Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul detailed Monday on Fox how the National Institute of Health (NIH) refuses to disclose key discussions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paul appeared on “Hannity” to discuss Fauci’s hearing with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Lawmakers highlighted issues under Fauci’s leadership as former chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden during the pandemic. Fox host Sean Hannity asked Paul about Fauci’s push back of the origins of COVID-19.
Hannity asked Paul “how soon” into the COVID-19 pandemic could Fauci have potentially known that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. (RELATED: ‘Science Doesn’t Belong To Any One Person’: Lawmakers Grill Fauci On Pandemic Origins)
“January 27, there’s emails starting at 6 o’clock. They’re going across the ocean to Jeremy Farrar in England and back. They go on until three in the morning. At three in the morning, Anthony Fauci sends an e-mail to the head of the safety committee. The head of the safety committee should have seen this research but never did, and he sends him an email saying, ‘Hey, nothing to see here. Here’s a paper that says in all likelihood this came from animals not from a lab.’ Why’s he sending that to the head of the safety committee? Because the safety committee was never allowed to review this,” Paul stated.
“For three years I’ve been asking the NIH for the deliberations. If this is not gain of function, I want to see the discussion between the scientists. Fauci says,’Oh, the scientists! Up and down, they all said it wasn’t gain of function.’ Let me see the deliberations. I want to see the arguments for and against. They won’t reveal this. They are tighter lipped than the CIA on this. The NI[H] has resisted, really, requests from Democrats and Republicans.”
During the hearing, Fauci said he keeps an open mind on the origins of COVID, including the fact that it may have come from a lab, but thinks the data leans toward a “natural occurrence from an animal reservoir.”
Paul called out Fauci’s dismissal of Dr. David Morens, who worked under Fauci for 20 years. Morens testified in January that he had never considered the possibility of COVID-19 originating from a lab, admitting to not have looked at scientific evidence regarding a “potential lab leak or an engineered virus,” COVID Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup said in a press release.
“The Democrat chair of my committee has cosigned this request. It’s over a year old, and my individual requests are three years old. They have resisted, they have obscured and according to Fauci’s assistant that he threw under the bus today — David Morens — according to him it was a targeted cover up and that they destroyed emails and evidence. But today the most shocking and surprising thing was Anthony Fauci threw David Morens, a 20 year assistant, under the bus and acted as if he hardly ever met him. ‘He wasn’t part of the inner circle. He never made decisions, had no access to my office,’ all completely the opposite of what David Morens says,” Paul stated.
Fauci denied that NIAID-funded studies could have been the origin, before conceding that there was “a difference between the viruses that were funded by the NIH subaward versus anything else anyone in China might be doing.”
