Kentucky Senator Rand Paul reportedly alleged National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Anthony Fauci to be "culpable" for the entire COVID-19 pandemic during the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee Hearing on Tuesday.
The Gateway Pundit said Paul confronted Fauci regarding his support of the Wuhan laboratory and accused him of dishonesty while being under oath.
"On Thursday morning Senator Paul took things one step further accusing Dr. Tony Fauci of potentially being culpable for the entire pandemic!" the report said.
During the hearing, Fauci denied that the NIH was engaged in such efforts with the Wuhan Institute stating, "the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute."
However, WND reported that documents from NIH contradict what Fauci says.
"NIH grant records verify that funds were sent to EcoHealth Alliance that were used for research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The question is whether or not those funds were used for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab," WND said.
In addition, WND cited an exclusive report from the National Pulse regarding a press release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The press release recounts a particular conference entitled "2nd China-U.S. Workshop on the Challenges of Emerging Infections, Laboratory Safety and Global Health Security."
This event, held in 2017, was headlined by three American professors-scientists who received almost 200 grants from the NIH. Interestingly, "75 of those grants came the NIAID, which Fauci has directed since 1984," WND noted.
In the Wuhan document, the three scientists were "Prof. Linda Saif (academician) from Ohio State University, Prof. David Relman (academician) from Stanford University, Prof. James LeDuc" who attended on May 24, 2017 to discuss "policies in response to emerging infectious diseases" with other representatives from the United States, Pakistan the Republic of Kenya, and China.
The event explicitly stated that it was a "workshop" divided into five "academic sessions" -foremost of which is that Fauci had been denying: "gain of function research," and more. The three scientists mentioned above were considered "special guests" in the event.
"Culpable"
The Gateway Pundit said Paul had a Fox News interview after the hearing where he directly stated that Fauci was culpable for the pandemic because of the said funding.
"It's even worse than your point out. The person they hired to investigate the lab for the WHO perspective is the guy who gave the money. So NIH gave the money to EcoHealth. The head of EcoHealth--they got him to investigate whether Wuhan was doing anything inappropriate in their lab. But if they were then wouldn't he be culpable?" Paul said.
"Doesn't he have a self interest in smoothing things over," he continued. "I'm not saying he did cover things up but you wouldn't appoint someone who is in the line of the supply chain of giving the money to them.
"Ultimately here's the rub. I don't know whether it came from the lab. But who could be culpable? Dr. Fauci could be culpable for the entire pandemic!" Paul said.
Paul based his claims against Fauci from a study released at the U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health website entitled, "Origin And Evolution Of Pathogenic Coronaviruses," on December 10, 2018 by three doctors led by Dr. Shi Zheng-Li of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Zheng-Li claimed in the document that NIH funded their study, which was originally set for bats but eventually had to make some changes such that the virus would become more lethal "with the highest possible infectivity for human cells."
Paul raised the need to investigate why the NIH was funding a "Chinese communist lab that was conducting some of the world's most dangerous research" in the first place, which was "extremely reckless."
