Earlier this month, former NIAID director Anthony Fauci endured a two-day grilling under oath by members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
It was the first time Fauci faced lawmakers since he stepped down from government duties in December 2022.
On the one hand, there was excitement that Fauci would be compelled to answer questions about policy decisions he made that irrevocably changed millions of lives.
On the other hand, Democrats were accusing Republican committee members of “politicising the greatest public health crisis of our time for their own partisan gain.”
Ohio Republican Brad Wenstrup, a physician and chair of the subcommittee, said he wanted to press Fauci on questions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how to manage future pandemics.
Wenstrup’s committee had been investigating Fauci and other government officials over whether they actively suppressed information about a possible “lab leak” and if they conspired to push the alternate theory that SARS-CoV-2 had a natural origin.
It was a closed-door hearing, so this summary is conditional, with much of the commentary surrounding Fauci’s testimony being relayed to the public by members of the committee.
After the first day of questioning, Wenstrup said Fauci couldn’t remember key details of the pandemic, responding to questions with “I do not recall” or “I don’t remember” over 100 or so times.
It was not the first time that Fauci developed acute amnesia under oath.
Fauci admitted the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered and accidentally released from a lab in Wuhan was credible, reportedly telling lawmakers that it was “not a conspiracy theory.”
Wenstrup says Fauci defended his previous Senate testimony in which he denied the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded gain-of-function (GoF) research in Wuhan, China.
In fact, Wenstrup said Fauci played semantics with the definition of GoF to avoid admitting his agency funded the research.
“NIAID scrubbed the definition of gain-of-function research overnight,” Kopp wrote.
“The change was made when grant reports made it unambiguous that Fauci funded research to make coronaviruses more dangerous in Wuhan, including research that increased the viral load by 10,000 times,” added Kopp.
Notably, Richard H Ebright, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, pointed out that NIAID had never published the correct definition on its website.
Ebright called out the deception, saying Fauci was “knowingly, wilfully, and brazenly untruthful.”
Fauci has often displayed a tenuous relationship with the truth—regularly flip-flopping on health policies—prompting Senator Rand Paul to accuse Fauci of blatant duplicity.
During the hearing, Fauci also admitted there was no scientific basis for socially distancing “6 feet apart” and reportedly said the rule “just sort of appeared.”
It was this very policy that kept U.S. children from attending school, in some cases, for over a year.
To add insult to injury, Fauci told lawmakers he “was not convinced” that closing schools resulted in learning deficits for children.
The six-feet rule was also the basis for closing or disrupting businesses, religious services, weddings, funerals, and forcing people to watch their loved ones die over Zoom.
When asked about vaccine mandates, Fauci admitted to urging American universities to adopt them, despite acknowledging that broad implementation of the policy would increase long-term vaccine hesitancy.
Perhaps one of the more egregious admissions was Fauci’s failure to review grant proposals before signing off on them and apparently said he was unaware of whether NIAID had conducted any oversight of the foreign laboratories the agency had funded.
Given that Fauci was the highest paid public servant, exiting government service with a yearly income of roughly US$481,000, many are left wondering if he will be held accountable for this colossal failing.
Fauci has agreed to a public hearing which has been scheduled for later this year.
