GOP leaders on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees are calling out Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as new evidence shows he knew that coronaviruses "may have been intentionally modified and leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
On Tuesday, excerpts of emails revealed showed that the chief medical advisor to the White House knew about coronavirus research in China's labs.
According to Fox News, Republican Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan, in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, pointed to a February 1, 2020 conference call that included Dr. Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, during which the health experts discussed the origins of the coronavirus.
"It was on this conference call that Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the WIV and, further, may have been intentionally genetically manipulated," the GOP House representatives' letter to Sec. Becerra read. The congressmen remarked that "it is unclear if either Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins ever passed these warnings along to other government officials or if they simply ignored them."
The GOP House representatives pointed out that other scientists were also on the call, four of which went on to write a paper titled "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," which was sent to Dr. Fauci and Collins just three days after the conference call. The paper did not theorize that the coronavirus originated from a lab.
Now, Republican leaders are questioning if the COVID lab leak theory was dropped because of Dr. Fauci and Collins' influence. They remarked how just in a "short period of time," the authors "abandoned their belief COVID-19 was the result of a laboratory leak," and that it was unclear if it happened "after speaking with Drs. Fauci and Collins." Reps. Comer and Jordan added that they are unaware if Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins edited the paper that was eventually published in Nature Medicine.
Comer and Jordan allege that the emails showed notes from the February 1, 2020 conference call, including a note from Dr. Jeremy Farrar to Collins, Fauci and current NIH Acting Director Lawrence Tabak, stating that "a likely explanation" could involve "accidently creating a virus that would be primed for rapid transmission between humans."
Dr. Fauci is also under fire over his recently publicized financial disclosures, Forbes reported. Following a heated exchange between Dr. Fauci and Senator Roger Marshall, the senator revealed the infectious diseases expert's unredacted financial disclosures for 2020, which revealed his household's net worth of more than $10.4 million.
The report shows that Dr. Fauci's household income totaled $1,776,479 in income, perks and benefits, and unrealized gains during the COVID pandemic. This also includes federal income and benefits of $868,812, as well as outside royalties and travel perks totaling $113,298, and an increase of investment accounts by $794,369.
