Fauci to testify about COVID-19 at hearing
By: Bart Jansen
USA Today
WASHINGTON - Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former federal government infectious disease chief, will testify before the Senate on July 29 [2026] about the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Senator Raul Paul, R-Kentucky, who arranged for the hearing, has accused the subpoenaed Fauci of destroying government records. some lawmakers have also questioned Fauci's recommendations for social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus.
..... "I will make sure Fauci answers for his dangerous decisions and the consequences they had for millions," Paul said on social media in advance of the hearing.
..... Paul, who heads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has jousted with Fauci for years about whether the U.S. government funded searcher at the Chinese lab that may have developed the coronavirus that sparked the worldwide pandemic in 2020.
..... But Fauci has strongly denied in previous congressional testimony the allegations that he tired to cover up information related to the theory that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
..... Paul said Fauci condemned and demeaned anyone who argued that the virus could have leaked form the la band never accepted responsibility for funding dangerous research.
..... On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a "public health emergency of international concern" followed a day later by the United States' own declaration under President Donald Trump's first administration.
..... Since then, he intelligence community has assessed that the virus wasn't developed as a biological weapon and that China had no advance warning of it. But the intelligence community couldn't definitively determine whether the virus was genetically engineered.
..... Part of the dispute is about coronavirus research into how disease jumps from one species to another, which is called "gain of function" research. The Pentagon pursed such research two years before the pandemic.
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And Fauci, who retired in 2022 after 54 years at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a House committee in June 2024 that he never influenced research on the origins of the virus. He said then that he believed the most likely origin was form animal-to-human transmission.
..... "I've also been very, very clear, and said multiple times, that I don't think the concept of there being a lab [leak] is inberently a conspiracy theory," Fauci said. "what is conspiracy is the kind of distortion of the particular subject like it was a lab leak, and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak."
..... Witnesses including a former Fauci aide, David Morens, have told lawmakers that they deleted correspondence and used private emails to get around public rerecords laws. But Fauici denied ever sung a private email address to discuss government business and he downplayed how closely he worked with Morens and said their offices were in different buildings.
..... Contributing: Reuters; David Jackson, Adrianna Rodriquez, George Petras, Ramon Padilla, Jim Sergent, Janet Lohrke, Grace Hauck and Ryan W. Miller, USA Today