July 19, 2021- 2:04 p.m.
On June 23, 2020, Fauci told Congress during a COVID-19 response hearing that he didn’t know why the Trump administration directed the NIH to cut funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Specifically, he said, “I don’t know the reason, but we were told to cancel it.”
Fauci’s NIH division had funded risky coronavirus experiments on bats and other animals at the Wuhan institute to the tune of $600,000 through subgrants since 2014.
Now, according to documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, we know that as early as January 2020, at least one expert alerted Fauci about the possibility that COVID-19 was engineered in a lab based on several “unusual features” of the novel coronavirus. And as early as Feb. 1, 2020, Fauci was internally expressing concerns about NIH-funded gain-of-function experiments conducted at the lab.
Yet, when Congress asked him during the June 2020 hearing why the Wuhan institute’s funding was cut, Fauci claimed to have no idea.
Not only did he plead ignorance, but Fauci and other NIH officials publicly rejected the lab leak hypothesis through 2020 and well into this year. Fauci dismissed the lab leak in interviews and literally laughed it off in at least one case. In March 2020, NIH Director Francis Collins called it “debunked” in a still-published tweet and blog on the NIH website.
Now, they’re both rewriting history and suggesting they never dismissed the possibility of a lab leak.
Taxpayers have a right to know if the NIH knew about and covered up a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that placed global health and our economy in peril.
It’s now abundantly clear that Fauci and the NIH haven’t been forthright with Congress or taxpayers about their involvement with the Wuhan animal lab and early knowledge of a potential lab leak. It’s indefensible but makes sense from their perspective: If a lab leak is determined to be the cause of the pandemic, their ties to the Wuhan lab would implicate them and the U.S. government in the biggest global catastrophe of our time.
We’re working together to pass the Defund the Wuhan Institute of Virology Act to hold the Communist Party-run Wuhan lab accountable and ensure it doesn’t receive another red cent of taxpayer’s money. But Fauci and his colleagues in the U.S. government must also be held accountable.
Taxpayers deserve to know exactly what Fauci was aware of, when, and why he didn’t take action. What is the cover up about? Why deeper then i would ever want to image.
