ICYMI: Wenstrup & Select Subcommittee Members Question Dr. Anthony Fauci for Two-Days, 14-Hours

WASHINGTON — Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) led a two-day, 14-hour transcribed interview of Dr. Anthony Fauci last week. The Select Subcommittee prepared more than 200 pages of questions and approximately 100 exhibits related to Dr. Fauci’s influential role during the COVID-19 pandemic. His two-day testimony revealed deep, systemic failures in America’s public health system. 

The most important discoveries from Dr. Fauci’s transcribed interview:

• Dr. Fauci claimed the “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation promoted by federal health officials during COVID-19 was likely not based on scientific data. He testified that the guidance “sort of just appeared” out of nowhere.

• Dr. Fauci stated he “did not recall” COVID-19 information and conversations relevant to the Select Subcommittee’s investigations more than 100 times.

• Dr. Fauci testified that he signed off on every foreign and domestic National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grant without reviewing the proposals.

• Nearly four years after prompting the infamous “Proximal Origin” paper that suppressed and vilified the lab-leak hypothesis, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that a laboratory origin of COVID-19 was not a conspiracy theory.

• Dr. Fauci admitted that America’s vaccine mandates — which were promoted and implemented by the Biden Administration — could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future.

• Dr. Fauci was unable to confirm if NIAID has ANY mechanisms to conduct oversight of the foreign laboratories they fund.

• Dr. Fauci played semantics with the definition of “gain-of-function” research in an effort to avoid accountability for his previous, seemingly inaccurate statements. According to Dr. Fauci, even the NIH website definition of “gain-of-function” research is incorrect.

Chairman Wenstrup joined Fox News, NewsNation, local radio, and others to discuss Dr. Fauci’s testimony. During his remarks, Chairman Wenstrup explained how Dr. Fauci’s transcribed interview answered pressing questions about his suppression of the lab leak hypothesis, his policy positions on masks and lockdowns, and his misleading public narratives surrounding mandates.

On Dr. Fauci’s inability to recall important COVID-19 information:

“He didn’t recall things over 100 times, and he didn’t recall conversations about the origins of COVID or the Wuhan Institute of Virology with President Trump or President Biden. He didn’t recall having any conversations with them. I don’t know how the rest of America could be having these conversations, but he wasn’t with the president.”

On Dr. Fauci’s suppression of the lab-leak hypothesis:

“It certainly seems like he had connections with the people that wrote the paper (Proximal Origin), saying that it came from nature. We have the conversations he was having with them. He put them together. He even, during those conversations said, we know they’re doing this type of work in Wuhan. All the people that were on the article had said that this thing looks engineered. There’s no way we can rule it out. And even the very day that he released on the White House lawn saying these scientists said it came from nature, and I’ll share this article with you, that same day, one of the authors in his internal document said, we still can’t rule out engineering. That same doctor is the one who said, I’m focused on disproving the lab leak theory, in spite of saying that they thought it came from the lab. So, we have a lot of evidence, besides just our conversations with him, but it gave us a chance to ask him about it and if he said something contradictory to what we have in evidence, I think that’s going to be very foreboding in the future.”

On Dr. Fauci’s misleading narratives surrounding mandates:

“What he came out and said was this (6 feet apart social distancing guidance) just kind of, somehow came out of nowhere and we just went with it. I mean, these were some of the conversations we had. Same with the masks. Well, you know, he just said use whatever mask because we’re having trouble getting masks. No, there’s no science behind it. Was there a double-blind study? No, that’s kind of hard. So why were we forcing these things?”

Nearly 1.2 million Americans lost their lives to a potentially preventable pandemic. Dr. Fauci’s private, and impending public, testimony will play a crucial role in improving the nation’s future public health response.

On preparing America for a future health crisis:

“I think we made a lot of headway. I think we’ve got him saying he’s changing his mind on a lot of things, so that can be a positive for us going forward, especially to those who follow him religiously. And so, we have next steps. We’ve got a lot of work to do to devise a system that’s actually going to work on behalf of the American people and not for political and personal purposes.”

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