A top doctor whose research paper helped fuel the Dr. Anthony Fauci-led 'propaganda effort' to discredit the Covid Wuhan lab leak theory came under attack in a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley, from Missouri, ripped into Dr. Robert Garry during the hearing on the origins of COVID about his March 17, 2020 paper dismissing the lab leak theory.
The Republican put the doctor on the spot for publishing the piece that was used to discredit the lab leak theory - while in private emails just weeks before he cast doubt over whether it was scientifically possible for the virus to have originated in a Chinese market.
'I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature,' according to emails from February 2020 that were read out by Hawley in the hearing.
'I really can't think of a plausible, natural scenario where you can get from the bat virus, or one very similar to it to this. I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.'
But in the paper, Dr. Garry declared that COVID likely came from bats.
On Tuesday, Senator Hawley said Dr. Garry must have had a 'revelation from God' to change his view on Covid origins so quickly.
Dr. Robert Garry - the top doctor at Tulane University's medical school - shown above on the left at a previous hearing, was slammed by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Tuesday for publishing a paper on COVID-19's zoonotic origin while at the time claiming in emails he did not know how such a virus could jump from animals to humans
Dr. Garry defiantly retorted: 'You know, all we did was write a paper. 3,000 words. It's been one of the most scrutinized papers in history.'
Still, the doctor doubled down on the publication, saying 'It [has] held up very well.'
Hawley was irate, charging that Dr Garry with in lock-step with Fauci, who he claimed led a 'cabal' to discredit the possibility of a lab leak.
'Fauci goes to the WHO [and] asked the WHO to intervene to discredit the lab leak.'
'Then Fauci 'did these multiple interviews where he says 'no way no how, lab leak is not possible at all.'
'And then he coordinates - and the whole federal Government coordinates - with the biggest tech companies in the world to suppress, and media companies to suppress any American who would ask questions about it. It's absolutely disgraceful.'
'Dr. Garry, you are part of this propaganda effort,' Hawley continued. 'I mean, you are right at the center of it. It's astounding.'
However, the doctor defended the paper saying it was just an opinion piece.
Hawley claimed that Garry's publishing of the now famous 'proximal origins paper' in March 2020 helped Dr. Anthony Fauci discredit the lab leak hypothesis
According to Tuesday's testimony, Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (left) who is seen inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) lab above in 2017, learned research practices from Americans and the research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab were funded by the U.S.
Hawley said Garry must have had 'a revelation from God' to change mind on COVID's origins from his private emails in February 2020 - in which he said he could not draw a line from animal to human origins - to publishing a paper saying the virus surely came from animals in March 2020
Fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the top GOP lawmaker on the panel, also charged America's top federal health agencies with deliberately deceiving the the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which held the hearing.
'Today we are here to examine one of the most critical and debated questions of our time: Did COVID-19 originate in a lab?' Paul said at the start of the hearing.
He then told the packed Senate hearing room that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) have refused for years to provide Republicans and Democrats documents on their alleged risky lab work.
'This has been a deliberate prolonged effort to deceive the committee about certain gain-of-function research experiments that the agencies have been withholding,' Paul charged.
Sen. Rand Paul opened up the hearing alleging that the top U.S. federal health agencies - HHS and NIH - deliberately lied to the Senate committee to avoid turning over documents
No officials from HHS or NIH were present at the hearing on Tuesday
Additionally, another eminent doctor on the panel, Dr. Richard Ebright, testified that COVID had to have come from a lab based on its molecular configuration.
'No — zero — secure evidence points to COVID's natural origins,' he told the committee.
He mentioned how the closest animals found with the virus were more than 800 miles away from Wuhan in south China.
Ebright also noted how the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where the lab leak theory states the disease came from, has 'the world's largest research program on bat SARS viruses.'
And at the time of the outbreak the WIV had, Ebright testified, 'the world's largest collection of bat SARS viruses.'
Previously, Fauci had decried the idea that COVID originated in a lab as a conspiracy theory and worked with social media firms to throttle discussion online about the virus's origins.
Earlier this month, however, while testifying before Congress Fauci said he kept an open mind about the pandemics start, despite his actions.
Fauci's claimed on June 3 he had 'kept an open mind' about the lab leak theory and did not play a part in the 'push to downplay the lab leak theory.'
However Republicans claim Fauci is lying about that.
Fauci's account is 'contradicted by Facebook's decision to remove content about the lab leak theory because of 'pressure' from the Biden Administration, particularly the Response Team, of which you were a member,' House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to the pandemic patriarch.
The Judiciary committee has requested Fauci sit for further interviews.
