Former White House doctor Anthony Fauci will be grilled by Congress today over his handling of the Covid pandemic and links to a Chinese lab feared to have started the outbreak.
Dr Fauci, 82, will appear before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday and Tuesday for two seven-hour closed-door sessions.
The ex-official will face questions about his perceived efforts to quash scientific debate about the lab leak theory, the idea that a genetically manipulated coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab.
Since his last appearance in front of Congress more than a year ago, it has been revealed that Dr Fauci oversaw federal spending on risky research on viruses during his time working in the federal government’s main scientific research agency.
He is also expected to be grilled on his flip-flopping on vaccine and mask mandates, as well as the long-term effects of lockdowns, which have been linked to falling test scores and performance in school, higher rates of severe diseases like cancers, and mental health issues.
Dr Fauci’s closed-door testimony is expected to get heated as previous hearings have. In the past, Dr Fauci has clashed with lawmakers including Sen Rand Paul of Kentucky over his perceived coverup of funding for gain of function research as well as the Covid lab leak theory
The private hearings mark Dr Fauci’s first visit to Capitol Hill since his retirement, and they are expected to become heated.
Members of the Subcommittee have compiled ‘more than 200 pages of questions and approximately 100 exhibits’, likely including evidence such as private emails between Fauci and other scientists that showed efforts to coverup dissenting opinions about the coronavirus’ origins.
The Subcommittee said Monday: ‘Serious work needs serious answers.’
The Select Subcommittee first requested a sit-down with Fauci in February, but an agreement over the timing was only just reached with Fauci’s attorneys earlier this month, according to a letter sent last year from the committee.
‘It is time for Dr. Fauci to confront the facts and address the numerous controversies that have arisen during and after the pandemic,’ Rep. Brad Wenstrup, the GOP chairman of the committee, said in a statement.
Dr Fauci famously insisted to Congress members in 2021 that his former department. the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, ‘has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’
Yet recently-published emails dated February 1, 2020 show Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.’
The sessions come amid skyrocketing levels of new Covid hospitalizations and flu and respiratory syncytial virus cases, all threatening to overburden hospitals again.
