On Monday, politicians got together to engage in the time-honored tradition of arguing about COVID again. After a 15-month investigation by the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic — and bipartisan questioning of other public health officials — the Republican-controlled panel grilled former NIAID head and White House Coronavirus Task Force advisor Anthony Fauci over his response during the pandemic, and about the hotly disputed origins of the virus itself. Below are key moments from the testimony of the retired, yet still very much embattled, public health figure.
As Rep. Jim Jordan tried to pin Fauci to social media companies’ efforts to block the spread of the lab-leak theory, Fauci had some questions of his own:
In her time, the Georgia Representative repeatedly and intentionally called the doctor by the wrong title. “You’re Mr. Fauci in my few minutes,” she said. After going on about research on beagles and holding up pictures of Fauci pulling his facemask down in public, Greene was told by the committee chair that she should “recognize the doctor as a doctor.” She then said he should be sent to prison:
After Fauci stated that he has experienced numerous death threats since the beginning of the pandemic, Rep. Debbie Dingell asked him to expand. “Everything from harassments from emails, texts, letters of myself, my wife, my three daughters,” he replied. “There have been credible death threats leading to the arrest of two individuals — and credible death threats means someone who clearly was on their way to kill me. And it’s required my having protective services essentially all the time.”
The congresswoman from Staten Island made an effort to expose Fauci’s financial come-up during the pandemic. Unfortunately for her line of questioning, he said under oath no such windfall occurred:
Fauci also corrected the spin that he has denied the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy. “I’ve said multiple times that I don’t think the concept of there being a lab leak is inherently a conspiracy theory,” Fauci said. “What is a conspiracy theory is the kind of distortions of that particular subject, like, it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak. That’s a conspiracy.”
In his opening statement, the former White House denied a theory that he was involved early in the pandemic of a cover-up of the virus leaking from a lab in Wuhan, providing email transcripts showing otherwise. Fauci also stated that he remained open to either of the competing theories that COVID-19 was sourced to a wet market in China or that it leaked from a lab engaged in gain of function research altering viruses at the genetic level. “I have repeatedly stated that I have a completely open mind to either possibility and that if definitive evidence becomes available to validate or refute either theory, I will readily accept it,” he said.
Over the past several months, members of the select committee have been arguing about the role of a controversial non-governmental organization called EcoHealth Alliance, which is focused on conservation and pandemic prevention. During the pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance faced scrutiny for its coronavirus research with Chinese scientists, which Republicans say could have sparked the pandemic. So far, however the committee has failed to make a connection between EcoHealth Alliance and the COVID outbreak. And in a report released in early May, the committee did not provide any new evidence for the lab-leak theory. Still, EcoHealth Alliance lost its government funding in May amid the Congressional inquiry.
