GOP Senator Rand Paul (KY) announced last Tuesday that he is going to send a criminal referral on Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, according to the Justice Department.
Paul made his announcement on the same day that he and Dr. Fauci sparred in a heated exchange during a congressional hearing where each individual accused the other man of lying.
The Details
Senator Rand Paul appeared on Fox News and met with host Sean Hannity, saying that he had began his questioning last Tuesday by emphasizing that there is a federal law that states that lying to Congress is a felony, punishable by a prison term.
When Hannity asked if Paul believed that Fauci broke the law, he answered that he did.
“I will be sending a letter to the Department of Justice asking for a criminal referral because he has lied to Congress,” Paul said.
Paul told Hannity that he felt that Dr. Fauci had been lying about whether his agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in which there is a theory that the COVID-19 pandemic escaped out of a lab.
“We have scientists that were lined up by the dozens to say that the research he was funding was gain-of-function,” Paul explained. “He’s doing this because he has a self-interest to cover his tracks and to cover his connection to Wuhan lab.
“Now does he deserve all the blame? No, there’s still some conjecture as to whether or not it came from the lab,” Paul continued. “But he’s lying about whether or not he funded gain-of-function research, and yes, he should be punished.”
Senator Paul also explained that Dr. Fauci’s work emails-which were published earlier this month by BuzzFeed News-demonstrated that he was concerned that his team could become culpable in regards to the beginning of COVID-19. This is one of the main reasons why Fauci appeared so concerned over the gain-of-function research.
“From the very beginning, I think he was covering up because he realized that there would be a great deal of culpability, of blame attached to him if a lab that he was funding through the NIH turned out to be the source of a pandemic that caused 4 million people to die,” Paul said. “That could be the worst governmental decision in the history of the world.”
After the exchange on Tuesday, a Washington Post Columnist explained that Paul was correct.
Indeed, the crux of the problem would have to be in whether a taxpayer-funded grant from the National Institutes of Health to nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance which was forwarded to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the purposes of conducting research on the bat coronaviruses, could be considered gain-of-function research.
The NIH continues to adamantly deny that it doesn’t, but many, including Senator Paul, claim that it does.
