Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, may have had a hand in suppressing investigations into the origins of COVID-19.

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi wrote in a report on his substack, Racket News, that emails show Fauci helped craft a paper that argued COVID-19 originated naturally as opposed to a lab leak in Wuhan, China — the favored explanation among several U.S. lawmakers, departments, and agencies.

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The paper Taibbi referred to is the "Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," in which the summary says the findings "clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."

Taibbi said in an interview with Fox and Friends on Monday that emails showed Fauci was "intimately involved" with the crafting of the paper.

He claimed the paper's authors actually believed the virus originated from a lab, "and they had to get over those feelings to write that paper."

Taibbi — who was involved in the "Twitter Files," concerning alleged government pressure on social media giants to suppress stories related to COVID-19 and Hunter Biden — said Fauci brought the paper as part of the conversations with the CIA and the Trump and Biden administrations.

"He also went to the State Department and the White House and essentially was trying to suppress inquiry into the origins of COVID," Taibbi said of Fauci.

Two agencies, including the CIA, have not released a conclusion as to where COVID-19 originated from. The FBI and the Energy Department believe the virus came from a lab leak, while four other agencies think it derived from natural transmission.

Taibbi said multiple sources confirmed to him that the FBI and Energy Department used their own analysts and not those provided by the "health bureaucracy," referring to the National Institutes of Health and, specifically, the NIAID, for which Fauci served as an executive.

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"Because they did an independent investigation, which is exactly how you should do intelligence, they came to their own conclusions, which is not, apparently, what Anthony Fauci wanted. And that's key," Taibbi said. "Without that kind of system, without that independence, you're not going to come to the correct conclusion."

The Washington Examiner reached out to the NIAID for comment.