Fauci transcript released ahead of public congressional hearing

By Annette Gartland on June 2, 2024

This article has been updated to include details from the opening statement Anthony Fauci is due to give on June 3.

Just days before the former director of the United States’ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci, is due to give public testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the subcommittee’s chairman has released the full transcript of closed-door questioning of Fauci in January.

In January, Fauci acknowledged that the lab-leak hypothesis about the possible origin of SARS-CoV-2 was not a conspiracy theory.

“This comes nearly four years after prompting the publication of the now infamous ‘Proximal Origin’ paper that attempted to vilify and disprove the lab-leak hypothesis,” select subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup said.

Fauci gave testimony in a closed-door, 14-hour, two-day hearing on January 8 and 9. He is due to give public testimony before the select subcommittee on June 3.

Fauci arriving at Congress on January 8.

Wenstrup released the transcript of the January interview in two separate documents (Part 1 and Part 2).

Asked whether he thought that the possibility or the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a laboratory accident was a conspiracy theory, Fauci told the select subcommittee: “Well, it’s a possibility. I think people have made conspiracy aspects from it. And I think you have to separate the two when you keep an open mind, that it could be a lab leak or it could be a natural occurrence.

“I’ve mentioned in this committee that I believe the evidence that I’ve seen weighs my opinion towards one, which is a natural occurrence, but I still leave an open mind. So I think that in and of itself isn’t inherently a conspiracy theory, but some people spin off things from that are kind of crazy.”

Wenstrup said Fauci’s testimony served as “a critical component of the select subcommittee’s investigations into the origins of Covid-19, pandemic-era domestic policy failures, and improvements to the United States’ public health system”.

In conjunction with the transcript, the select subcommittee also released a staff memorandum that highlights the key takeaways from Fauci’s transcribed interview.

Wenstrup said Fauci repeatedly played semantics with the definition of gain-of-function research “in an effort to avoid conceding that the NIH’s funded this dangerous research in China”.

As the head of NIAID “and the face of America’s response to the pandemic”, Fauci certainly understood the common definition of gain-of-function, yet he repeatedly refused – both behind closed doors and to Senator Rand Paul during a 2021 hearing – to clarify a general understanding of the term and instead only referred to his own operative definition, Wenstrup said.

Fauci told the select subcommittee that, when he was asked whether something was gain of function, he was referring to the operative definition of gain of function according to the P3CO (the framework that governs proposed research that could enhance the lethality or transmissibility of a potential pandemic pathogen).

“That is the regulatory operational definition,” Fauci said. “And as we were talking about before, other people use the word ‘gain of function’ this, ‘gain of function’ that, and everybody’s got their own interpretation of it.

“But when you’re deciding whether a grant should be funded, this is the operational definition. And when I was asked anywhere by the Congress, by the Senate, by Senator Paul this is what I was referring to.”

Emily Kopp from the investigative research group ‘U.S. Right to Know’ (USRTK) tweeted yesterday (Saturday): “Fauci attempted to define ‘gain-of-function research’ out of existence. But his description of gain-of-function research here does not match NIAID’s internal policies under his leadership, according to the letter we obtained via FOIA.

“In addition to misleading the Senate under oath with Sen. Paul, Fauci doubled down and made false statements to the House.”

Richard Ebright, a microbiologist working at Rutgers University, who is a member of the leadership team at the NGO Biosafety Now, tweeted on June 1 that Fauci’s definition did not match the “official, legally controlling, definitions in the US policies in effect in 2014-2017 and 2018-present”.

Ebright also tweeted: “Fauci did not ‘play semantics.’ Fauci perjured himself. Fauci misfeasantly violated US policies in effect in 2014-2017 (“Pause”) and 2018- (“P3CO”), and in his testimony repeatedly perjured himself about the definitions in the policies and his violations of the policies.”

During his testimony in January, Fauci said that his staff had no conflicts of interest regarding the origins of Covid-19.

Wenstrup said on May 31, however, that Fauci’s senior advisor, David Morens, was “best friends” with the “disgraced and soon-to-be debarred” president of the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), Peter Daszak.

“Considering Dr Morens worked under Dr Fauci’s leadership for more than 20 years, it seems highly unlikely that Dr Fauci was genuinely unaware of this relationship,” Wenstrup said.

