The GOP begins investigating the origin of COVID by sending a letter to Dr. Fauci sends
House Republicans Monday launched an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 by releasing a series of letters to current and former officials in the Biden administration for documents and testimony.
Republican chairs of the House Oversight Committee and Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic called for several people, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, information on the hypothesis that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus originated so that we can attempt to predict, prepare for, or prevent a recurrence,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the virus subcommittee, said in a statement .
Rep. James Comer, R-Tenn., chairman of the oversight committee, added that Republicans are “following the facts” and “will hold accountable U.S. government officials involved in any type of cover-up.”
The letters to Fauci, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Health Secretary Xavier Beccera and others are the latest effort by the new Republican majority to fulfill promises made during the 2022 Midterms campaign.
Wenstrup, who is also a longtime member of the House Intelligence Committee, has accused the US Secret Service of withholding key facts about its investigation into the coronavirus. Republicans on the committee issued a staff report last year arguing there was “indications” the virus may have been developed as a bioweapon at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That would contradict a US intelligence assessment, released in unclassified form in August 2021, that analysts do not believe the virus was a bioweapon, though it may have leaked in a lab accident.
The letters sent on Monday do not require the recipient’s cooperation. But in announcing the Republican staff report in December, Wenstrup said lawmakers would issue subpoenas if potential witnesses didn’t cooperate.
The hypothesis that COVID-19 originated from an accidental laboratory leak was initially dismissed by most public health experts and government officials after President Joe Biden ordered an investigation into the matter in May 2021.
The 90-day review was intended to get American intelligence agencies to gather more information and verify what they already had. Former State Department officials under President Donald Trump had publicly pushed for more investigation into the virus’ origins, as had scientists and the World Health Organization.
Many scientists, including Fauci, who was Biden’s senior medical adviser until December, still believe the virus most likely originated naturally and jumped from animals to humans, a well-documented phenomenon known as the spillover event. Virus researchers have not publicly identified any important new scientific evidence that might make the lab leak hypothesis more likely.
But Republicans have accused Fauci of lying to Congress when he denied in May that the National Institutes of Health conducts “gain of function” research — the practice of improving a virus in a lab to discover its potential effects in humans to examine the real world – in a virology-funded laboratory in Wuhan, China. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, even called for Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special attorney to investigate Fauci’s statements.
Fauci, who has served as the country’s top infectious disease expert under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has called the GOP criticism nonsense.
Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have previously said that an October 2021 letter from the NIH to Congress contradicts Fauci. However, there is no clear evidence or scientific consensus that the gain of function research was funded by the NIH, and there is no link between the US-funded research and the emergence of COVID-19. The NIH has repeatedly claimed that its funds have not been used for research that involves increasing the infectivity and lethality of a pathogen.
Nonetheless, Fauci indicated in November that he would “fully cooperate and testify” if Republicans went ahead with their plans to investigate the origin of COVID.
“I have no problem testifying — we can defend and explain everything we said,” he told reporters during a White House briefing last year.
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