E-mails Show Belief That SARS-CoV-2 Was Engineered; Fauci Informed That Natural Origins of The Virus Were “Highly Unlikely”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – GOP members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees on Tuesday have released email excerpts that allege Dr. Anthony Fauci – Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief White House medical advisor – may have been fully aware that COVID-19 had been the subject of “gain-of-function” research and subsequently leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, stating that the origins of COVID-19 were discussed in a February 1, 2020 conference call that included Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.

“It was on this conference call that Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the WIV and, further, may have been intentionally genetically manipulated,” Comer and Jordan’s letter read, adding that “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.”

Comer and Jordan are now hypothesizing whether or not Fauci or Collins suppressed the WIV lab leak theory, pointing to a letter written by four scientists who participated in the call three days later entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” which made no mention of it.

“It is unclear what, if any, new evidence was presented or if the underlying science changed in that short period of time, but after speaking with Drs. Fauci and Collins, the authors abandoned their belief COVID-19 was the result of a laboratory leak,” Comer and Jordan said.

Comer and Jordan claim the emails in their possession contain notes from the conference call in question; in one of them, Fauci and current National Institutes of Health Acting Director Lawrence Tabak state that “a likely explanation” for COVID-19 could be “accidently creating a virus that would be primed for rapid transmission between humans.”

Farrar added that he “just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.”

Comer and Jordan have several other emails that continue the discussion on the potential origins of COVID-19 over the course of several months, including Fauci calling the WIV lab leak theory a “very destructive conspiracy.”

Comer and Jordan are asking HHS if either Fauci or Collins warned them about the WIV lab leak theory, or if new evidence had come to light disproving it. They are also requesting that Fauci sit with them for a transcribed interview to go over the contents of the emails and any related matters, according to a Tweet by Comer Tuesday morning.

“Oversight Republicans have secured more @NIH emails showing what we’ve long suspected: Fauci took the Wuhan Lab Leak much more seriously than he publicly let on,” he tweeted. “It’s time for America’s most famous doctor to sit for a transcribed interview with @GOPoversight.”