Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice regarding Dr. Antony Fauci’s claims that the National Institutes of Health has not funded gain-of-function research.
The story: Paul asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to criminally investigate the White House chief medical advisor for stating under oath that the NIH has never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Kentucky Republican sent the request on Wednesday, the Washington Examiner reports.
“I write to urge the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into testimony made to the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on May 11, 2021,” Paul wrote in the referral, which the Examiner obtained.
The Republican lawmaker claimed in the letter that a 2017 paper on work done by a Chinese virologist at the Wuhan lab, which cited an NIAID award, proves that the NIH indirectly funded gain-of-function research.
The work included combining “spike genes from two uncharacterized bat SARS-related coronavirus strains, Rs4231 and Rs7327… with the genomic backbone of another SARS-related coronavirus to create novel chimeric SARS-related viruses.”
“These experiments combined genetic information from different SARS-related coronaviruses and combined them to create novel, artificial viruses able to infect human cells,” Paul wrote. “This research, conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and funded under NIAID Award R01AI110964, fits the definition of gain-of-function research.”
In detail: The NIH has given $15.2 million to Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, a non-government organization whose goal is to prevent pandemics. Daszak has a close relationship with Shi Zhengli, a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like viruses and works at the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He sent her lab at least $600,000 in NIH funding.
In his letter, Paul was referring to Zhengli’s work at the Wuhan lab.
How we got here: Paul announced that he will sent a letter to the Justice Department to ask for an investigation into Fauci’s claims last week on Fox News.
“I will be sending a letter to Department of Justice asking for a criminal referral because he has lied to Congress. We have scientists that were lined up by the dozens to say that the research he was funding was gain-of-function,” he told host Sean Hannity on Tuesday. “He’s doing this because he has a self interest to cover his tracks and to cover his connection to Wuhan lab.”
The announcement came after he and Fauci clashed during a Senate hearing where both accused each other of “lying” over gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.