Rep. Nancy Mace, who has signed onto a letter along with several other lawmakers — including Democrats — is demanding answers from Dr. Anthony Fauci about the funding of research on animals through the National Institutes of Health.
Mace told Newsmax that the revelations about what was being done to puppies in a Tunisian lab were "completely gruesome."
"What we learned is that upwards of $1.7 million was spent, via the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under Dr. Fauci, to debark and then drug, kill, and dissect 44 beagle puppies," the South Carolina Republican said on Newsmax.
"As a lifelong animal lover, myself, and the fact that this still goes on and that we're using American taxpayer money to pay for it, is disgusting,"she added.
Mace on Saturday tweeted a letter she attached to her message to Fauci "regarding cruel, taxpayer-funded experiments on puppies; debarking before drugging and killing them."
According to a report from the White Coat Waste Project, generated through a Freedom of Information Act request with the NIAID, which Fauci heads, more than $400,000 in taxpayer money was spent on canine experiments.
The documents show that the otherwise healthy dogs had been treated with an experimental medication before they were subjected to being bitten by flies infected with a parasite known to be contagious to humans. The dogs' vocal cords were cut so their barking would not interfere in the study, the report indicated.
"I don't think there's anything we can trust Dr. Fauci with these days," Mace told Newsmax. "He should be fired. We should have a hearing on this and many other things he's been found over and over and over again to lie about to the American people and to lie to Congress. And I'm quite frankly sick and tired of it."
Mace said she thinks the bipartisan letter is a good place to start.
"If this is what it takes to get people to come together and realize how bad Dr. Fauci is, and do it in a bipartisan way, then this is the first step to do that," she said. "But I'm disgusted. I have a puppy and I have cats myself. I love animals.
"Like most Americans, this is a nonpartisan issue. And if this is what brings it to the line, then we will. We've got to keep moving forward and exposing all of the awful things that Dr. Fauci has led our nation into."
Fauci has also said that it's impossible that taxpayers' dollars that ended up at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were used to fund gain of function research on the coronavirus that led to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mace told Newsmax that she would "call BS" on that.
"There's no way that that can't be an option there. I mean, he's lied to us every step of the way on this thing," she said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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