Anthony Fauci accused of perjury: Former White House doctor ‘LIED under oath about funding gain-of-function research in China – which is feared to have started Covid pandemic’, Republican Senator claims
- Senator Rand Paul has reiterated calls for Fauci’s testimony to be investigated
- Emails from Fauci to scientists about Covid’s origins were released last week
- READ MORE: Lab leak-condemning scientists believed it was ‘highly likely’
Dr Anthony Fauci was tonight accused of lying under oath over his knowledge of dangerous virus research in China — which is feared to have caused the pandemic.
DailyMail.com can reveal Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week calling for an investigation into whether Dr Fauci, 82, committed perjury when he testified in front of a Senate committee in 2021.
In a showdown with Republicans, including Sen Paul, in July that year, Dr Fauci testified that his former ‘has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’
Dr Fauci was the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until the end of 2022 and was responsible for signing off on research grants.
Yet newly released emails dated February 1, 2020 show Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.’
Perjury is a federal offense that carries up to five years in prison. While the emails show that Fauci was aware of gain-of-function going on in the lab, he never admitted that the NIH funded it.
But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined last month that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan University did receive NIH funding, Sen Paul said in his letter to AG Garland.
New emails dated February 1, 2020 show Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan’
On July 13, 2023 the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released the emails sent by Dr Fauci about a conference call regarding the origins of Covid attended by Dr Fauci, Dr Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and other researchers.
In one email, Dr Fauci admits the scientists had concerns that Covid might have been genetically engineered and that these were worsened by the fact that gain-of-function research was taking place in Wuhan before the pandemic.
Gain-of-function research is medical research that genetically alters a virus to make it more deadly or infectious to try and get ahead of natural mutations that might occur.
At the hearing in July, Fauci ‘stated that the NIH has never and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,’ Paul said in the committee chamber.
‘And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute by Doctor Shi [Zhengli] and was funded by the NIH,’ he said.
Paul then cited the paper by WIV scientists titled ‘Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus’.
The paper specifically talks about ongoing efforts to produce a ‘chimeric’ coronavirus, which means it has been altered by man – otherwise known as ‘gain of function.’
It also details, Paul noted, that the NIH was a source of funding for that research.
Senator Rand Paul got in a heated exchange with Dr. Anthony Fauci at a hearing in July 2021 when he again pushed the nation’s top immunologist on whether the U.S. funded gain of function research in Wuhan. Fauci responded with, ‘You do not know what you are talking about’
Paul gave Fauci the opportunity to retract his May 11 statement claiming the U.S. did not fund gain of function research with its $600,000 grant, saying ‘Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement?’
Fauci got quite animated during the exchange, as he pointed his fingers at Paul for being a ‘liar’
Paul pointed back his pencil, and insisted the evidence shows National Institute of Health funding went to the Wuhan lab, who he claims then used that money to do research on how to make a bat coronavirus transmittable to humans and more infectious and deadly
Paul asserted that the research recorded in the paper ‘explicitly matches the definition of gain-of-function research.’
‘This paper was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function,’ Fauci insisted.
But the newly released emails show Fauci referring to the research by scientists at Wuhan University as ‘gain-of-function experiments’.
Dr Shi Zhengli, also known as ‘bat lady’, a leading virologist based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, spent years researching bat coronaviruses with the aim of identifying those with the potential to infect people.
EXCLUSIVE: Scientists who denounced Covid lab leak theory as a conspiracy secretly believed it was ‘highly likely’
A renowned scientist who led the condemnation of the Covid lab leak theory privately believed it was ‘highly likely’, leaked messages show.
Both she and Beijing itself have vehemently and publicly denied the possibility that Covid could have emerged from experiments carried out at the lab.
Dr Zhengli graduated from Wuhan University in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in genetics and received her master’s degree from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 1990.
Last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan University received NIH funding, Sen Paul said in his letter to AG Garland.
It said: ‘The report noted that NIH funded the WIV’s project “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” and included “genetic experiments to combine naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in hybridized coronavirus strains.”
‘GAO also found that NIH funded the Wuhan University’s collaboration with WIV on viral detection in the Yunnan province.’
DailyMail.com has reached out to Fauci via the NIAID for comment.
As the former head of the NIH, Fauci presided over the allocation of taxpayer-funded grants for virus-enhancing research at the WIV years before the pandemic began.
A federal watchdog found the NIH ‘did not effectively monitor’ those experiments or check whether they involved pathogens with pandemic risk.
But there has still been no direct evidence for a natural or synthetic origin, which has left officials divided over the issue.
The Energy Department, FBI and several government committees believe the virus leaked from a lab, pointing to a number of coincidences and indirect evidence.
The WIV – one of the top bat virus hubs in the world – is located at the epicenter of the original Covid outbreak and suffered several security and infection control breaches before the pandemic.
The lab housed viruses considered Covid’s closest known relatives, and its research involved genetically engineering different strains to see how they would infect humans.
However, several other intelligence agencies maintain that the virus was transferred from animals to humans in a natural spillover event.
Advocates of the natural origin point to an early cluster of cases at an animal slaughter market just eight miles from the WIV, where animals known to harbor Covid, such as raccoon dogs, hedgehogs and rats, were kept in squalid conditions.
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