Last Updated on February 17, 2022
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told Fox News that Dr. Anthony Fauci “could be culpable for the entire pandemic” when discussing the origins of COVID-19 on Fox News.
In April of 2020, Patrick Howley of National File was the first to report that Fauci’s NIAID funded a study on Bat Coronavirus, a project that included scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab at the center of controversy over their bat research. A year later, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul confronted Fauci on the fact that the U.S. government was funding the Coronavirus bat project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the global outbreak, which many people including President Donald Trump, have said originated from the Wuhan lab, as National File reported.
Following Paul’s intense questioning, Fauci appeared on the news and said he “doesn’t understand what the problem is” with Paul. The Senator reacted to the clip, noting that if Fauci “was being interviewed by a journalist they would have asked, did the NIH, did your specific division of the NIH give money to the Wuhan lab? That’s incontrovertibly true.”
“He knows his group gave money, but he’s saying oh it wasn’t for juicing up these super viruses, we gave it for other research,” added Paul. “Dr. Shi, the bat scientist that’s the most famous one from the Wuhan Institute, when she published her papers, which scientists across the board are saying are gain of function, they were juicing up viruses. She gave credit to Dr. Fauci, she said that the funding came from, we have this in black and white, from a peer review journal. She said the funding came from Dr. Fauci’s National Institute, AID, NIAID. This is Dr. Fauci’s baby for 40 years. She lists him in the credits. He can’t escape this. He did the funding.”
MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt reviewed this paper that was published with financial assistance from Dr. Fauci’s NIH/NIAID and concluded “certain techniques that the researchers used seemed to meet the definition of gain-of-function”
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 13, 2021
“My other question is, China is a rich country, they’re kicking our butt in so many places. Why would we be giving them money for their research? Can’t they spend their own money on their own research,” said Paul. “We’re asking specifically for some NIH papers and the conclusions because in those conclusions, we believe that it will be unequivocal, from a group of scientists, that they will conclude that yes, the Wuhan Institute was making these super viruses.”
“So when Dr. Fauci goes on these other channels and they laugh it up and yuck it up, but they never ask him, did you fund the institute? See, he’s trying to evade that he funded it at all. I asked him the general question, I didn’t ask him whether he funded gain of function. I said did the NIH fund the Wuhan lab? And he danced around it and answered a different question. But there is no question at all that the NIH funded this lab,” said Paul.
“The person they appointed to investigate the lab, from the WHO perspective, is the guy who gave the money. So the NIH gave the money to a group called Eco Health, the head of Eco Health, a guy named Daszak, they got him to investigate whether Wuhan was doing anything inappropriate in their lab, but if they were, wouldn’t he then be culpable? So doesn’t he have a self interest in smoothing things over? I’m not saying he did cover things up, but you wouldn’t appoint someone who’s in the line of supply chain of giving the money to them,” explained Paul.
“Ultimately, here’s the rub. I don’t know whether it came from the lab. Nobody knows whether it came from the lab. But who would be culpable? Dr. Fauci could be culpable for the entire pandemic. So could Dr. Daszak, and so could Dr. Shi. I’m not saying that happened, I don’t know. But you wouldn’t put the people who gave the money to the Wuhan lab in charge of the investigation. That looks like a coverup,” said Paul.
Yes, Dr. Fauci’s NIH did fund the Wuhan Virology Lab. Here’s the verbatim admission from their chief scientist Dr. Shi Zhengli. pic.twitter.com/MzXBiRX0tx
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 13, 2021
