Says COVID testimony doesn’t align ‘with facts that have since come to light’

Bob Unruh
WND News Center

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is asking a prosecutor in Washington to investigate Anthony Fauci, who was a top COVID-19 adviser to President Donald Trump and then Joe Biden, for possible perjury charges, a federal offense that carries a punishment of up to five years in prison.

A report in the Daily Mail explains Paul, who repeatedly has criticized Fauci for his inconsistent statements regarding the pandemic that swept the world and killed millions, wrote to U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves with his request for a review of Fauci’s actions and statements.

At issue are his comments during a congressional hearing in 2021 when Fauci claimed that COVID did not come from a Chinese lab in Wuhan that was doing gain-of-function experiments on those very dangerous bat viruses. Fauci, in fact, denied those very experiments, and the American funding for them.

“Dr. Fauci testified that ‘the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’ In a subsequent hearing, I warned Dr. Fauci of the criminal implications of lying to Congress and offered him an opportunity to recant his previous statements,” the senator said.

“In response, Dr. Fauci stated that he had ‘never lied before the Congress’ and ‘d[id] not retract that statement,'” he wrote.

However, Paul pointed out Fauci’s “testimony” does not align “with facts that have since come to light.”

Paul previously submitted a referral regarding Fauci to the Joe Biden-supervised Department of Justice, which has been busy trying to jail Biden’s top 2024 presidential race opponent, President Donald Trump, but a Paul aide confirmed the DOJ refused to respond.

The referral cites Fauci’s comments on the coronavirus and its possible origins in the Chinese lab.

“Before Congress, Dr. Fauci denied funding gain-of-function research, to the press he claims to have a dispassionate view on the lab leak hypothesis, and in private he acknowledges gain-of-function research at WIV to his colleagues. His own colleagues have acknowledged Dr. Fauci’s inconsistency,” Paul continued.

“A congressional hearing, however, is not the place for a public servant to play political games – especially when the health and well-being of American citizens is on the line,” Paul wrote.

Fauci, in July 2021 claimed the U.S. “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Such work in labs involves making viruses more dangerous, or more easily spread, in order to propose vaccines.

Fauci, while he led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was responsible for signing off on such grants, and last month the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed emails sent by Fauci about a conference call regarding the origins of COVID attended by Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and other researchers.

The Daily Mail confirmed, “In one email, Fauci admits the scientists had concerns that Covid might have been genetically engineered and that these were worsened by the fact that gain-of-function research was taking place in Wuhan before the pandemic.”

That showed that back in 2020, Fauci “acknowledged” scientists in Wuhan were known to be working on gain-of-function experiments.

While he never admitted that NIH funded those experiments, the Government Accountability Office revealed just last month that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan University did in fact receive NIH funding, Paul has confirmed.

In fact, at one point before his denials, Fauci wrote of the idea the virus came out of the Chinese lab: “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.”

Paul said, “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.”

Top experts across the U.S. now consider the Wuhan lab as the probable source of the death and destruction delivered by COVID-19.