Majority counsel asked Fauci during the interview in January: “I was wondering if you had thoughts on whether Dr Daszak should have filed competing interest statements when he was weighing in on these issues, whether through the national academies or other venues.”

In response, Fauci said: “You know, I hesitate to speculate about what someone else should do. The only people that I am involved with is my own staff, who we’ve mentioned many times in this discussion, who don’t have a conflict of interest.”

Wenstrup says evidence suggests that National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials received instructions about how to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and avoid public transparency in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Newly uncovered documents show that Dr Anthony Fauci’s senior advisor, Dr David Morens, consulted with the NIH FOIA office on best practices for deleting official records,” Wenstrup said on May 28.

“Dr Morens went so far as to write in one email ‘i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear’.”

The documents also showed that Morens gave Daszak preferential treatment by forwarding him potentially damaging FOIA productions prior to public release, Wenstrup said.

Wenstrup has requested access to Fauci’s personal email accounts and cellphone records. He says new evidence suggests that Fauci may have used his personal email account to communicate about official government business during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He cites an email sent by Morens to Daszak in which Morens states: “I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work … He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

In a separate email, Morens referenced a “secret back channel” that he would use to communicate with Fauci outside the public eye, Wenstrup said.

Wenstrup added: “When asked about Dr Fauci’s use of personal email to evade the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Morens concerningly testified ‘I may have’.

“This new evidence raises additional, serious concerns about public health officials purposefully concealing information and behaving as if they are unaccountable to the American people they serve.”

Wenstrup says further evidence shows that Fauci’s former chief of staff, Greg Folkers, also used FOIA-evading tactics by strategically misspelling words.

“This evasion tactic ensures that when the NIH searches its email server for key words that are responsive to a FOIA request, Mr Folkers’s emails that contain the misspelled key word are not identified or produced as a responsive document,” Wenstrup said.

“In one email produced to the select subcommittee through a subpoena, Mr Folkers appears to have purposefully misspelled ‘EcoHealth’ as ‘Ec~Health’.”

Fauci testified in January that he signed off on every foreign and domestic NIAID grant without reviewing the proposals.

“He was also unable to confirm if NIAID has any mechanisms to conduct oversight of the foreign laboratories they fund. NIAID’s flawed grant process – which relies heavily on trusting its grantees without verifying – leaves opportunities for adversaries to exploit,” Wenstrup said.

Wenstrup said Fauci claimed more than a hundred times that he did not recall numerous issues and events surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Specifically, Dr Fauci testified that, despite the fact EcoHealth Alliance was conducting risky gain-of-function research in China, he did not know any details about the grant, nor did he maintain a relationship with its president, Dr Peter Daszak,” Wenstrup said.

Fauci also said during his testimony in January that the ‘six-feet-apart” social distancing recommendation during the Covid-19 pandemic was arbitrary and not based on science.

Asked whether he had seen any studies that supported the ‘six-feet’ recommendation, Fauci said it “sort of just appeared”.

Asked whether he recalled reviewing any studies or data supporting masking for children, Fauci said: “You know, I might have, Mitch, but I don’t recall specifically that I did. I might have.”

Wenstrup noted that the upcoming June 3 hearing would be the first time that Fauci would testify publicly before Congress since retiring from public service.

“On June 3, Americans will have an opportunity to hear directly from Dr Fauci about his role in overseeing our nation’s pandemic response, shaping pandemic-era polices, and promoting singular, questionable narratives about the origins of Covid-19,” Wenstrup said.

“During Dr Fauci’s closed-door interview in January, he testified to serious systemic failures in our public health system that deserve further investigation, including his testimony that the ‘6-feet-apart’ social distancing guidance – which was used to shut down small businesses and schools across America – ‘sort of just appeared’.

“This raises significant concerns about public health officials and the validity of their policy recommendations during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Wenstrup added: “We also learned that Dr Fauci believes the lab-leak hypothesis he publicly downplayed should not be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.”

Given that Fauci was the face of America’s public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic, his statements raised serious questions that warranted public scrutiny, he said.

Bryce Nickels from Biosafety Now tweeted at length about the newly released transcript. Nickels accuses Fauci of lying about the ‘Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses’ (DEFUSE) grant proposal that the EHA submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the US in March 2018.

Fauci’s claim that he learned about the DEFUSE proposal from the press was a lie, Nickels said.

