Rand Paul Drops Evidence Fauci Lied to Congress on Intel Briefings While Promoting Natural Origin Narrative

Chairman Rand Paul and the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee released a timeline of events and a document dump related to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role in the alleged COVID-19 origin cover-up. The documents support the testimony of CIA whistleblower James Erdman and include new emails that show biodefense experts working with Dr. Fauci to spread the message that COVID-19 had a natural origin.

On July 8, 2021, Dr. Fauci sent the “Proximal Origins” preprint to Beth Cameron, the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense on the White House National Security Council for President Biden. He told Cameron to read the paper by “highly qualified virologists,” and he would follow up with a CNN summary of the article.

Cameron thanked Dr. Fauci for spending time with them the day before, when Fauci was invited to read classified briefings on the origins of COVID-19. Senator Paul wrote, “He was pushing the natural-origin story while secretly getting classified briefings on the actual origins. After Fauci sent the Proximal Origins paper to Cameron, she said: “We remain in awe of you and grateful for your work.” She added, “Thank you again for what you do and who you are.”

There is a March 6, 2020, email from Kristian Andersen thanking Jeremy (Farrar), Tony (Fauci), and Francis (Collins) for their advice and leadership regarding the Proximal Origins paper. Andersen asked them for any comments, suggestions, or questions regarding the draft. Andersen also thanked Dr. Fauci for his “straight talk” on CNN.

Francis Collins responded by confirming that he and others assisted with the Proximal Origins paper, but were not listed as co-authors. “FYI, this is work that Tony, Jeremy, Larry [Tabak], and I helped with, but are appropriately not mentioned explicitly in the paper,” Collins wrote. “Note the conclusion: “The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered.” I hope Senator Cotton notices this.”

Senator Paul highlighted Fauci’s close relationship with the intelligence community dating back to 2003, when he was asked to review their work. In the same year, he received a CIA report titled “The Darker Bioweapons Future” that warned about the potential of making viruses more dangerous through genetic engineering.

On January 31, 2020, Fauci expressed concerns that the furin cleavage site appeared engineered in a message sent just weeks before the Proximal Origins paper was published. Fauci suggested Farrar and Andersen should report the concern to the FBI and MI5, and he would alert his US government colleagues in the meantime.

Following the hearing with the CIA whistleblower Erdman, Senators Paul and Ron Johnson wrote a letter to the CIA Director John Ratcliffe detailing the findings. They wrote that Fauci influenced the intelligence community’s analytic process on the origins of COVID-19 by providing a curated list of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), public health officials, and scientists, including the authors of the Proximal Origins paper. Senators Paul and Johnson argue that these revelations contradict Dr. Fauci’s sworn testimony to Congress in 2024. During that testimony, Dr. Fauci was asked if he had briefed any intel agency regarding viral research, and Fauci responded: “Not to my knowledge.”

The statute of limitations has expired for bringing charges against Dr. Fauci for perjury regarding his claims that the US government did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The 5-year statute of limitations would extend to 2029 for potential charges against Dr. Fauci for statements he made regarding intelligence briefings during his 2024 Congressional testimony.

Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy for the White Coat Waste Project, also noted that Dr. Fauci claimed he didn’t use his personal email for official business, to the best of his knowledge, during a 2024 COVID Select Subcommittee hearing. A previously released email shows he told Washington Post reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb to message him on his private email.

A DARPA whistleblower report was released on August 13, laying out evidence and a hypothesis that COVID-19 was a lab creation from US-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Less than two weeks later, Dr. Fauci was “warmly” invited to review a “very interesting report.” Two days later, the ODNI released its “Unclassified Summary of Assessment on COVID-19 Origins” report, which four agencies and the National Intelligence Council concluded with “low confidence” that a natural origin of COVID-19 is most plausible.

Dr. Fauci received a blanket pardon from President Biden dating back to 2014, the time when President Obama announced a federal funding pause on gain-of-function research. Fauci’s advisor, David Morens, was indicted last month for conspiracy, deleting and concealing records, and faces 51 years in prison. Senator Paul and others have suggested that Fauci’s pardon may not be valid as it was signed by autopen, but he has said that charges need to be brought so the court system can make that ruling.