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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is testifying on Monday at a House subcommittee hearing regarding the U.S. response to COVID-19 and the origins of the virus.
Follow the Post’s latest updates from the Fauci COVID hearing:
Since the 2001 anthrax attacks, Fauci has held a “pretty high level” security clearance, according to his earlier closed-door congressional testimony this year. During Monday’s subcommittee hearing, he acknowledged receiving national security briefings on COVID-19 from U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI and CIA. At one point, Fauci testified that he has never discussed the Chinese bioweapons program with anyone.
A June 2023 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had links to China’s People’s Liberation Army. The report states that between 2017 and 2019, WIV funded and conducted research projects to enhance China’s knowledge of pathogens and early disease warning capabilities for the military’s defensive and biosecurity needs.
The NIH funded risky gain-of-function research at WIV through a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which conducted experiments on novel bat coronaviruses from 2014 to 2021. EcoHealth President Dr. Peter Daszak testified last month that virus sequence samples from those experiments have not been recovered since before the pandemic.
On Monday, Fauci testified that it was “molecularly impossible” for any of the NIH-funded experiments to have “evolved into SARS-CoV-2,” despite the missing samples. Fauci also denied any knowledge of his senior adviser, Dr. David Morens, deleting federal records to avoid FOIA requests and working behind the scenes to reinstate a suspended grant for EcoHealth Alliance.
Fauci stated in his opening remarks that he was unaware of Morens’ actions to assist Dr. Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. He also clarified that Morens was not a senior adviser on institute policy or substantive issues and asserted that he has never conducted official business via personal email.
Subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) indicated that Morens might face a criminal investigation for evading federal record-keeping requirements. Wenstrup’s panel has also requested access to Fauci’s personal email and cell phone records.
During the hearing, Wenstrup criticized Fauci for his “hypocrisy” during the pandemic, claiming that Fauci had presided over “one of the most invasive regimes of domestic policy the US has ever seen,” citing restrictions that Fauci recently admitted had no scientific backing. Wenstrup noted that Americans were bullied, shamed, and silenced for questioning or debating social distancing, masks, vaccines, or the origins of COVID.
