Dr. Anthony Fauci's actions at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic will be investigated by the Republican-led Senate in the next Congress, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said.
Paul, incoming chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told the Washington Examiner that his panel will issue subpoenas for documents concerning the origins of the virus and connections Fauci and others at the National Institutes of Health had in funding research in China.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a target of Paul for several years. Now, the lawmaker will be in position to make decisions as committee chairman.
"They have resisted for three years, and I'm not going to wait around another year to see if they start responding," Paul told the Examiner.
"What I'm looking for now is the actual deliberations, the paperwork, the discussion over whether or not it was or was not gain of function. I think there is something to be had there," Paul said. "I don't think they would have resisted me for three years if they actually didn't have something to hide. It wouldn't make sense."
Last month, Paul said the federal government was withholding a "treasure trove of information about dangerous" gain-of-function biological research.
"We're nearing the beginning of the real investigation because come January, with a friendly administration, we think we're going to get all of this information," he told the New York Post.
Republicans have accused Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until he left the government in 2022, of being dishonest about government involvement in risky virus research and covering up the origins of coronavirus.
Paul and Fauci engaged in a yelling match over whether the then-NIAID director signed off on possibly illegal, risky virology research, using the term "gain of function."
That exchange happened when Paul questioned Fauci as to whether NIAID used the EcoHealth Alliance to violate a federal ban on funding of gain of function by financing genetic experimentation on bat coronaviruses between 2014 and 2020.
During a transcribed interview three years later, Fauci told a House panel on the pandemic that he was using the "operative definition" of gain of function, while Paul was using the general term.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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