WATCH: Tucker Carlson SLAMS Fauci for lying under oath after emails revealed

In the emails, Fauci said that face masks are not helpful, received information that there was reason to believe the virus was engineered, and advocated early for school closures despite evidence showing that kids were not at high risk of contracting or spreading the illness.

"In March of last year, we interviewed Fauci on this show. We treated him with respect. We took his answers seriously. We’re Americans, so we assumed the man in charge of protecting the United States from Covid must be impressive and rational. We also assumed he was honest," Tucker said. "But we were wrong."

"It soon became clear that Tony Fauci was just another sleazy federal bureaucrat — deeply political and often dishonest. More shocking, Fauci himself was implicated in the very pandemic he’d been charged with fighting. Fauci supported the grotesque and dangerous experiments that appear to have created Covid."

"We came to these conclusions slowly, spurred by evidence that accumulated over the course of a year. Tonight, we have the mother-load. Thanks to a freedom of information request from Buzzfeed, we have thousands of emails to and from Tony Fauci, going back to the early winter of 2020," Fox News' Tucker Carlson said.

"They show that from the beginning, Fauci was worried the public might conclude that covid originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Why was Fauci trying to hide that? Probably because he knew perfectly well he’d funded gain-of-function experiments at that same laboratory."

"The emails prove Fauci lied about that under oath," Tucker fired back on Wednesday. "Consider this exchange, which began the evening of January 31, 2020. It was a Friday, just before midnight. The first email came from an immunologist called Christian Andersen, who works at the Scripps Research Institute in California. Andersen warned Fauci that covid appeared to have been manipulated in a laboratory. Quote: "The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (less than point one percent), so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered."

"The next day, on February 1, Tony Fauci wrote back, "Thanks Christian. Talk soon on the call." Fauci then sent an urgent email to his top deputy, Hugh Auchincloss. The subject of his email, in all-caps, was "IMPORTANT." Quote: "Hugh: It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on. Read this paper as well as the email that I will forward you know. You will have tasks today that must be done."

"Attached to the email was a document entitled, quote, "Baric, Shi, et al -- Nature Medicine -- SARS Gain of Function.pdf. The "Baric" in that attachment refers to Ralph Baric, a virologist based in the United States who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Baric worked with a woman called Dr. Shi Zhengli -- known as the "Bat Lady," because she manipulates coronaviruses that infect bats."

"Keep in mind that during questioning from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Tony Fauci denied that this same Ralph Baric had conducted gain-of-function research. Again, this is the Ralph Baric in Fauci’s attachment entitled, "Baric, Shi et al - SARS Gain of Function." Yet, under oath, Fauci denied it."

"Why would Tony Fauci lie about all of this? Here’s one reason: the emails show that Tony Fauci speaks regularly to Bill Gates. Gates isn’t a doctor or a scientist. He’s a rich guy who made mediocre software for office computers. Yet the term "Bill Gates" comes up more than two dozen times in the Fauci emails. Has Bill Gates profited from Fauci’s covid guidance? That would definitely be worth knowing."

"Our media don’t seem interested. No reporters asked about these emails at today's White House briefing," Tucker Carlson said on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight.