Former President Donald Trump released two statements in response to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s leaked emails, saying the U.S. is “fortunate” he did not follow Fauci’s advice.
“After seeing the emails, our Country is fortunate I didn’t do what Dr. Fauci wanted me to do,” Trump said in a statement Thursday.
The Washington Post obtained 866 pages of Dr. Fauci’s private emails dated from March to April 2020 in which the NIAID director was informed that COVID-19 “potentially” looked engineered and suggested that he had some knowledge of the U.S. funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research.
The former president said Fauci must give answers regarding his knowledge on gain-of-function research funding. Fauci denied that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded gain-of-function research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to experiment with coronaviruses.
“There are a lot of questions that must be answered by Dr. Fauci. The funding of Wuhan by the U.S. foolishly started by the Obama administration in 2014 but ended under the Trump administration,” the statement said. “What did Dr. Fauci know about ‘gain of function’ research, and when did he know it?”
NEW: Trump statement on Fauci:
“What did Dr. Fauci know about gain-of-function research and when did he know it?” pic.twitter.com/7N475vqdVb
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 3, 2021
In a separate statement released the same day, Trump claimed Fauci corresponded with China and that oppositional media outlets and politicians are beginning to admit he was right about the lab-leak theory.
China owes a large sum of money to the world for causing “death and destruction,” the statement said. (RELATED: Biden Claimed Trump ‘Muzzled’ Fauci-But Emails Reveal Fauci Said Otherwise)
“Now everyone, even the so-called ‘enemy,’ are beginning to say that President Trump was right about the China Virus coming from the Wuhan Lab. The correspondence between Dr. Fauci and China speaks too loudly to ignore,” Trump said. “China should pay Ten Trillion Dollars to America, and the World, for the death and destruction they have caused!”
The Trump administration had reportedly investigated whether the virus had originated from a lab rather than natural causes. While previously denied by most media outlets, the lab-leak theory has recently been considered a credible possibility.
Trump credited himself with “the life saving decision” of closing the borders when the COVID-19 pandemic hit with the intent of preventing the spread of the virus through travel, saying Fauci gave the former president credit for saving lives through the policy decision.
“I was later given credit, even by ‘Tony,’ [Fauci] for saving hundreds of thousands of lives,” the statement said.
Trump complained that Fauci did not credit him for the establishment of Operation Warp Speed that created the COVID-19 vaccine within nine months rather than an estimated three to four years.
The former president additionally took jabs at Fauci’s shifting stance on masks, saying that he was against masks in the beginning but became a “radical masker” during the escalation of the virus.
In a Feb. 4, 2020 email to Sylvia Burweel, the former secretary of Health and Human Services, Fauci said masks are only intended for infected people and are not effective in protecting an uninfected person from getting the virus, the New York Post reported.
