In a hearing this morning before the US Senate Health Committee, Senator Rand Paul blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci for his continued deflections and lies on funding the NIH provided to EcoHealth Alliance, to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  Predictably, Fauci lied and shifted his stance away from previously made statements on gain-of-function, to a new narrow definition which he claims qualifies his statements as true.

I’ll be honest…I’m furious.  Why, you ask?  I am furious because today I watched Dr. Fauci lie and try to snake his way out emphatic statements he’s made before the committee previously. I am mad that while it is now undebatable, that Dr. Anthony Fauci has lied about the research performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, under a grant awarded by the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance, not one of these Senators…. not one….. called for Fauci’s resignation besides Rand Paul.

In the eight-and-a-half minute exchange, Senator Paul slammed Fauci for his flat-out lies, demanding that Fauci accept responsibility for lying about the NIH funding the risky research.  After a blistering indictment of Fauci’s divergence from the facts, Senator Paul finally put him on the spot.

“Will you today finally take some responsibility for funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan?”

After pausing to collect his lies thoughts, Fauci first took issue with Senator Paul’s use of “gain-of-function,” suggesting that the term is “nebulous.”  Fauci then goes on to describe how “outside bodies [have spent] a considerable amount of effort to give a more precise definition to the type of research that is of concern.”  Fauci refers to the new P3CO Framework that was released in 2017.

Let’s be clear here.  Within literal seconds of Fauci beginning to speak, he is already lying and qualifying his statements, to protect himself from facing Contempt of Congress charges.  When Senator Paul confronted Anthony Fauci about the funding of the Wuhan Lab in May, Fauci stated, in no uncertain terms that the NIH:

“has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

When again, in July, Senator Paul questioned Fauci regarding the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Lab, this time, referencing an NIH-funded study at the lab that spoke of research that met the definition of gain-of-function research, Fauci instead deflected, telling the Senator that the research didn’t rise to the level of gain-of-function.  He then followed up with this:

“Sen. Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I would like to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about,”

But a clear distinction has to be made here: Fauci didn’t qualify either of these statements, so why is he qualifying his statement from this morning?  If the research wasn’t gain-of-function then, it should still not be gain-of-function now.  What Fauci did say today, through his mastery of parsing his language to qualify his lies, is that the research was gain-of-function just not the type of gain-of-function research that would have required additional oversight. (Spoiler Alert:  It still is.)

Senator Paul was not just going to sit by and allow Fauci to lie his way out of this. He immediately pointed out, as we have reported recently, that the NIH removed the definition of gain-of-function research from its website, in what was likely a response to the NIH being forced to admit the creation of an enhanced virus by their funded research at the Wuhan Lab.

This is where Fauci again resorts to flat-out lies:

“The guidelines are very, very clear that you have to be dealing with a pathogen that clearly is shown, and very likely to be highly transmissible in an uncontrollable way in humans, and to have a high degree of morbidity and mortality, and you do experiments to enhance that.”

Fauci either doesn’t know the definition or he does and he has no idea what he is talking about.  But as is typical Faucian style, he scribbles over his blatant lies with a big fat “partial truth” crayon.  Yes, PPPs, that is Potential Pandemic Pathogens, must be both highly transmissible, capable of causing uncontrollable spread in humans, and highly virulent, capable of causing morbidity and death.

BUT (and with Fauci, there’s always a but), Fauci’s understanding of enhanced PPP, or a lab-manipulated virus that does require additional biosafety requirements and would have voided the EcoHealth grant, is clearly (and perhaps intentionally) flawed.  From the P3CO Framework:

An enhanced PPP is defined as a PPP resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen. Enhanced PPPs do not include naturally occurring pathogens that are circulating in or have been recovered from nature, regardless of their pandemic potential.

Clearly, an ePPP does not need to be the results of experiments on a PPP, but can simply be a PPP that results “from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.” It doesn’t say “enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a PPP.”   For Fauci to say it does amounts to either a wildly misleading statement, or much more likely (following his trend to date), a massive lie.

Senator Paul continues his offense, stating it wasn’t his claim that the EcoHealth Alliance grant created an enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogen, but the claim of the NIH, the very agency for which Fauci works.

Fauci tries to pawn this work off as under the P3CO framework, saying that the work was “according to the definition that is currently operable.”  Yet, that same definition was operable in May and July, when he stated that the research was not gain-of-function, and chose not to qualify those statements with the same P3CO Framework.  Yet, despite Fauci’s claims that this work was within that Framework, our reporting here has revealed and decisively concluded that the funding did create an Enhanced PPP.  This is backed up by the NIH’s flagging of the lab creation of a virus that could infect humans and was more transmissible and virulent than the prior pathogens from which it was engineered.  Why would the NIH ask Ecohealth Alliance for clarification and explanation, if the work definitively fell under the allowed research of the grant? (hint: they wouldn’t)

My report yesterday, as well as that from The Intercept, also confirm two things:  1) that the NIH was aware that EcoHealth Alliance conducted gain-of-function experiments and 2) that those experiments were conducted before the institution of the new P3CO Framework and during the US Government-ordered ban on gain-of-function experiments.

As Fauci ended his testimony, he was particularly bothered by Senator Paul’s inference that he (Fauci) was in some way responsible for the current pandemic.  And previously, I likely would have agreed, despite my belief that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that Fauci was not responsible for the pandemic.  What causes me to question it is this:  Why lie so often and so consistently, despite the gathering mountain of evidence proving your inaccuracies, if the truth would confirm your innocence? I mean why, as facts stare you in the face and destroy your credibility and tear down your otherwise spotless career, would you defend what happened at the lab?   Why would you deny something that the very researchers you cite, have been calling for an investigation into?  Why would you do all of that, especially at the end of your career and at 80 years old, if you were not responsible for the current pandemic?

Unless of course, you are.

More coming soon. Stay Tuned.

Video of the entire exchange: