Fauci Prepares for Grilling From Congressional Republicans Over Foreign Labs, Censorship With Social Media Giants

Anthony Fauci is preparing to face what will likely be an intense, hours-long grilling from congressional Republicans about funding for labs abroad, big tech’s involvement with alleged government-directed censorship, and other matters. His testimony is scheduled for June 3. Since the GOP took the House majority in 2023, the select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic has been investigating the origins of Covid and the response in America. The chairman, Congressman Brad Wenstrup, said he would be “investigating the economic impacts, vaccines and treatments, roles of our agencies, use of taxpayer funds, and the effectiveness of our public health responses.”Dr. Fauci will testify after in January giving a closed-door deposition over the course of two days. According to Mr. Wenstrup, he admitted that there were serious mistakes made by the executive branch and state and local governments in 2020, including certain social distancing guidelines and suppression of the lab leak theory on social media. He also reportedly said the vaccine mandates harmed America’s future ability to fight a pandemic and created even more unnecessary distrust. “After two days of testimony and 14 hours of questioning, many things became evident. During his interview today, Dr. Fauci claimed that the policies and mandates he promoted may unfortunately increase vaccine hesitancy for years to come,” Mr. Wenstrup said in a statement. “He testified that the lab leak hypothesis — which was often suppressed — was, in fact, not a conspiracy theory. Further, the social distancing recommendations forced on Americans ‘sort of just appeared’ and were likely not based on scientific data.”One of the damning disclosures from the more than year-long investigation into America’s Covid response was the recent release of emails from a senior advisor to Dr. Fauci, David Morens, who spent more than a quarter-century advising the director. The subcommittee recently found that Dr. Morens had been hiding emails from Congress and other outside interested parties and tried to circumvent directives from the Trump White House. President Trump suspended federal funding to the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance in 2020 after it was discovered that the organization — which was sending grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a possible nucleus of the outbreak — was not adequately monitoring how the funds were being used and what the risks of gain-of-function research could carry. Shortly after Mr. Trump made that decision, Dr. Morens wrote to EcoHealth’s director, Peter Daszak, to say that he was doing everything in his power to get the funding restored and to deflect any blame away from Mr. Daszak.“There are things I can’t say except Tony [Fauci] is aware and I have learned there are ongoing efforts within NIH to steer through this with minimal damage to you, Peter, and colleagues,” Dr. Morens wrote to Mr. Daszak. “I have reason to believe that there are already efforts going on to protect you.”Dr. Morens also bragged to a professor at Boston University that he had learned from a colleague how to keep his official email communications from reporters’ Freedom of Information Act requests. “I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe. Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail,” Dr. Morens wrote.The Biden administration ultimately reinstated funding for EcoHealth Alliance in 2023, before suspending funding once again on May 15. The subcommittee has existed since 2020, when Speaker Pelosi established it as a way to prevent waste and fraud after Congress passed the nearly $2 trillion Cares Act. That effort was bipartisan, and a report released in 2022 found that America was wildly unprepared for a global pandemic. That bipartisanship is now gone, with Democrats accusing Republicans of weaponizing the panel for political gain. The current top Democrat on the subcommittee, Congressman Raul Ruiz, is — like Mr. Wenstrup — a trained physician. The two men were both elected to Congress in 2012 and have been friends ever since. The work of the subcommittee, though, has strained that relationship. Mr. Ruiz told Politico in 2023 that Mr. Wenstrup and his fellow Republicans are hell-bent on politicizing the pandemic and placing all of the blame on Dr. Fauci, rather than doing meaningful, bipartisan work to prevent another pandemic. “Three million-plus individuals died, and we’re spending our time trying to push a partisan narrative that Dr. Fauci is guilty of wrongdoing,” Mr. Ruiz said. “How in the world will that help us prevent the next pandemic?”

Fauci Prepares for Grilling From Congressional Republicans Over Foreign Labs, Censorship With Social Media Giants

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