thing down. Why don't you shut [2:49:54] down Dr. Nath, who's actually treating injection injured? Why? Because of vaccine hesitancy. And [2:50:02] because we haven't acknowledged that. And the reason I've been advocating for this is because I know the [2:50:07] injection injured. I know people who have lost loved ones within days of the injection. And we've turned [2:50:15] our backs on them. They deserve acknowledgement. They deserve to be heard, seen, and believed so [2:50:22] they can get treatment. I also know the doctors whose careers were destroyed because you denigrated [2:50:29] things like ivermectin and denied ivermectin to people in hospitals who got their kidneys knocked [2:50:35] out by their indesivir but got put on ventilators, never got to hug their loved ones goodbye because [2:50:41] of those hospital protocols. That's what your science did to people. So, Dr. Fauci, my only question is, [2:50:48] based on your lack of testimony here today, based quite honestly on our investigation into the [2:50:56] cover-up of safety signals and injection injuries, we have issued letters to a number of former FDA [2:51:03] officials to come in for transcribed interviews. You will be getting a letter today asking for a [2:51:08] volunteer tri-screwed transcribed interview. So, I'd be asking, will you comply or will I have to [2:51:14] subpoena you? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the [2:51:20] fifth amendment to the constitution. Expect a subpoena. Thank you. Senator Scott. Dr. Fauci, [2:51:27] did you personally receive any royalty payments connected to COVID-related intellectual property? [2:51:31] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth [2:51:37] amendment to the constitution. Given that NIH receives royalty payments from certain pharmaceutical [2:51:42] companies, why would any American believe these financial ties did not influence decisions about which [2:51:46] treatments were promoted or restricted? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer [2:51:52] based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution. Why doesn't NIAID publicly [2:51:59] disclose these payments? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [2:52:05] rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution. Did you partner with Bill Gates on global health [2:52:10] initiatives or vaccines? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [2:52:16] rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution. How much did Bill Gates entities provide in funding [2:52:21] to NIAID collectively since 2005? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based [2:52:28] upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution. To your knowledge, did Bill Gates [2:52:32] partner with China on sensitive research? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based [2:52:38] upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution. Specifically dual use research such as [2:52:44] counter measures or gain a function. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based [2:52:50] upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution. Do you know if Bill Gates entities [2:52:54] partnered with US government classified programs? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer [2:53:00] based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution. Do you know if Bill Gates maintains [2:53:04] an active national security clearance? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based [2:53:10] upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution. Did you advocate a request for Bill Gates to [2:53:14] receive a security clearance on the advice of counsel i respectfully decline to answer based [2:53:20] upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution you have any knowledge that niaid or [2:53:25] nih through hhs sponsored or requested a security clearance for bill gates on the advice of counsel [2:53:31] i respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution [2:53:35] around 2010 my understanding is that the government shifted its approach to biodefense countermeasure [2:53:40] research did niaid under your leadership partner with the obama white house or any other u.s [2:53:45] government classified entities on sensitive countermeasures research on the advice of [2:53:50] counsel i respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the [2:53:54] constitution did your office take steps to drive biological research investments on the advice of [2:54:01] counsel i respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution [2:54:06] what was private industry's take on the type of research in the 2010 time frame and before [2:54:10] on the advice of counsel i respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth [2:54:15] Amendment to the Constitution. Was it considered too dangerous to conduct an industry that was [2:54:19] hesitant to take this on and invest in? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully [2:54:24] declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:54:28] Why did you take steps to mature the government's approach to biodefense? [2:54:32] On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights [2:54:36] under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Were there any specific lines of effort or [2:54:40] actions you felt were needed during this time to improve the research development and fielding [2:54:44] model? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under [2:54:50] the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. How was dual-use and gain-of-function incorporated [2:54:54] or accounted for in maturing biodefense countermeasures? On the advice of counsel, [2:54:59] I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:55:03] Did you ever discuss moving gain-of-function countermeasures research out of government [2:55:07] space to private industry space? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based [2:55:13] upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. How were these private [2:55:17] organizations regulated through government oversight while conducting risky research, [2:55:21] including gain-of-function or gene editing technology? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully [2:55:26] decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. [2:55:30] Did the Obama White House or any government entities take steps to inject funding into [2:55:33] private industry? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon [2:55:38] my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. How do you ensure that our [2:55:42] national security and public health is protected when private organizations work with foreign [2:55:45] countries of concern and have the no government oversight, such as the EcoHealth Alliance [2:55:51] research grant you funded in a CCP military lab? