Fauci sneered at lab leak concerns after pushing paper to disprove theory

Former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly dismissed concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic began with a lab leak in Wuhan, China — after he commissioned a paper to “disprove” the theory, according to newly released emails.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released evidence Sunday that Fauci ordered, helped to edit, and gave final approval to a paper titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which was published on Feb. 17, 2020. Exactly two months later, Fauci used that same publication to wave away concerns that the virus might have come from a Chinese facility.

Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pointed reporters on April 17, 2020, to a paper by “a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists” published in Nature Medicine that showed the coronavirus had “mutations” that were “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”

Fauci also told the White House press corps that “the paper will be available. I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you.”

One of the paper’s co-authors, Dr. Kristian Andersen, said Fauci was one of several big scientific names who “prompted” him to write the study to debunk the lab leak theory, according to a cover email submitted with the article to Nature Medicine on Feb. 12, 2020.

“There has been a lot of speculation, fear-mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space. [This paper was] prompted by … Tony Fauci, and [then-National Institutes of Health Director Dr.] Francis Collins,” Andersen wrote.

Sunday’s email release by the GOP-controlled House committee calls into question repeated statements made by Fauci to members of Congress during the pandemic — especially regarding the NIH funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In a high-profile clash during a July 2021 hearing, Fauci told Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that “you do not know what you’re talking about, quite frankly,” when asked about his involvement with the research.

Last week, Paul’s wife Kelley claimed Fauci repeatedly lied to Congress about the issue, tweeting: “He knew NIH and NIAID money was sent to Wuhan via intermediary EcoHealth Alliance.”

In January 2022, Paul and Fauci were at loggerheads again over a Feb. 1, 2020 conference call convened by Fauci, Collins and at least 11 other scientists — four of whom submitted a first draft of the “Proximal Origins” paper to Fauci and Collins three days later.

“Did you communicate with the five scientists who wrote the opinion piece in Nature, where they were describing, ‘Oh, there’s no way this could have come from a lab?’” asked Paul at the time.

“That was not me,” Fauci answered. “You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning how you do that.”

However, Andersen suggested otherwise on Feb. 8, 2020 when he wrote a contact at the German Center for Infection Research: “Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory”.

The same day that Fauci reassured the White House press corps about COVID origins, emails made public in January 2022 show, he also talked down Collins about the lab leak theory.

“Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy, with what seems to be growing momentum,” Collins had emailed Fauci on April 16, 2020. “I hoped the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this. But probably didn’t get much visibility. Anything more we can do?”

“I would not do anything about this right now,” Fauci answered on the morning of April 17. “It is a shiny object that will go away in times [sic].”

On April 18, 2020, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, which redirected millions of taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan lab, emailed Fauci “to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

“From my perspective,” Peter Daszak added, “your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’s origins.”

“Many thanks for your kind note,” Fauci wrote back the next day.

As recently as last week, after reports emerged at the Energy Department had assessed with “low confidence” that the virus emerged from a lab, Fauci couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the prospect, telling the Boston Globe: “I don’t see any data for a lab leak. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened.”