Dr. Anthony Fauci, arguably America’s most well-recognized health official in the battle against COVID-19, assumed a central role in political controversy following a newly released slough of last year’s emails, giving rise to concerns about COVID-19’s origin and the controversial scientific research U.S taxpayers have funded. Yesterday, Congressman Paul Gosar (AZ-04) joined several of his colleagues in a news conference to discuss auditing the correspondence and financial statements of Dr. Fauci.
Fauci is no stranger to the spotlight, as the immunologist was one of the world’s most frequently-cited scientists across all scientific journals from 1983 to 2002, in addition to the world’s 10th most-cited HIV/AIDS researcher from 1996-2006. He has advised seven Presidents and was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H.W. Bush in 2008 for his efforts on an AIDS relief program. Serving as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, Fauci is perhaps more widely recognized for leading the nation’s COVID-19 response as a White House coronavirus advisor during the Trump Administration. He continues to lead the nation’s pandemic response during his current role as chief medical advisor in the Biden Administration.
However, Fauci’s consistently shifting narratives throughout the pandemic, in addition to frequent opposition towards President Donald Trump’s leadership, resulted in a sizable number of public critics, many of which included Trump White House officials. Peter Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist and China hawk who served as a top trade and economic policy advisor to President Trump, publicly criticized Dr. Fauci in a USA Today op-ed, outlining the many instances Fauci was mistaken during the pandemic. USA Today promptly attached a remorseful precursor to the article; an apologetic note addressed to readers for publishing any criticism of Fauci.
One of the most notable examples Navarro specifies is the predictive memos he sent in January and February 2020, which grimly anticipated COVID-19 to be a deadly and impactful global pandemic. Senior officials shrugged off these warnings, including Fauci, due to Navarro’s hawkish views on China. “The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on US soil,” Navarro’s January 29 memo to the National Security Council states. “The lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
Weeks after Navarro’s warning was sent out, Fauci assured the media just how worried the American people should be about the pandemic when he expressed, “The danger of getting coronavirus now is just minusculely low,” Fauci stated. “As of today, on the 17th of February, the risk is really relatively low.”
Since then, public criticism of Fauci continues to escalate as 3,000 pages of his emails from March and April 2020 were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) following a lawsuit filed by taxpayer watchdog group, the White Coast Waste Project. “Taxpayers have a right to know what the NIH knew about how its money was being spent at the Wuhan animal lab, and what NIH knew about a potential lab leak in late 2019 and early 2020,” stated Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy at the White Coat Waste Project. “Transparency and accountability at home and abroad are critical in the quest to identify the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to prevent another outbreak.”
Fauci’s obtained emails point to the fact that he was indeed warned of the possibility that COVID-19 was engineered, a theory he remained adamantly opposed to throughout the pandemic. Kristian Andersen, the head of a viral genomics lab at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA, emailed Fauci in February 2020 entertaining the possibility of COVID-19’s lab-based origin, “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.” This week, Anderson addressed his involvement in these recently released emails, assuring that his newfound research discourages any lab-based scenarios while also claiming it is scientifically impossible to determine the origins of the pandemic, “As we stated in our article last March, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove specific hypotheses of SARS-CoV-2 origin.”
Additionally, these emails raise questions surrounding the type of research U.S. taxpayers are funding. Under Fauci’s four-decade-long leadership, the NAIAD resides within the National Institute of Health (NIH), which allocates 80% of its federal funds to scientific research, including grants to foreign organizations. Fauci swore under oath that no taxpayer funds were used to fund research in Wuhan. However, in a later congressional hearing, he stated that the NIH earmarked $600,000 to study coronaviruses in Wuhan. NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins confirmed that $3.7 million in federal funds were sent to EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit, of which $600,000 went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Fauci’s emails show a message received from the President of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, thanking him for rejecting any lab-leak theories in April 2020. Daszak wrote to Fauci, “I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Daszak adds, “Your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins.”
These concerns have led Congressional Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), to call for Dr. Fauci’s dismissal from his role as NIAID director. Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, took an early lead to hold Dr. Fauci accountable through his co-sponsorship of the Fire Fauci Act, which would bring Dr. Fauci’s taxpayer salary to $0 and will require the Senate to confirm another individual to fill his position.
Gosar stated in a recent press release, “Dr. Fauci has seriously mishandled the nation’s COVID-19 response. He has given contrary advice regarding the source of the virus, the transmissibility of the virus, the virulence of the virus, the efficacy of masks and vaccines, the efficacy of social distancing, and in general, demeaned the public health community. Americans across the country have lost faith in our public health community as they beclowned themselves with false narratives and malpractice. While telling Americans to ‘trust the science,’ Fauci routinely contradicted the established science.”
Gosar concluded, “Therefore, today I am asking that Mr. Biden fire Dr. Fauci following his testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services where he admitted directing $600,000 in taxpayers’ money to a lab in Wuhan, China to study whether bats could transmit coronavirus to humans.”
Fifteen months ago, those who theorized Dr. Fauci’s role in personally lobbying to exempt research into coronaviruses at the WIV from funding restrictions were smeared as fringe, right-wing conspirators. However, following the release of Fauci’s emails, President Joe Biden has found it necessary to launch a 90-day investigation into whether COVID-19 was deliberately released from a lab.
