The resignation of Dr. Anthony Fauci won’t stop investigations of the departing National Institutes of Health director, a key Republican critic vowed Monday.
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, took to social media to say that America’s top COVID adviser must still account for his testimony to Congress about gain-of-function research and his and America’s involvement with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic,” Mr. Paul said.
“He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak,” the senator continued.
Mr. Paul, who also is an M.D., albeit in ophthalmology rather than communicable diseases, has repeatedly clashed with the NIH chief over, among other things, the Wuhan lab.
According to one unproven-but-not-disproven theory, the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Chinese lab that was creating the virus as part of “gain of function research.”
Dr. Fauci denied that the NIH had ever funded such efforts, which create super-germs and super-bacteria in a bid to counteract them better should they develop in nature.
But this seemed to contradict some official documents and testimony from other scientists, Mr. Paul said.
“I was told directly to my face, and the quote is there from Dr. Fauci, they had never ever funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan,” Mr. Paul told The Daily Wire as he left a 2021 hearing. “All three witnesses contradicted that.”
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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