In the News

• On February 14, 2022, Republican leaders from the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to former NIH director Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Fauci “about their apparent attempts to suppress scientific debate and information about the origins of COVID-19.”

[LETTER EXCERPT]: We have significant concerns that your conduct, which appears to have been designed to protect China and, in furtherance of that, to suppress certain scientific information, occurred at a time when it was critical for government leaders and decisionmakers to be aware of all relevant information and may have hurt our COVID-19 response.

Also in the letter were requests for Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins to answer a series of specific questions regarding their conduct and the origins of the virus, to be responded to by February 28, 2022.

• “E&C Republican Leaders Launch Probe into Attempts by NIH’s Fauci and Collins to Suppress Debate and Information on COVID-19’s Origins,” February 14, 2022, U.S. House Energy & Commerce Republicans
• “Republicans Step Up Attacks on Fauci to Woo Trump Voters,” February 7, 2022, The New York Times
• “Fox News Special Report outlines fresh questions on what Fauci, government knew about COVID origin,” January 25, 2022, Fox News

In His Own Words

• In late November, Sen. Ted Cruz suggested to Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Fauci’s statements about the origin of the virus, to which Fauci responded in an interview on “Face the Nation” with frustration:

I should be prosecuted? What happened on Jan. 6, senator?

I’m just going to do my job and I’m going to be saving lives, and they’re going to be lying.

Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this.

• At another COVID-19 Senate hearing on November 4, 2021, Sen. Rand Paul again accused Fauci of starting the COVID-19 pandemic via funding risky biological research at the facility in Wuhan, China. In response, Fauci denied these accusations again, adding:

I have a great deal of respect for this body of the Senate, and it makes me very uncomfortable to have to say something, but he is egregiously incorrect.

I’m unwilling to take any responsibility for the current pandemic. I have no responsibility for the current pandemic.

In His Own Words

• During the October 24 airing of “The Week with George Stephanopoulos” on ABC News, Fauci responded to a recent statement made by Sen. Rand Paul that Fauci had lied about NIH funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, repeating that this was not the case.

Well, I obviously totally disagree with Senator Paul. He’s absolutely incorrect. Neither I nor Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH lied or misled about what we’ve done.

The framework under which we have guidance about the conduct of research that we fund, the funding at the Wuhan Institute was to be able to determine what is out there in the environment, in bat viruses in China. And the research was very strictly under what we call a framework of oversight of the type of research.

And under those conditions which we have explained very, very clearly, does not constitute research of gain of function of concern.

There are people who interpret it that way, but when you look at the framework under which the guidance is, that is not the case.

So I have to respectfully disagree with Senator Paul. He is not correct that we lied or misled the Congress. It’s just not correct…

• In mid-October, NIH’s Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak sent a letter to the ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee that has reignited controversy over whether Fauci, Francis Collins, and Tabak has been dishonest about the research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Included in the letter was the following, which suggests that a variation of spike protein binding research did occur under the NIH’s grant:

The limited experiment described in the final progress report provided by EcoHealth Alliance was testing if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.

NIH released a follow up statement with clarifications about the review and determination process:

…NIAID reviewed the progress report and has determined that the research described in the progress report would not have triggered a review under the HHS P3CO Framework because the bat coronaviruses used in this research have not been shown to infect humans and the experiments were not reasonably expected to increase transmissibility or virulence in humans.

In the News

• In late October, a series of analyses were released fact-checking Fauci’s statements to Congress, many of which involve the Wuhan Institute.
  • “Bat Viruses? Puppy Experiments? Fact-Checking Critics’ Latest Claims About Dr. Fauci.” October 28, 2021, Forbes
  • “The repeated claim that Fauci lied to Congress about ‘gain-of-function’ research,” October 29, 2021, The Washington Post

Several government representatives also shared their opinions on Fauci during this time:

• • “Rep. Mike Gallagher: Let’s get to the truth on China, COVID – Biden, Fauci must be honest with American people,” October 30, 2021, FOX News
• On September 9, 2021, following the release of a new report on September 6 by The Intercept that revealed two previously unpublished grant proposals on bat coronavirus research, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about whether Fauci lied to Congress about the funding NIAID provided to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Psaki dismissed the accusations, denying that Fauci lied to Congress.

