In a significant move, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has launched an official criminal referral against Dr. Anthony Fauci, sending it to the Department of Justice. Sen. Paul cites evidence that he claims contradicts Fauci’s previous testimony before Congress.

A key element of the referral revolves around an email dating back to February 2020. In the email, Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and one-time presidential medical adviser, recollected a discussion with Jeremy Farrar, a renowned British medical researcher and then director of the Wellcome Trust.

Fauci reported that a task force of eminent scientists, including Francis Collins, ex-director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, had serious concerns regarding the “fact upon viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.”

The newly unredacted Fauci email was shared by RealClearPolitics White House reporter Philip Wegmann. Fauci continued, “The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.”

The content of this email led Sen. Paul, a medical graduate from Duke University School of Medicine and former practicing doctor, to declare Fauci’s earlier denials of funding gain-of-function research as false.

“This directly contradicts everything he said in committee hearing to me, denying absolutely that they funded any gain of function, and it’s absolutely a lie. That’s why I sent an official criminal referral to the DOJ,” Paul wrote on Saturday via “X,” formerly known as Twitter.

In a fiery exchange in July 2021, Paul warned Fauci that misleading Congress is a federal crime. He suggested that Fauci was not forthright about the NIH’s role in funding gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, specifically tied to COVID-19.

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Fauci, in turn, assured he had “never lied before Congress” during a prior testimony in May, retorting that Paul was uninformed about the issue.

He further disputed that the NIH had financed any gain-of-function studies, a statement contested by Paul referencing a journal article “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses.”

During the same July hearing, Paul discussed how the author of the paper attributed credit to the NIH, mentioning the specific grant number provided by the NIH.

The research involved splicing two bat coronavirus spike genes with a SARS-related backbone, creating novel viruses not found in nature. These lab-engineered viruses were then demonstrated to replicate in humans.

Paul stated, “Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans.”

When challenged by Paul, Fauci responded by saying that the cited paper had been evaluated by numerous qualified staff and determined not to constitute gain of function research.

Paul countered by citing the NIH’s own definition of ‘gain of function’: “This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that ‘scientific research that increases the transmissibility among mammals is gain of function.’ They took animal viruses that only occur in animals, and they increased their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that’s not gain of function – it’s a dance, and you’re dancing around this because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic.”

Paul has held true to his threat of pursuing legal action for perjury. It remains to be seen if the DOJ will actually do anything with this referral or if it will just get buried and disappear. Paul, who endured personal attacks from Fauci, will likely not let this one go.

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