The House subcommittee tasked with investigating Covid-19’s origins will put Dr. Anthony Fauci on the spot next month in an effort to determine his involvement in gain-of-function research, to evaluate the federal government’s response to Covid-19, and to develop an approach to preventing a future pandemic should one arise.
Speaking with National Review, subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio), who has worked as a physician for over 30 years, explained his panel’s strategy for Fauci’s upcoming transcribed interview, which the congressman said is meant to be more of a round-table discussion than a deposition.
In a closed-door session scheduled for January 8–9, the committee plans on asking Fauci about his involvement in covering up gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where it is believed Covid-19 originated from. Other relevant topics that the committee intends to cover include EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit that used funds from the National Institutes of Health to conduct coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab, and scientific censorship of Americans who questioned the pandemic’s source.
The purpose of the transcribed interview is to learn from Fauci’s knowledge of the origins of Covid-19 and the U.S.’s response to the public-health crisis, which will be used to help the committee draft recommendations and legislation to mitigate the effects of another pandemic.
“There’s a lot we need to know. We’re gonna get retrospective on the policies, and he’ll have a chance to explain them,” Wenstrup said of Fauci. “To me, honesty is non-negotiable.”
In addition to giving 14 hours of private testimony over those two days, Fauci will appear for a public congressional hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.
“What I’m finding in so many compartments, government and now science, is that some think that the truth is too harmful for the American people to understand and that they know better,” Wenstrup added. “They’re going to tell you one thing when maybe they’re thinking something else, and Dr. Fauci has been part of a group like that.”
The Ohio Republican detailed how Fauci was aware of gain-of-function research prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, according to emails revealed by the committee in July. A few months prior, evidence was released suggesting the physician-scientist prompted, edited, and approved the writing of a scientific paper with the goal of disproving the lab leak theory. The peer-reviewed article, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” was published in Nature Medicine in March 2020, just as the pandemic emerged in the U.S.
Additionally, Wenstrup is curious about a whistleblower’s allegations that Fauci visited the CIA headquarters to possibly influence the agency’s investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus, which resulted in the CIA paying off six analysts to change their minds on the lab leak theory’s plausibility. According to the letter Wenstrup wrote in September, there was no record of entry for Fauci’s alleged visit.
The congressman also intends to ask about Fauci’s decade-old comments in support of gain-of-function research, the benefits of which “outweigh the risks,” as he wrote in a 2012 paper.
Before retiring at the end of last year, Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor under the Trump and Biden administrations.
Fauci, whom Wenstrup called the “face of the pandemic,” previously testified on Capitol Hill, where he frequently clashed with Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) when asked to provide detailed information about the gain-of-function research in Wuhan that led to the Covid-19 outbreak. In those hearing exchanges, Fauci insisted the lab leak theory was unfounded and denied that the NIH continued funding research at the Wuhan lab.
The transcribed interview in early January will mark the first time that the retired public-health official has appeared before the 118th Congress, which started its two-year session earlier this year.
“This is in no way, shape, or form right, and America needs to know that this was going on,” said Wenstrup. “We need to make sure that we can implement a public health system that can be trusted based on honesty and science and doesn’t have any other outside pressure.”