NIH has “never approved any research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans.”

Also in response to the new report, the NIH reiterated a similar sentiment in an email:

The research we supported in China, where coronaviruses are prevalent, sought to understand the behavior of coronaviruses circulating in bats that have the potential to cause widespread disease.

The body of science produced by this research demonstrates that the bat coronavirus sequences published from that work NIH supported were not SARS-CoV-2.

In his own response to the new report, Sen. Rand Paul tweeted about Fauci:

I was right about his agency funding novel coronavirus research at Wuhan…Fauci lied again.

In His Own Words

• During a July 25 episode of CNN’s State of the Union talk show, Fauci defended funding Chinese research.

“It was a… proposal that was peer-reviewed and given a very high rating for the importance of why it should be done.”

“[The proposal was] to be able to go and do a survey of what was going on among the bat population, because everyone in the world was trying to figure out what the original source of the original SARS CoV-1 was.”

Fauci also defended the vitality of conducting this specific research in China:

It was almost as if you didn’t pursue that research you would be negligent because you were trying to find out how you could prevent this from happening again…If we were starting to look for bats in Secaucus, New Jersey, or Fairfax County, Virginia, it wouldn’t contribute very much to the standing of where SARS COV-1 originated.

Fauci was also asked whether Washington should collaborate with labs like Wuhan, given the obstructions to investigations by Beijing.

…if you go back to when this research really started, and look at the scientific rationale for it, it was a peer- reviewed proposal that was peer-reviewed and given a very high rating for the importance of why it should be done, to be able to go and do a survey of what was going on among the bat population, because everyone in the world was trying to figure out what the original source of the original SARS-CoV-1 was.

…Going forward, we are always going to be very, very careful, go through all kinds of review, including the risk/benefit ratio.

…And we are always willing to reexamine the criteria that are used when you do research wherever you do them. But I think doing research in the context of where these things happen is very important.

And SARS-CoV-1 originated in China. And that is the reason. 

• On July 20, 2021, Fauci gave further testimony before the Senate Health Committee as an update on the pandemic. During this hearing, Sen. Rand Paul repeated his questioning to Fauci about his former statements on the origins of the virus and asked Fauci if he would like to change his prior statement from May 11 that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci firmly stood but his previous testimony.

Sen. Paul, I have never lied before the Congress. And I do not retract that statement.

A back-and-forth “shouting match” continued for a few minutes over the definition of ‘gain-of-research.’ For example, when Fauci elaborated:

I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, senator…If you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments, that were given in the annual reports, that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible–

Sen. Paul responded “You are obviously obfuscating the truth,” among other interjections and statements. Fauci concluded by stating:

I don’t think I have anything further to say…This is a pattern that Sen. Paul has been doing now at multiple hearings based on no reality. He keeps talking about gain-of-function. This has been evaluated multiple times by qualified people to not fall under the gain-of-function definition.

I have not lied before Congress. I have never lied, certainly not before Congress. Case closed.

• On July 17, 2021, in an interview on CNN, Fauci reiterated his belief that the most likely origin for the coronavirus is a natural evolution.
  
   

The most likely explanation is a natural evolution from an animal reservoir to a human. Once you say that, which I believe is the more likely, you’ve got to make sure you emphasize that you still keep an open mind for all possibilities, including a lab leak.

A recent paper was put out by 21 very well internationally-respected virologists and evolutionary biologists who said the same thing as I’m saying. And I rely on people like that, who have great experience in this. That’s what they do every single day — who, again, are open minded — and are saying it’s conceivable that you may have had a lab leak. So you’ve got to keep an open mind to all possibilities, but they feel that the more likely explanation is a natural evolution from an animal host to a human.

