Rand Paul asks DC US Attorney to probe Fauci for lying to Congress about US-funded COVID research in Wuhan
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has asked the top federal prosecutor for Washington, DC, to investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress about his knowledge of US-funded coronavirus research in Wuhan, China, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paul requested US Attorney Matthew Graves on Monday to consider charging Fauci for making false statements in May 2021 Senate testimony about government grants for gain-of-function research in Wuhan labs.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released new emails last month that show the former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director acknowledging the risky research was happening.
“Dr. Fauci testified that ‘the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,’” Paul told Graves in a letter obtained by The Post.
“In a subsequent hearing, I warned Dr. Fauci of the criminal implications of lying to Congress and offered him an opportunity to recant his previous statements,” the libertarian-leaning senator added.
“In response, Dr. Fauci stated that he had ‘never lied before the Congress’ and ‘d[id] not retract that statement.’ Dr. Fauci’s testimony is inconsistent with facts that have since come to light.”
The letter, which was first reported by DailyMail.com, comes weeks after Paul also referred Fauci to the Department of Justice for lying under oath on the matter.
Government officials convicted of making false statements to Congress face up to five years in prison, in addition to criminal fines.
An aide in Paul’s office told The Post that Attorney General Merrick Garland has not responded to the lawmaker’s request.
Fauci expressed alarm at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic 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,” according to an email dated Feb. 1, 2020.
He also related concerns to National Institutes of Health-associated scientists on a conference call that “there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.”
Those scientists included authors of a controversial paper Fauci prompted to debunk the so-called “lab leak theory” of COVID origins as well as then-NIH Director Francis Collins.
The House COVID panel retrieved more than 8,000 pages of internal communications from Fauci and other government scientists that revealed a shocking attempt to cover up evidence that COVID-19 may have been engineered.
“Tony doesn’t want his fingerprints on origin stories,” one veteran NIH official said in a July 29, 2021, email released by the subcommittee.
The NIH and US Agency for International Development gave $2,168,345 in grant funding between 2014 and 2021 to Chinese research institutions including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and Wuhan University, the Government Accountability Office reported in June.
Paul in his letter also pointed to an NIAID grant for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that led to a paper titled “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.”
“Before Congress, Dr. Fauci denied funding gain-of-function research, to the press he claims to have a dispassionate view on the lab leak hypothesis, and in private he acknowledges gain-of-function research at WIV to his colleagues,” Paul wrote.
“A congressional hearing, however, is not the place for a public servant to play political games – especially when the health and well-being of American citizens is on the line.”
