Fauci to loom large over House Oversight’s COVID-19 origins hearing

Dr. Anthony Fauci will loom large over a House Oversight hearing Wednesday on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, despite not actually attending.

The former longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is under fire after reports emerged that he prompted the drafting of a scientific study dismissing the lab-leak theory at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

He then cited that study several times to combat the lab-leak theory in public interviews.

“Dr. Fauci lied about tax dollars funding research in Wuhan, repeatedly denied the lab-leak theory,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, New York Republican. “Now we know he commissioned a paper to disprove it and push his narrative.”

Dr. Fauci, who led NIAID for nearly 40 years, headed the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic when it first emerged in early 2020. At the time, Dr. Fauci urged the public to wear masks, quarantine, and practice social distancing to slow the spread of the pandemic.

Documents obtained by the House Oversight subcommittee on the coronavirus also indicate that in February 2020, Dr. Fauci prompted a paper dismissing the theory that the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The paper came only days after he and other public health officials were warned the virus could have been genetically manipulated before emerging from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  

Oversight Committee Republicans say the paper, titled the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” purportedly “skewed available evidence” to show that China was not responsible.

“There was a study recently where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences … in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human,” Dr. Fauci said at a White House press conference in April 2020.

At the time, Dr. Fauci did not disclose that he was involved in the commissioning of the paper. The new evidence and the timeline will be a focal point of the Oversight subcommittee’s hearing.

“We can’t accept more years of stonewalling,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Republican and the subcommittee chairman.

Congress will likely have to wait a little while longer, however, before it hears from Dr. Fauci. The former public health chief retired at the end of December before Republicans took control of the House.

While GOP lawmakers have promised to subpoena or compel him to testify, that has yet to happen. The delay, in part, comes because of the competing jurisdictions between various House Committees.

No less than three high-profile congressional committees — Judiciary, Oversight, and Energy and Commerce — have opened probes into the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, for which each has some level of responsibility.

“Now that we’re in the majority, everyone wants the glory of a televised hearing into a big controversy like COVID-19,” a senior GOP aide said. “Usually this gets settled by leadership, but the new House rules and the narrow majority make everything more difficult.”

Wednesday’s House oversight subcommittee hearing is the first on the origins of the coronavirus hosted by the panel. But it is by no means the first for this Congress.

Last month, the oversight subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce panel held its initial hearing into COVID-19 origins. The oversight panel, chaired by Rep. Morgan Griffith, Virginia Republican, has purview over public health and research matters.

Dr. Fauci did not appear as a witness at that hearing either.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.