More than 3,200 pages of emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — covering the period from January to June 2020 — provide a rare glimpse into how Fauci approached his job during the biggest health crisis of the last century, showing him dealing directly with the public, health officials, reporters, and even celebrities. Many of which will shock the general public who, for nearly a year now, have been told inconsistent information via the main stream media and Fauci himself.
Many Republicans focused their grievances on the fact that Fauci received messages in early 2020 warning that the virus had been “engineered” or may have otherwise emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, while he was publicly dismissing the possibility.
“Newly released emails from White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci prove that he knew the Wuhan Institute of Virology was carrying out dangerous gain-of-function research”, Sen. Rand Paul charged Wednesday night.
“The emails paint a disturbing picture, a disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci, from the very beginning, worrying that he had been funding gain-of-function research,” Paul (R-Ky.) told Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” “and he knows it to this day, but hasn’t admitted it.”
“Two weeks ago in committee hearing, he [Fauci] said they did not fund any gain-of-function research,” Paul said Wednesday night. “I quoted that specific paper … He’s worried about this in February of last year, but only two weeks ago he tells me, ‘Oh, it wasn’t gain-of-function research.’”
Fauci and NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins have denied to lawmakers that any grant money for the Wuhan Institute of Virology was meant for gain-of-function research, defined by Fauci as “taking a virus that could infect humans and making it either more transmissible and/or pathogenic for humans.”
While both Fauci and Collins have previously admitted there’s no way of knowing whether researchers in Wuhan carried out undisclosed gain-of-function research, Fauci insisted during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing last week that such work “categorically was not done.”
“Big Tech was censoring posts about the Wuhan lab leak. The media was calling people who talked about the Wuhan lab leak conspiracy theorists,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) tweeted. “All while Fauci himself was emailing about COVID-19 possibly leaking from the Wuhan lab. Let that sink in.”
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows claimed to Fox News on Wednesday that Fauci did not relay any of the correspondence about the lab leak theory to the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force in early 2020.
“Part of the troubling thing that we’re seeing with these emails that are coming out is, not only do they seem to correspond with what President Trump said and what [then-] Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo said in terms of the origins of the virus,” Meadows said on “Hannity,” “but it indicates that Dr. Fauci had knowledge, or at least a suspicion, of things not happening in an evolutionary manner very early on, and he didn’t share that … That’s very troubling and something that we do need to get to the bottom of.”
“Fauci lost my trust long before this,” claimed Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas). “Never contextualizing his statements, never giving honest risk assessments, always treating us like we are too stupid to do anything but lockdown and wear masks forever. The emails show it was worse than we thought.”
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), who introduced a bill last month called the Fauci Incompetence Requires Early Dismissal (FIRED) Act, tweeted that it was “time for Americans to hear from other voices. Dr. Fauci has lost credibility.”