Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) slammed Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Fox News interview Wednesday during which he addressed the growing controversy surrounding the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“There’s a lot of evidence that he has a great deal of conflict of interest,” Paul said. “And that if it turns out this virus came from the Wuhan lab, which it looks like it did, that there’s a great deal of culpability in that he was a big supporter of the funding. But he also was a big supporter to this day of saying we can trust the Chinese on this, we can trust the Chinese scientists. And I think that’s quite naïve, and really should preclude him from the position that he’s in.”
Host Laura Ingraham asked Paul if he thought if there was “could there be criminal culpability here, given the repeated failures of Dr. Fauci” or “criminal culpability here of fraud or ongoing collaboration with the Chinese when when he was making excuses for them?”
“At the very least, there’s moral culpability,” Paul responded. “In the research done by the bat scientist in Wuhan, she gives him credit, she lists the exact NIH grant with a 10 numeral disclaimer or ID number, listing the money and thanking the NIH for the money. It’s clearly gain of function. There are several scientists who are in this field, cellular biologists, they all say that taking a SARS virus and adding an S protein to it to make it infect human cells, that is the very definition of gain of function. It’s very dangerous. We shouldn’t be doing it here or there.”
“But Dr. Fauci has denied it to this day, but the private emails and show that he was acknowledging that it was gain of function. Nobody was questioning it,” Paul continued. “The scientific community needs to look at this, because he hides behind this veil of the lab coat that nobody can question him. I believe and by looking at the evidence that it absolutely was gain of function research, and he was funding it. And to this day, he’s still saying he would do it again because he trusts the Chinese scientists.”
WATCH:
TRANSCRIPT:
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: Alright. Joining us now is one of the few who questioned Dr. Fauci’s expertise and motives as early as we did, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Senator, you are now calling for the firing of Anthony Fauci. What can you do in the Senate to get more answers than the ones that we have from these emails, which are still redacted?
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Well, you know, I think we’ve had a sea change of opinion. Everybody left of center was saying this was a conspiracy. No way could it have happened to the Wuhan lab. Now even Dr. Fauci is saying that we should investigate it. But the emails paint a disturbing picture, a disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci from the very beginning, worrying that he had been funding gain of function research. And he knows it to this day, but hasn’t admitted. We have to get Democrat counterparts who will actually use the committee hearings to investigate this. But so far, it’s been such a partisan support for Dr. Fauci that he can do no wrong. But really, there’s a lot of evidence that he has a great deal of conflict of interest. And that if it turns out this virus came from the Wuhan lab, which it looks like it did, that there’s a great deal of culpability in that he was a big supporter of the funding. But he also was a big supporter to this day of saying we can trust the Chinese on this, we can trust the Chinese scientists. And I think that’s quite naïve, and really should preclude him from the position that he’s in.
INGRAHAM: And we’re referencing the point you just made, senator, the emails, they show that Fauci was scrambling in those early days of the pandemic to find out the links between the NIH funded gain of function research and COVID. Now here’s how one of his NIH underlings responded to this email about a 2015 gain of function study that was co authored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s bat lady, and he said, ‘The paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause, but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH. Not sure what this means since Emily is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone through the p3 framework.’ Explain that, senator. Why is that so significant?
PAUL: Here’s, Laura, what makes it worse. Two weeks ago in committee hearing he said they did not find any gain of function research. I quoted that specific paper. So the very paper that he puts in the email, he says, oh, my goodness, we need to read this paper because we looks like we are actually funding gain of function research, which is where we juice up these viruses, take them from animals, and infect them into humans. He’s admitting that to his underling, he’s worried about this in February of last year. But only two weeks ago, he tells me, oh, it wasn’t gain of function research. But in his email, in the subject line, he says gain of function research. He was admitting it to his private underlings seven, eight, nine months ago.
INGRAHAM: I mean, could there be criminal culpability here, given the repeated failures of Dr. Fauci, who is basically in charge of much of our messaging on this and advice on this? Could there be criminal culpability here of fraud or ongoing collaboration with the Chinese when when he was making excuses for them?
PAUL: At the very least, there’s moral culpability. In the research done by the bat scientist in Wuhan, she gives him credit, she lists the exact NIH grant with a 10 numeral disclaimer or ID number, listing the money and thanking the NIH for the money. It’s clearly gain of function. There are several scientists who are in this field, cellular biologists, they all say that, taking a SARS virus and adding an S protein to it to make it infect human cells, that is the very definition of gain of function. It’s very dangerous. We shouldn’t be doing it here or there. But Dr. Fauci, has denied it to this day, but the private emails and show that he was acknowledging that it was gain of function. Nobody was questioning it. The scientific community needs to look at this, because he hides behind this veil of the lab coat that nobody can question him. I believe and by looking at the evidence that it absolutely was gained to function research, and he was funding it. And to this day, he’s still saying he would do it again because he trusts the Chinese scientists.
INGRAHAM: Well, one of those emails obtained by BuzzFeed, senator, was from Peter Daszak of the Eco Health Alliance. Now he was the one pushing this and doing this research that was funded by NIH in Wuhan. So he wrote to Fauci on April 18, 2020, ‘I just wanted to say a personal thank you for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” It’s unbelievable.
PAUL: But here’s the thing, Laura, Peter Daszak is not a disinterested party. He’s not just looking for the truth. He was the funder of the research in Wuhan. So he has a self-interest in not revealing this because if it turns out the lab, the virus came from the lab — that’s my point too — this is a big deal. So any investigation going forward, it can’t include Tony Fauci, can’t include Peter Daszak, because they were the ones who funded the lab, they have a conflict of interest with coming to the truth.
INGRAHAM: We want to ask one more question, which is about the timing of the lift of the moratorium on this type of research, senator, in January 9 of 2017. The NIAD released this statement saying we have gone through the reviews, basically we have all these recommendations as to why this type of research should be permitted. It was 11 days before Donald Trump is inaugurated. And it’s like a four- or five-page memorandum. Don’t you find that timing to be interesting?
PAUL: Absolutely. So the NIH realized the gain of function was dangerous. They banned it for three years. And then right before Donald Trump becomes president, they allow it again, they start granting exemptions, all approved by Dr. Fauci. The committee’s secret, they won’t let you know everybody on the committee. But you know, Dr. Fauci knows who’s on the committee and reviews this stuff. But then they also allowed some of the research in Wuhan not to go before the committee. And when they were asked, Why was this not reviewed by this committee on safety? They said, well, wasn’t gain of function research. So they basically defined it out of the purview of the committee that was supposed to be assessing safety and preventing, you know, dangerous experiments from going on. So yeah, there’s something rotten in Denmark, and somebody needs to get to the bottom of this, but it can’t include Tony Fauci investigating himself. It’s got to be an independent bipartisan commission.
INGRAHAM: Senator, do you have any faith [in] a bipartisan commission, given the lies that have been put out there, and 500,000 dead and people are just looking the other way?
PAUL: Yeah, we can’t even get a hearing, but realize what they were studying in that lab they’ve admitted to was 15 times more deadly than the virus we’re dealing with. COVID-19 has about a 1% mortality. And that’s a lot of people. But SARS, the one from 2004, has a 15% mortality. And they were taking SARS and juicing it up and making it more infectious to human airway cells. That’s a really scary thing to do, particularly for the Chinese communists, who I don’t think are the most trustworthy partners.
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