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to [2:55:59] answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Did any, did, [2:56:04] given the culture of the pay-to-play NIAID, did you or anyone acting on your behalf make any payment [2:56:11] or injure any arrangement in any way or fashion to secure influence the broad pardon you received [2:56:16] from President Biden? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [2:56:22] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to ask unanimous [2:56:27] consent to enter into the record a letter from the Department of Energy that confirms during Anthony [2:56:33] Fauci's tenure that Bill Gates was given Q security clearance from 2014 to 2021. Without objection, that will be [2:56:42] entered into the record. I'd also ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the contents of the folder [2:56:48] of authorities provided to Dr. Fauci, including the pardon. Let's be clear today, you know, what we've seen. [2:57:02] I really did want to hear from Dr. Fauci. I wanted to hear perhaps an apology, perhaps some semblance of [2:57:12] being sorry for what happened or that judgment errors were made. We didn't hear any of that. [2:57:16] But he was subpoenaed here to testify, refused to answer any questions even after being directed by the chair [2:57:23] and being advised of the law requiring him to do so. He has cited a privilege that is unsupported [2:57:29] because of his blanket pardon and because he waived the privilege by testifying at the start. [2:57:34] I'm going to give you one more opportunity to comply with the law limited to the period of your pardon [2:57:40] at any point between January 1st, 2014 and January 19th, 2025. Did you destroy any federal record or [2:57:50] tell anyone else to? Under the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights [2:58:00] under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Given that you have a unlimited presidential pardon, [2:58:07] what is your specific objection that you are making? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline [2:58:13] to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. My question [2:58:17] was limited to the period of your pardon only. I find your objection unsupported and direct you [2:58:22] to answer the question. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my [2:58:28] rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Because you refused to answer citing a privilege [2:58:33] that is unsupported because of your pardon, and after being denied to do so, this committee is [2:58:39] scheduled to vote next week on a resolution certifying your contempt. I think we have another [2:58:46] question or two from Senator Langford. Chairman, really, this is a question for you. And it's a [2:58:53] question to try to figure out how do we get a good answer on this. Because clearly, Dr. Fauci's [2:58:59] attorneys are saying that he has a Fifth Amendment right. We've also subpoenaed him to be able to compel [2:59:05] his testimony to be able to be here. I happen to be in the committee. We're also dealing with Lois Lerner. [2:59:11] Lois Lerner came and testified, gave an opening statement, and then took the Fifth Amendment. The [2:59:19] committee then held her in contempt for that, saying you can't do both. You can't both testify [2:59:24] and say I'm not going to answer questions. So the parliamentary question that I think we've got to be [2:59:29] able to deal with is, is this consistent with Lois Lerner? What she also did when she came before [2:59:34] Congress, gave an opening statement testimony. So made a statement and then refused to answer questions. [2:59:40] Are we dealing with the same issue here where someone is making you can't make a statement and say I'm not [2:59:46] going to make statements at the same time? I think it's a very good question. I think that's something [2:59:50] all of us will examine over the next week. We're going to have a vote next week on contempt. [2:59:54] I think there's another legal question that the courts may have to [2:59:58] to decide upon, and that is whether or not [3:00:02] a presidential pardon that offers you complete immunity that you can still claim that you need [3:00:08] protection from immunity when you've been protected. Because Dr. Fauci isn't liable for anything, as long as he tells the truth, [3:00:14] even if he admits that he destroyed records on a routine basis. His [3:00:18] assistant said she destroyed a ton of emails. I think it was a routine thing. I think he destroyed [3:00:23] throughout his career. There are probably thousands of emails. Even if he did that, as long as he answered truthfully, [3:00:29] yes, I did. I didn't think that was important. I made a mistake. You can't be prosecuted for it. [3:00:36] Many of the things are outside the statute of limitations as well. All he had to do today, [3:00:40] if he wanted to testify, to be honest. As long as he was honest, even about committing a crime, [3:00:44] he would have no jeopardy. But I think the pardon has given him more immunity than most people would [3:00:51] ever get. If you offer a witness immunity in exchange for testimony, he has blanket immunity. [3:00:56] The president gave him blanket immunity for virtually anything he could have possibly done while at NIH. [3:01:02] So I think we all have to individually answer this question. We welcome you to be part of helping us [3:01:09] figure out the question. But there will be a vote. At least right now, though, [3:01:12] we plan to be a vote next week on contempt. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [3:01:17] Today will be the capstone to Anthony Fauci's 40 years of abuse of power at NIH. In the end, [3:01:24] must imagine Fauci believes he got away with it. But still late at night, even the guilty must become [3:01:29] anxious, rerunning the scenarios through his mind, wondering, latching on to lingering doubts, [3:01:35] and worrying. Did his actions lead to the largest man-made plague in human history? Are the millions [3:01:41] dead the result of his experiments or experiments that he approved that increased the pathogenicity [3:01:47] of deadly viruses? History will judge. But the facts, as we now know them, paint a sordid tale of [3:01:53] dishonesty, misjudgment, and ultimately the hubris, the likes of which the world has rarely seen. If everyone [3:02:00] will remain seated for a few minutes, we're going to let Dr. Fauci exit. Thank you.