Rand Paul presses Fauci for answers on NIH gain-of-function funding following Senate hearing

Fox News obtained this letter containing questions for Fauci, which was written a week after Fauci's Jan. 11 testimony to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee in a hearing entitled "Addressing New Variants: A Federal Perspective on the COVID-19 Response."

The letter lays out 11 "yes or no" questions for Fauci to answer, written to Senate HELP Committee chairwoman Patty Murray and ranking member Richard Burr on Jan. 18, 2022.

"The American people deserve to know how this pandemic started, to know if the NIH funded dangerous gain-of-function research that may have caused this pandemic, and to remove from office anyone, such as Dr. Fauci, who let this happen," Paul told Fox News in a Monday email.

"In these questions, I am demanding simple 'yes' or 'no' answers that aim to get us closer to the truth about the origins of COVID-19," he continued.

Paul's questions for Fauci center around whether the NIH funded gain-of-function research, focusing on the EcoHealth Alliance grant given for that research.

"Did the NIH award a grant on bat SARS-related coronaviruses to EcoHealth Alliance with a subcontract to the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Please answer yes or no," one of the questions asks.

Another question asks whether the NIH had been informed that researchers "constructed new SARS-related coronaviruses (so-called 'chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses') that combined the spike gene of one SARS-related coronavirus with the rest of the genetic information of another SARS-related coronavirus, and that the resulting new viruses infected human cells?"

"Did the NIH continue to fund the grant, despite the violations of the terms and conditions outlines on page 5 of the 2016 grant Notice of Award (specifically, for failing immediately to 'stop all experiments with these viruses and provide the NIAID Program Officer and Grants Management Specialist… with the relevant data and information')" another question asks.

The letter goes on to state that if Fauci answers "yes" to any of the questions outlined, "are you prepared to retract your previous false testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and pensions?"

During the Jan. 11 hearing, Fauci and Paul got into a heated exchange over the lab leak hypothesis, accusing Fauci of discrediting doctors who believed that origin theory of COVID-19. "The idea that a government official, like yourself, would claim unilaterally to represent science, that any criticism of you would be considered a criticism of science itself, is quite dangerous," Paul said.

Paul noted later on that an email exchange between Fauci and now former NIAID director Dr. Francis Collins shows the two conspiring to takedown epidemiologists that believed the theory.

"In an email exchange with Dr. [Francis] Collins you conspire and I quote here directly from the email to create a quick and devastating published takedown of three prominent epidemiologist from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford. (Apparently, there's a lot of fringe epidemiologist at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford.) And you quote in the email that they are from Dr. Collins and you you agree that they are fringe. Immediately as this takedown ethic," Paul critiqued.

"A published takedown, though," Paul continued, "you know, doesn't exactly conjure up the image of a dispassionate scientist. Instead of engaging them on the merits you and Dr. Collins sought to smear them is fringe and take them down. And not in journals, in lay press. This is not only antithetical to the scientific method; it's cheap politics and it's reprehensible, Dr. Fauci. Do you really think it's appropriate to use your $420,000 salary to attack scientists that disagree with you?"