At a Tuesday hearing, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) grilled two of the authors of an influential scientific paper published during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic that was used to discredit the lab leak theory of the coronavirus's origins.

The paper, "The proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2," has come under significant scrutiny from the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in recent months due to the involvement of National Institutes of Health officials in the drafting and publication of the paper with the intention of rebutting speculation that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry, two of the authors of the paper, published in March 2020, testified before the subcommittee on Tuesday after engaging with the panel in transcribed interviews and submitting thousands of pages of subpoenaed communications between themselves and top officials at the NIH.

Malliotakis asked both Andersen and Garry to explain why, in the communications dug up by the committee, they initially expressed concerns that the virus was genetically engineered but then, just three days later, submitted an initial draft denying the possibility of a lab leak.

"Something happened here. Politicians may flip-flop. Scientists do not flip-flop in a matter of 72 hours," Malliotakis said.

Malliotakis began her questioning by asking whether Andersen and Garry believed that the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, was a conspiracy theorist when he testified before the committee, saying, to quote Malliotakis, "that it was not scientifically plausible that the virus went from a bat to humans and subsequently became one of the most infectious viruses in history." Andersen equivocated in answering, saying he had not thought about it.

Malliotakis also highlighted that Redfield was excluded from the conference call on Feb. 1, 2020, between the authors of the scientific article and leading officials at the NIH, including National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Anthony Fauci, then-NIH director Francis Collins, and then-NIH ethics director Lawrence Tabak.

Andersen himself on Jan. 20 expressed to Fauci his concerns regarding the possible Chinese-led genetic engineering of the coronavirus, at which point Fauci said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would need to be involved.

Garry also addressed similar concerns before the Feb. 1 conference call. Malliotakis read a statement from Garry to that effect, saying: "I really can't think of a plausible natural scenario [of the circumstances] to be at the exact same time to gain this function. I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature."

Garry responded to Malliotakis by saying that, in the three-day period between the Feb. 1 conference call and the initial draft of the paper that discredited the lab leak theory, he and his colleagues discovered scientific literature confirming the genomic sequences of pangolin viruses were similar to that of SARS-CoV-2, dispelling their concerns of human engineering.

Malliotakis rebutted the relevance of this data with the discussion between the authors of the political consequences of implicating poor Chinese research practices in the release of the virus, which are extensively outlined in a majority report published by the subcommittee in advance of the hearing.

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Garry and Andersen denied being aware of the gain-of-function research being conducted at the WIV. Both scientists also denied being aware of the NIH grant funding being funneled to the WIV, to which Anderson said it was "obviously irrelevant to understanding the origin itself."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently released a declassified report noting that the intelligence community is divided on the plausibility of the lab leak theory. Both the Department of Energy and the FBI continue to suspect that the WIV was involved in the outbreak of the virus.