WASHINGTON — Anthony Fauci, the former top U.S. infectious disease official and a longtime foil for congressional Republicans, on Monday came out forcefully against GOP accusations on a host of Covid-related issues, and said debate about the coronavirus’s origin had been “seriously distorted.”
Fauci, in one of his most closely watched appearances before a congressional committee, said allegations that he sought to influence scientists’ research about Covid’s origins — so that they would not conclude the virus was the result of a lab leak — were “simply preposterous.” But he also played down accusations that work funded by the National Institutes of Health had led to the emergence of the virus.
“One thing I can be sure [about], the viruses that were funded by the NIH bio-genetically could not be the precursor to SARS-CoV-2,” he told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Later, he added: “I don’t think the concept of there being a lab leak is inherently a conspiracy theory. What is conspiracy is the kind of distortion of that particular subject. Like it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne.”
Fauci, who is now retired, was also quick to distance himself from David Morens, the senior adviser recently targeted in the committee’s investigation for emails in part revealing he advised the president of an infectious disease research group, EcoHealth Alliance, to avoid email correspondence with government accounts, which can be obtained by the public. The warning was sent when discussing the furor over a grant by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency Fauci led, to a EcoHealth to study coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Morens and Fauci worked together on some scientific papers over the years but Morens “was not an adviser to me on institute policy,” Fauci said.
Republicans pushed back, asking Fauci if Morens directly reported to him and if he had knowledge of Morens’ advice to evade federal records requests — and did so himself in communications.
“I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about, there’s no back channel at NIAID,” Fauci said. “I do not do government business on my private email.”
The longtime infectious disease doctor appeared before a packed hearing room. A line for public seating snaked through the hallway; among the attendees filing in was a cluster wearing “Got Ivermectin?” T-shirts, a reference to the drug that was initially promoted as a way to treat or prevent Covid infections. Studies later showed it was not an effective therapy or preventative tool.
Committee Republicans on Friday released nearly 500 pages of transcripts from Fauci’s January closed-door testimony. The records show that lawmakers questioned him extensively over the early days of the pandemic, when Fauci became the most visible face in federal health officials’ calls for shutdowns, masks, social distancing, and dismissals of the lab leak theory.
Many of the early questions Monday retread those issues, with some Republican lawmakers digging into the composition of the coronavirus and NIAID’s processes for funding viral research.
Looming over the hearing is a GOP push to bar what’s known as gain-of-function research, a field of study in which researchers make viruses more transmissible to study their spread.
This is a developing story and will be updated.