It appears that there's more drama with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who is also a medical doctor, than what we're seeing in committee hearings. During an exchange between Dr. Fauci and Sen. Paul in January, only one of many, as Katie has covered, the senator confronted the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) over his tactics to silence other doctors who disagreed with him on the origin of the Wuhan coronavirus. Following such an exchange, Sen. Paul sent a letter to Dr. Fauci with 11 questions. He has yet to hear back, though, as Houston Keene reported for Fox News.
In a statement for Fox News, Sen. Paul emphasized that the questions were 'yes or no' in nature. The first 10 questions request "Please answer yes or no," with the final question asking "If you answered yes to any of the questions above, are you prepared to retract your previous false testimony before the United States Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions?"
The questions largely touched upon a grant from National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded to EcoHealth Alliance, which funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). It is believed that the virus likely originated from there. Members of Congress, including Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) have sounded the alarm about the involvement of EcoHealth Alliance for many months.
"While Dr. Fauci has been MIA for the past few months, he still owes the American people answers. Following a Senate HELP Committee hearing in January, I submitted 11 ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions to the committee hearing record that aimed to get us closer to the truth about the origins of COVID-19 – we still haven’t heard back," Sen. Paul said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"The American people deserve to know how this pandemic started, to know if the NIH funded dangerous gain-of-function research that may have caused this pandemic, and to remove from office anyone, such as Dr. Fauci, who let this happen," Sen. Paul continued in his statement. "Dr. Fauci can hide out for the next few months and ignore efforts to find the truth, but I can promise you, when Republicans retake the Senate and I’m chairman of a committee, he won’t be able to ignore me and the American people any longer."
Should Republicans take control of the U.S. Senate following the November midterms, Sen. Paul is expected to chair the HELP Committee. The current ranking member, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), is retiring from Congress. As I covered in January, Sen. Paul and his father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) discussed late last year during an episode of "The Liberty Report" potential future investigations into Fauci.
Earlier this month, as Katie reported, Sen. Paul introduced an amendment to get rid of Dr. Fauci's position and break it up into three separate institutes.
Though Dr. Fauci and Sen. Paul have had particularly memorable interactions, the senator isn't the only member of Congress that whom Fauci has been less than forthcoming with. As I covered last July, Fauci responded to a letter from Rep. Gallagher sent in May a little over a month later, but with astounding ignorance.