In His Own Words

• Following the scrutiny received from his released emails and the renewed attention to the ‘lab leak theory’ earlier in June, Fauci appeared for a lengthy discussion on the June 21, 2021 episode of The Sway podcast by The New York Times.
• Multiple media sources, political officials and professionals have also weighed in on the renewed scrutiny of Fauci and the potential for a lab leak:
  • “Anthony Fauci under siege over lab leak theory,” Financial Review, June 6, 2021
  • “China, Fauci and hoaxes: Donald Trump targets usual suspects in return to stage,” The Guardian, June 5, 2021
  • “Scientist Opens Up About His Early Email to Fauci on Virus Origins,” The New York Times, June 14, 2021
  • “Fauci’s 2,000 emails a day show how little U.S. officials knew in the early days of the Covid pandemic,” CNBC News, June 5, 2021
• On an episode of CBS This Morning on June 16, 2021, Fauci stated that scientists did not “deliberately” suppress information on theories that the coronavirus originated from the lab in Wuhan, China. 

If you go back then, even though you lean towards feeling this is more likely a natural occurrence, we always felt that you gotta keep an open mind — all of us. We didn’t get up and start announcing it, but what we said, ‘Keep an open mind and continue to look.’ So I think it’s a bit of a distortion to say that we deliberately suppressed that.

• During the first few days of June 2021, thousands of pages of emails from Fauci’s inbox ranging from January to June 2020 were released through a freedom of information act (FOIA) request. BuzzFeed News published more than 3,200 pages, The Washington Post published excerpts from 860 pages, and CNN received “a number of emails” that were heavily redacted.

The emails, which included correspondence from Chinese scientists, were immediately put under scrutiny and have caused a renewed split in opinion on Fauci’s credibility and an increase in analyses comparing his statements on the pandemic over time. In response, on June 3, 2021 Fauci called the media’s claims that his statements were inconsistent “nonsense”.

In His Own Words

• On May 26, 2021, Fauci gave testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health & Human Services on the National Institutes of Health Fiscal Year 2022 Budget Request. During this meeting, Fauci was asked multiple questions regarding the origins of Sars-CoV-2 and the possibility of an intermediate host that is currently being investigated.

The intermediate host, if there is one, has not yet been found.

When asked by Senator Lindsey Graham about the “consequences to any country, China included, that allowed this [viral escape from a lab] to happen”, Fauci reiterated his support for a continuation of the World Health Organization’s investigation that was “inadequate” and noted the specifics of any consequences would have to be determined by the circumstances under which it happened, if it did happen.

When questioned by Senator John Kennedy about the NIAID funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology for gain-of-function research, Fauci reconfirmed prior statements he had not overseen any such grant funding awarded for gain-of-function research. Fauci did acknowledge that “there is no way of guaranteeing” that the Wuhan Institute did not secretly use foreign grant funding for gain-of-function research and not publish it, but added that they have a long history of working with Chinese and other grantees.

…they are very competent, trustworthy scientists–I’m not talking about anything else in China, I’m talking about the scientists–that would you expect they would abide by the conditions of the grant, which they’ve done for the years that we’ve had interactions….I know the scientists that we have dealt with have been trustworthy.

Fauci was also asked his opinions about the relationships between the Communist Party of China, the World Health Organization, and the Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

…I don’t have enough insight into the Community Party in China to know the interactions between them and the scientists

…I have no way of knowing the influence of the president of China over the WHO.

Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith asked each of the panelists for how “strongly they believe that it is possible” that the Covid-19 pandemic originated from a “leak of the virus from the Chinese lab” to which Fauci responded: 

As I have said many times, I feel the likelihood is still high that this is a natural occurrence, but since we cannot know 100 percent whether it is or is not, other possibilites exist…

• During a 4-day event from May 10-14 titled United Facts of America (hosted by PolitiFact and Poynter Univresity), Fauci said that he is “not convinced” COVID-19 developed naturally. In finishing his response to the question, he concluded: “I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.”
  • This–and other recent statements by Fauci on the origins of the coronavirus–show an evolution of his beliefs on the subject over the last year, as he told National Geographic in May 2020 that there is “no scientific evidence” the virus was created in a lab. 
• “Rand Paul clashes with Fauci over coronavirus origins,” The Hill, May 11, 2021

  • During a Senate hearing on the pandemic response, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accused Fauci “of cooperating with the Chinese government, and supporting the laboratory that bioengineered a deadly virus.” He pressed Dr. Fauci on the “theory that the novel coronavirus was created in the Wuhan lab, and then somehow escaped, either because of an accident or because it was deliberately released.”

