The Energy Department, which was previously undecided on the origin of the pandemic, according to FOX News, now joins the FBI’s stance that the coronavirus likely spread due to
a mishap at a Chinese laboratory, citing a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress and first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The “Wuhan, China lab leak theory”** of the origins of the COVID-19 virus was widely dismissed as a conspiracy theory and "misinformation" by Democrats, major news outlets, scientists and social media companies in the early stages of the pandemic.
And chief among those using their inflated reputation to dismiss any questions about, let alone any investigation into the connection between COVID-19 and Red China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
As Mark Moore of the New York Post observed, Dr. Anthony Fauci pooh-poohed the theory that COVID-19 may have emerged from a Chinese lab shortly after the onset of the pandemic in the US, calling it a “shiny object that will go away,” according to an email made public by House Republicans.
Back in January of 2022, Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.), then the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), then the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, revealed the contents of the April 2020 email in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra demanding he make the chief White House medical adviser available to testify.
On April 16, 2020, then-National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins sent Fauci a link to a report by Fox News host Bret Baier which stated that “multiple sources” who had been briefed on the origins of COVID-19 believed it emerged from the Wuhan lab.
“Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy, with what seems to be growing momentum,” wrote Collins. “I hoped the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this. But probably didn’t get much visibility. Anything more we can do? Ask the National Academy [of Sciences] to weigh in?”
Two months earlier, on Feb. 1, 2020, Comer and Jordan claim, Fauci and Collins took part in a conference call with at least 11 other scientists in which they were warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but “it is unclear if either Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins ever passed these warnings along to other government officials or if they simply ignored them.”
One participant in the call, Tulane University virologist Robert F. Garry, wrote in a follow-up email that “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario” for the emergence of the virus.
However, Garry later signed his name to a paper called “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” a draft of which was sent to Collins and Fauci before it was to be published in Nature Medicine. This was the paper to which Collins referred in his April 16 email to Fauci and it stated: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
“After speaking with Drs. Fauci and Collins, the authors abandoned their belief COVID-19 was the result of a laboratory leak. It is also unclear if Drs. Fauci or Collins edited the paper prior to publication,” the Republicans’ letter said.
The two senior Republicans also claimed that Fauci was aware in January 2020 that NIAID worked with the non-profit EcoHealth Alliance to design a policy that would sidestep a gain-of-function moratorium and allow it to complete dangerous experiments on novel bat coronaviruses.
Fauci denied both any knowledge of illegal gain-of-function experiments in Red China, and the funding stream, even though it has been proven by Senator Rand Paul that his agency passed the funding for the experiments through EcoHealth Alliance.
Sen. Paul, now the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says the Biden administration should declassify classified documents showing that scientists at the Department of Energy believe COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
“Classified documents leaked (they should be declassified!) showing scientists at DOE believe COVID leaked from Wuhan Lab,” Paul tweeted on Monday, circulating a Wall Street Journal story published over the weekend reporting the Energy Department has concluded the COVID-19 pandemic likely came from a lab leak.
Here’s the bottom line: A year ago Fauci was still claiming the lab leak theory was nonsense, even as the evidence accumulated that, in Senator Paul’s words, “NIH, under Dr. Fauci’s tutelage, funded research in Wuhan that used recombinant genetics to merge unknown bat coronaviruses with a known pandemic pathogen, the SARS virus.
“And Dr. Fauci still claims it isn’t ‘gain-of-function’ research because the scientists didn’t know in advance that the newly created virus would be enhanced or more deadly.”
In January of 2022 Representatives Comer and Jordan were Ranking Members of their respective committees, without the power for force hearings on the majority Democrats. Today, they are the Chairmen of their respective committees with the power to call hearings and initiate subpoenas.
We call on Chairman Comer and Chairman Jordan to set immediate hearing dates and if necessary, subpoena Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify on the Department of Energy intelligence report on the origin of the COVID-19 virus. The Capitol Switchboard is (202) 224-3121 we urge CHQ readers and friends to call Chairman Comer and Jordan – tell them you expect immediate action and prompt hearings on the DOE report and Fauci’s role in suppressing information about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
**Our take has from the beginning been that the COVID-19 virus got out of Red China’s Wuhan lab and once out, the Communist Chinese were happy to sit back and watch it spread as proof of concept for a form of asymmetric warfare against America and the West.
Energy Department
COVID Origins
Wuhan laboratory
FBI
Dr. Anthony Fauci
COVID vaccines
COVID mask mandates
Wuhan Institute of Virology
Rep. James Comer
Rep. Jim Jordan
EcoHealth Alliance
gain of function research
Sen. Rand Paul
NIH
National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins