Rand Paul vindicated: government agency says lab leak likely origin of COVID

‘He is egregiously incorrect in what he says,' Fauci said of the senator’s claims in 2021.

In November 2021, Sen. Rand Paul asked White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate hearing if the National Institutes of Health supported gain of function research in Wuhan, China.

Fauci staunchly denied the funding and Paul’s lab leak theory as it pertained to the origins of COVID19.

“It makes me very uncomfortable to have to say something, but he is egregiously incorrect in what he says,” Fauci said of Paul.

 

The New York Times reported on Sunday, “New intelligence has prompted the Energy Department to conclude that an accidental laboratory leak in China most likely caused the coronavirus pandemic, though U.S. spy agencies remain divided over the origins of the virus, American officials said on Sunday.”

“The conclusion was a change from the department’s earlier position that it was undecided on how the virus emerged,” the report continued.

It’s not just the Energy Department that has now come to this conclusion.

The Times added, “In addition to the Energy Department, the F.B.I. has also concluded, with moderate confidence, that the virus first emerged accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that worked on coronaviruses.”

Paul grilled Fauci at multiple hearings over the origins of COVID and whether the NIH-funded Wuhan lab could have been the culprit. At each turn, Fauci denied the possibility and accused Paul of being dishonest in his questioning.

The establishment media more often accused Paul or the Right of targeting Fauci rather than following up on the validity of the senator’s claims. A May 2021 Washington Post fact-check gave Paul’s claims “two Pinocchios.”

At the time, for many, and certainly now in retrospect, Paul appeared to be fishing for facts, while Left partisans appeared to be more interested in scoring political points.

Speaking on the lab leak theory posed by Paul in October 2021, a defiant Fauci told ABC News that “It is molecularly impossible for those viruses that were worked on to turn into” Covid-19.

 

Here’s the full Fauci quote, “There’s all of this concern about what’s gain of function or what’s not, with the implication that that research led to SARS-CoV-2, and Covid-19, which, George, unequivocally anything that knows anything about viral biology and phylogeny of viruses know that it is molecularly impossible for those viruses that were worked on to turn into SARS-CoV-2 because they were distant enough molecularly that no matter what you did to them, they could never, ever become SARS-CoV-2.”

Paul wrote in a November 2021 op-ed, “Why so many machinations and word manipulations? Because ultimately, we’re talking about culpability here. NIH, under Dr. Fauci’s tutelage, funded research in Wuhan that used recombinant genetics to merge unknown bat coronaviruses with a known pandemic pathogen, the SARS virus.”

“The American people deserve to know how this pandemic started, to know if the NIH funded research that may have caused this pandemic, and to remove from office anyone, such as Dr. Fauci, who let this happen,” he added.

The Energy Department apparently disagrees with Anthony Fauci, with it now believing that COVID might have originated in an overseas lab.

Rand Paul agrees. He’s been saying this for nearly two years. Now the Biden administration appears to be catching up.

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Jack Hunter
Jack Hunterhttp://LibertyTree.com
Jack Hunter is a freelance writer, the co-author of Sen. Rand Paul’s 2011 book ‘The Tea Party Goes to Washington’ and the former politics editor for Rare.us.