Fauci Responds to Republican Probe Threat After GOP Poised to Retake House

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 14, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said that he has “no problem at all” testifying before the House after it was projected that Republicans would win the majority in the lower chamber.

“I’d be more than happy to discuss anything that we’ve done over the last several years with this outbreak, since I have nothing to hide and I can defend everything we’ve done,” Fauci said at a STAT Summit in Boston.

While it is unclear what party will control the House of Representatives, Republicans need only one seat called in the party’s favor to get 218 seats. Several prominent lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), have said they plan on investigating Fauci and whether his agency funded controversial research of viruses in China.

Several months before the midterms, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform committee, said in a statement that Fauci would be investigated regardless of whether he retires or not. It came as Fauci had made an announcement that he is stepping down from his federal government positions.

Comer, in an interview with Fox News last week, reiterated that he'll target Fauci’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his agency’s connection to the Wuhan laboratory.

“We also want to get to the bottom of the origination of COVID-19. We believe that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins took steps to hinder investigations early on. We don’t think they’ve been honest with how they’ve spent a lot of tax dollars, especially when they went to the Wuhan lab.” Comer said, referring to Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

During remarks at the STAT event, Fauci attempted to characterize any future investigations as politically motivated.

“Because others choose to drive me into the political arena, does not mean I am in the political arena in what I do, what I think, what I say, what I advise,” Fauci said, adding that it “does not mean all of a sudden I have turned political.” Later in the event, he criticized former President Donald Trump.

In 2021, Fauci publicly clashed with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) during Senate hearings over whether his agency gave funds to a third-party to research gain-of-function mutations at a virology laboratory in Wuhan, China. In late 2019, COVID-19 reportedly first emerged in Wuhan, although Chinese regime officials have claimed it was first transmitted at a market in the city.

“Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress,” Paul told the longtime chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a sub-agency within the National Institutes of Health, during a Senate hearing in July 2021.

“On your last trip to our committee, on May 11, you stated that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And yet gain of function research was done entirely in the Wuhan institute by Dr. Shi and was funded by the NIH,” the senator also remarked. “Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement?” Paul later asked.

In that hearing, Fauci bristled at Paul’s statements and questions.

“Sen. Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you are referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function,” Fauci told the senator.

“You do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about,” he added to Paul.