Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, persuaded fellow scientists to drop their theory that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak and turn to his theory that it began from a wet market — then used the paper they wrote on it as part of a cover-up in the early days of the pandemic, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., tells Newsmax.
"He felt guilty about funding the research in China that became COVID-19, Paul said Tuesday on "Rob Schmitt Tonight." "And so I think, his guilt and his fear of retribution, or his fear of culpability, led him to perhaps the most massive cover-up in modern medical history."
Paul sits on the Senate Select Subcommittee on the Origins of COVID-19 which holds its second hearing on Wednesday.
He told Schmitt that from the very first days of the COVID outbreak in the United States — on January 31 — that Fauci was exchanging emails "all night long."
"The next day he has a video conference and in that conference, all of the virologists are telling him they think it came from the (Wuhan) lab," Paul said. "And he convinces them that day — we don't know exactly how, because that's been redacted — but he convinces them to change their mind and write an article for a scientific journal."
Then, Paul said, Fauci uses that very article "to justify why this had to have come from nature."
Why was Fauci so intent on such a cover-up, according to Paul?
Paul says it was because Fauci and Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health provided American dollars to the Wuhan lab for research a year earlier.
"We also learned that in 2018 the Wuhan lab was asking for money from DARPA, which is part of our Defense Department, and they wanted to create a super virus that was a coronavirus with a furin cleavage site," he said.
A furin cleavage site, Paul explained is "a peculiar thing that helps the virus invade the cell, and it just so happens to be in COVID-19. So a year before the pandemic the Wuhan lab is asking to create a virus that in the end looked just like COVID-19. Coincidence? I think not."
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