Fauci to Face the Music

Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical adviser to the president who was regularly the face of the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, will give testimony to the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into how the crisis was managed.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will be interviewed on Monday and Tuesday for seven hours each day with two personal and two government lawyers in attendance. Fauci has agreed to attend a public hearing at a later date, which has yet to be confirmed.

Representative Brad Wenstrup, the subcommittee chair, said in a statement that Fauci's testimony will serve as a "crucial component" of its investigation.

"It is time for Dr. Fauci to confront the facts and address the numerous controversies that have arisen during and after the pandemic," the Republican from Ohio said. "Americans deserve trusted public health leaders who prioritize the well-being of our people over any personal or political goals."

Newsweek reached out to Fauci via email for comment on Friday.

The House Oversight Committee noted previous accusations made against Fauci, including that he attempted to obfuscate indirect United States funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology—which some suspect may have been the true origin of COVID-19, rather than the virus jumping the species barrier into humans—and that America had financed research to enhance viruses in a lab.

Two intelligence agencies have said they believe the pandemic started as a result of a mishap at the Chinese lab, something China has repeatedly denied.

Fauci came under fire after it emerged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—which he had been a key member of between 1984 and 2022—gave U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance a $3.7 million grant in 2014, $600,000 of which was sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study bat coronaviruses.

The leading immunologist denied repeatedly to Congress that the funding had been used for "gain-of-function" research, which seeks to enhance viruses to predict their evolution. Peter Daszak, the president of the research nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, told CNN in April 2020 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology did not have the virus that caused the pandemic.

In March, House Republicans released a memorandum that accused Fauci of orchestrating the publication of a scientific paper that would suggest against the lab leak theory. Fauci described this as "false and misleading" in a previous statement given to Newsweek.

He later said the allegations against him were "politically motivated" due to his public disagreements with then-President Donald Trump at the height of the pandemic and called claims he attempted to cover up a lab leak "conspiracy at its height" and "really ridiculous."