Fauci to be grilled by Congress over pandemic failures and lab leak during marathon 7-hour session TODAY

Former White House doctor Anthony Fauci is being grilled by Congress today over his handling of the Covid pandemic and links to a Chinese lab feared to have started the outbreak.

Dr Fauci, 82, is appearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic for a seven-hour closed-door session. He will return on Tuesday for another seven-hour session.

The ex-official will face questions about his efforts to crush scientific debate about the lab leak theory, the idea that a genetically manipulated coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab.

Since his last appearance in front of Congress more than a year ago, it has been revealed that Dr Fauci oversaw the approval on risky research on coronaviruses in China and signed off on grants worth millions of dollars.

He is also expected to be grilled on his flip-flopping on vaccine and mask mandates, as well as the long-term effects of lockdowns, which have been linked to falling test scores and performance in school, higher rates of severe diseases like cancers, and mental health issues. 

Dr Fauci’s closed-door testimony is expected to get heated as previous hearings have. In the past, Dr Fauci has clashed with lawmakers including Sen Rand Paul of Kentucky over his perceived coverup of funding for gain of function research as well as the Covid lab leak theory

New emails dated February 1, 2020 show Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan’

The private hearings mark Dr Fauci’s first visit to Capitol Hill since his retirement last year, and they are expected to become heated.

Members of the Subcommittee have compiled ‘more than 200 pages of questions and approximately 100 exhibits’, likely including evidence such as private emails between Fauci and other scientists that showed efforts to coverup dissenting opinions about the coronavirus’ origins.

The Subcommittee said Monday: ‘Serious work needs serious answers.’

The committee first requested a sit-down with Fauci in February, but an agreement over the timing was only just reached with Fauci’s attorneys earlier this month.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, the GOP chairman of the committee, told DailyMail.com: ‘Americans demand and deserve explanations for any pandemic-era failures. 

‘This is an opportunity for Dr Fauci to explain his COVID-19 policy positions. His forthcoming, honest, and transparent testimony over the next two days is critical for improving our nation’s future public health responses.’

The infectious disease expert was found to have suppressed voices of those who contended that the coronavirus that spurred the global pandemic was the product of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

He privately commissioned a scientific paper that denounced the lab leak theory as a conspiracy and attacked those who subscribed to it as racists.  

Dr Fauci then touted that paper to the public as evidence the virus emerged naturally without disclosing his connections to it. 

Senator Rand Paul got in a heated exchange with Dr. Anthony Fauci at a hearing in July 2021 when he again pushed the nation’s top immunologist on whether the U.S. funded gain of function research in Wuhan. Fauci responded with, ‘You do not know what you are talking about’

Dr Fauci has been accused on squashing dissenting opinions that argued the covid pandemic likely emerged as a result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology where researchers performed gain of function work

Dr Fauci famously insisted to Congress members in 2021 that his former department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, ‘has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’ 

Yet emails that surfaced in 2023 – dated February 1, 2020 – show Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.’

While the emails show Dr Fauci was aware of gain-of-function research going on in the lab, he never admitted the NIH funded it. 

Advocates for the lab leak theory, including the FBI, have pressed for a more comprehensive investigation into the pandemic’s origins, going back as far as to probe federal funding for the controversial research organization EcoHealth Alliance run by British scientist Peter Daszak, between 2014 and 2021. 

The organization has subcontracted taxpayer-funded grants to several labs, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

EcoHealth Alliance was awarded $8 million in federal grants via Dr Fauci’s former department between 2014 and 2021, which it subcontracted to eight research facilities including the WIV.

White Coat Waste, a watchdog group that calls for the elimination of medical experiments on animals and a harsh critic of EcoHealth, said on Monday: ‘We’ve been working for years to have [Dr Fauci] taken to task for abusing his authority to violate a federal gain-of-function funding ban, conspiring to cover it up, and repeatedly lying to Congress about it. 

‘Anthony Fauci is the poster child for waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, and taxpayers deserve answers and accountability for his role in recklessly bankrolling and running interference for an adversary’s animal lab that probably prompted a pandemic using U.S. taxpayers’ money.’ 

Shi Zhengli [pictured left], known as ‘Batwoman’ due to her work sequencing the animals’ viruses, held meetings in 2017 with EcoHealth in 2017

Watchdog group White Coat Waste, highly critical of Dr Fauci and government funding of gain of function research parked a truck displaying an attack against the former government doctor for allegedly lying about the National Institutes of Health’s funding for such research

Dr Fauci has long been one of the most sought-after authorities on infectious disease, particularly on the rise of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. 

But he has seen a precipitous fall from grace in recent years for promoting misguided policies for locking down cities and schools for extended periods of time, with disastrous consequences, which are now coming back to haunt him.

It started in the wake of early 2020 guidance to discourage Americans from using face masks, instead urging the public to keep as much of the limited protective equipment available to healthcare workers as possible. 

Since then, though, he has been a staunch advocate for masking up in public despite dubious evidence that it actually makes a difference in preventing transmission and severe disease.