    In response, Dr. Fauci replied: “Sen. Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely and completely incorrect…The NIH has not ever, and does not now, fund ‘gain of function research’ in the Wuhan Institute.” Fauci also stated that “I don’t favor gain of function research in China” and restated: “I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China.”

  • For a full analysis on this conversation, see: “Fact-checking the Paul-Fauci flap over Wuhan lab funding,” The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2021
• ““You’ve got to shut down,” Biden’s chief medical adviser tells the Indian government,” Quartz, May 10, 2021

In His Own Words

• In a CNN special report “COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out” that aired April 2, 2021, Fauci was among six medical professionals interviewed by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on various topics related to Covid-19, including its origins and China’s actions. When asked about a ‘cover up’ by Beijing, Fauci revealed that he “always had skepticism” about the Covid-19 data coming out of China “because of what we went through with SARS…they were not very transparent in the past. It wasn’t outright lying. They just didn’t give you all the information.”
• Dr. Fauci was a witness at the congressional hybrid hearing on “Reaching the Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Science-Driven Approach to Swiftly and Safely Ending the Pandemic” to be held on Thursday, April 15, 2021. The two other witnesses were Dr. David Kessler (Chief Science Officer, COVID Response, HHS) and Dr. Rochelle Walensky (CDC Director).
  • Read Dr. Fauci’s full testimony HERE.
• Dr. Fauci participated in a press briefing at the White House on April 13, 2021

Media

• “Dr. Fauci vs. Dr. Zhong Nanshan: What’s ahead of this pandemic?,” CGTN, March 3, 2021

[T]he two experts shared their views of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and explored how to change and reshape public health systems to transform outcomes. Both of them agreed that international cooperation is crucial to put an end to the global health crisis.

• Podcast with the Council on Foreign Relations, “A Global Shot in the Arm, With Anthony Fauci,” March 3, 2021

In His Own Words

• Debates and opinions on the origins of the coronavirus rose again around the time when the WHO released its long-anticipated investigative report on the “Global Study of the Origins of SARS-CoV-2” on March 30, 2021. In response to personal opinions by former CDC Director Robert Redford stating his belief that the virus “escaped” from a laboratory in Wuhan where it was man-made, Dr. Fauci acknowledged the possibility of lab origins but added that “most public health officials agree” that it was “below the radar screen, spreading in the community in China for several weeks” prior to formal identification by Chinese officials.

Media

• “Fauci underscores Biden’s commitment to WHO and its COVID fight, in direct contrast to Trump’s approach,” CBS News, January 21, 2021
• “China’s top epidemiologist hopes to exchange views with Anthony Fauci,” CGTN, Video, January 31, 2021

In His Own Words

Media

• In the early months of the epidemic–now pandemic–the origins of the virus were severely debated. In an interview in May 2020, Dr. Fauci said that it is likely the virus was “in the wild to begin with,” though he valued solving the problem over discovering its origin. Among the many back-and-forth discussions were a controversial ‘report’ that attempts to link funding by Dr. Fauci to the “creation” of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. As discussions turned to vaccine development in Summer 2020, Fauci was “unmoved by the prospect that China would get there first” and, “[a]lthough he said he hopes China succeeds, he does not think they will win the vaccine race.”
  • Interview by National Geographic, “No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab,” May 4, 2020 
  • ABCNews, “Dr. Anthony Fauci addresses China lab theory” (2:20), May 5, 2020
• As ‘America’s Doctor,’ Dr. Fauci’s nomination, which he quickly accepted, was well-received by the public-at-large and by his colleagues in the medical field.
  • “Fauci accepts offer of chief medical adviser role in Biden administration,” The Guardian, December 4, 2020
  • “Biden Asks Fauci To Serve As ‘Chief Medical Advisor’ During Covid Crisis,” Forbes, December 4, 2020
  • “Biden asked Fauci to be his chief medical advisor, and Fauci said yes ‘on the spot’,” Business Insider, December 4, 2020

In His Own Words