Several scientists who have been investigating the origin of SARS-CoV-2 say the DEFUSE proposal was a blueprint for SARS-CoV-2.

Nickels also says Fauci was lying when he denied remembering meeting the scientist Ralph Baric, whose laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was listed as a partner in the DEFUSE proposal.

Peter Daszak gave public testimony before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on May 1.

The EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak have since been suspended from participating in US federal government procurement and non-procurement programmes and the US Department of Health and Human Services has begun formal funding debarment proceedings against Daszak and the EHA.

On May 1, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released an extensive report about the EHA and recommended funding debarment.

The committee also released a transcript of the closed-door interview conducted with Daszak on November 14, 2023. Daszak gave a voluntary interview and testified for nine and a half hours.

There’s a select subcommittee wrap-up of the May 1 hearing here.

There’s a transcript here of testimony given by Ralph Baric on January 22 this year. Baric was interviewed for six hours by members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

During the interview, Baric stated that, from his perspective, the Huanan seafood market was clearly a conduit for the expansion of Covid-19. Asked whether he thought Covid-19 started in the market, he replied “I don’t think so”.

Baric testified that he had told senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology Shi Zhengli that all bat virus culturing work should be done in biosafety level three (BSL-3) conditions, not BSL-2.

“A lot of the virus discovery work and culturing work that the Chinese do with zoonotic coronaviruses is done at BSL-2,” Baric said. “The animal work they do is actually at their BSL-3, but the culturing is at BSL-2.”

Speaking about the possible origin of SARS-CoV-2, Baric said during his testimony that escape from a Wuhan laboratory could not be ruled out.

“ … you can’t rule that out, because they do work at BSL-2. You just can’t. But for the reasons I talked about earlier, just on the frequency and the exposure level in nature versus lab … the scales are massively weighted to natural origins,” he said.

“ … taking out bioengineered, I think there’s much consensus that that is not what we’re looking at here. But with the lab leak and zoonotic, there would be possibilities for it to be somewhat more of a combination of the two.”

UPDATE

A transcript of the opening statement Fauci is due to give at the June 3 hearing is available here.

According to the transcript, Fauci will deny numerous accusations levelled against him.

“Let me state for the record that to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email,” he says in the written testimony.

Fauci says he knew nothing of David Morens’ actions in assisting Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance “or his conducting NIH business on his personal e-mail account or deleting emails to avoid FOIAs”.

He adds: “Several years ago, Dr Morens was transferred from a scientific division at NIAID to help me write scientific papers and review the scientific literature on infectious diseases. Following his transfer, we needed a title for him and the empirical title of ‘Senior Advisor to the NIAID Director’ was chosen.

“It is important to point out for the record that, despite his title, functionally Dr Morens was not an advisor to me on institute policy or other substantive issues. He is a scientist, science writer and historian. At NIAID we had a weekly executive committee meeting of the institute leadership, which to the best of my recollection he did not attend.

“We had a daily morning meeting of the immediate Office of the Director leadership staff, which to the best of my recollection he did not attend. Furthermore, his office is located in a different building from that of the NIAID Director.”

Fauci refers to a conference call held on February 1, 2020, and the controversial paper entitled ‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’, published on March 17, 2020, which dismisses the lab-origin hypothesis.

The ‘Correspondence’, published in Nature Medicine, was authored by several of the scientists who attended the conference call. Fauci denies bribing these scientists.

He says: “An accusation has since been circulated that I influenced these scientists to change their minds by ‘bribing’ them with millions of dollars in grant money. There is no way to answer this accusation except to say that it is preposterous.

“The NIH system for allocating money to grantees would make this feat impossible even if someone were foolish enough to attempt it.

“Furthermore, anyone who knows anything about the culture and integrity of the independent-minded scientists from several different countries who participated in the conference call would confirm how outlandish this accusation is. Importantly, participants on the call have testified before this subcommittee that I had no input into the content of the published paper.”

Fauci also denies trying to cover up the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a laboratory.

He states: “Another unfounded accusation that has circulated is that I actively tried to minimize and ‘cover up’ the possibility that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated from a laboratory.

“Assertions have been made that my e-mails prove this supposed ‘cover up’. In fact, those emails prove exactly the opposite, namely, that I was proactive in making sure that any possible ‘laboratory leak’ was actively investigated.”