As Katie and Spencer reported today, Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails were made available thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request from BuzzFeed news. Sure enough, Fauci was alerted that the virus could have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
One person who was particularly vindicated was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who is also a doctor.
The senator spoke with Tom Roten of WVHU, a local radio station in Kentucky, that same morning about those exchanges.
Paul and Fauci have had many memorable exchanges in the times Fauci has appeared before committee hearings where he is subjected to the senator's questioning.
In one exchange, Sen. Paul slammed Dr. Fauci for engaging in "theater" by wearing two masks, despite being fully vaccinated. He did so even though he knew masks weren't effective, as the email exchanges show, and as Spencer had also reported on further.
During the radio program, Sen. Paul recalled this exchange, noting Fauci has "one big lie after another" and that "he's setting the example with bad science."
He offered that the "biggest belief" from Fauci and the powers that be "isn't really in public health or what's right or wrong, it's in submission, submission to their will and to the state."
Another more recent exchange from last month involved denials from Dr. Fauci that NIH was funding gain-of-function.
Sen. Paul quickly addressed Dr. Fauci's emails, noting that it seems Fauci "was very troubled early on that there was gain-of-function." The senator also noted, "Once people know this, this is explosive, that he knew about the gain-of-function and is trying to cover it up."
EcoHealth's Peter Daszak is the actual funder of the Wuhan lab, as laid out in a letter from Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mike Gallagher (R-WI) seeking answers about taxpayers funding that lab. Rep. Gallagher also explained the EcoHealth connection in a conversation with Townhall last month.
In the radio interview, Sen. Paul noted that there are email exchanges with Daszak as well. The senator called the connection "so incestuous" and noted, "it's a small group of people." Peter Daszak was put in charge of an investigation into the virus, despite his close connection with Fauci, with Paul highlighting how "they have an incentive to cover it up because they were funding the lab."
Sen. Paul also addressed confusion as to why the grant being sent to the Wuhan lab for gain-of-function research continued even though there had been a pause. This was the focus of the above-mentioned letter from Reps. Jordan and Gallagher. "Somebody is culpable here. It's either Fauci or somebody else approved without going through the review committee," Paul offered.
"In recent testimony, Fauci has said, 'Well, it didn't qualify, it didn't have to go through this review process.' But these emails show he was perplexed at that point as to why it was going around the process too and why it wasn't approved. They call that P3, which is this committee. So what really went on in Wuhan was not, it was being paid for by the NIH, but it did not get approved as gain-of-function research, and so somebody either did something criminally wrong or criminally negligent," the senator mentioned.
It sure sounds like Dr. Fauci has fewer scruples than he should.
"People just blindly following Dr. Fauci's will, well they need to get a good grip on who Dr. Fauci is. It sounds like he's not a disinterested party here and that he's telling us half-truths, partial truths, and sometimes he's telling us the sort of Plato's noble lie, trying to tell us what he thinks we're smart enough to hear, according to his logic. But I think as we see these emails and as more comes out about it and as more comes out about him covering up and being very, very defensive and very, very cagey about whether he funded this gain of function or this creation of super viruses in China," Paul explained.
"I think he knew all along it was funded, I think he's very, very worried about that boomerang coming back to him, and for a while, the liberal media covered up for him, for nine months they covered up for him, now even the liberal media's starting to doubt. The question is, will they look at these emails," he said when it comes to the mainstream media.
We'll see if these words from Sen. Paul have as much of a lasting and true effect as his other insight has.