Fauci Said He ‘Did Not Recall’ Specifics on Covid Origins, Pandemic Policies over 100 Times in Closed-Door Testimony

Testifying behind closed doors on Capitol Hill on Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci said over 100 times that he “did not recall” important information and conversations relevant to the origins of Covid-19 and the U.S. pandemic response he presided over.

“The face of our nation’s response to the world’s worst public health crisis ‘does not recall’ key details about COVID-19 origins and pandemic-era policies,” House Coronavirus Select Subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio) said in a statement Monday night. The “potentially preventable pandemic” ultimately resulted in the deaths of nearly 1.2 million Americans, the Ohio Republican noted.

In late November, Wenstrup announced that Fauci had agreed to testify before his subcommittee in a private setting over the course of two days. Before retiring at the end of 2022, Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor under the Trump and Biden administrations.

During the first seven hours of the transcribed interview on Monday, Fauci repeatedly defended his previous Senate testimony in which he claimed the National Institutes of Health did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which was conducting research on bat coronaviruses that may have produced the Covid pandemic. Similar to his hearing exchanges with Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.), Fauci disagreed with Congress’s definition of “gain-of-function” to avoid admitting that the NIH funded potentially dangerous research that led to the pandemic’s outbreak.

Gain-of-function research refers to making viruses more infectious or deadly for laboratory study.

Fauci also testified that he approved of all foreign and domestic NIAID grants without reviewing the proposals, and conceded that he was unable to confirm whether NIAID has any procedure in place to conduct oversight of the foreign labs they fund.

“Dr. Fauci’s testimony today uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America’s public health systems,” said Wenstrup. “While leading the nation’s COVID-19 response and influencing public narratives, he simultaneously had no idea what was happening under his own jurisdiction at NIAID.”

Furthermore, when presented with his February 2020 email to NIH officials demonstrating he was then aware of the gain-of-function research taking place in China, Fauci backpedaled, saying he should not have stated the Wuhan lab’s involvement as “fact” in the email.

“The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain of function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan,” Fauci wrote in the February 2020 email to his colleagues.

In his second round of questioning on Tuesday, Wenstrup said he plans on asking Fauci about mask and lockdown mandates, his policy positions related to those restrictions, and his role in prompting, editing, and approving the March 2020 “Proximal Origin” scientific paper that sought to disprove the lab-leak theory. The second half of the transcribed interview on Tuesday will also last for seven hours.

“Clearly, the American people and the United States government are operating with completely different expectations about the responsibilities of our public health leaders and the accountability of our public health agencies,” Wenstrup added.

Coinciding with Fauci’s questioning, the White Coat Waste Project, a taxpayer watchdog group dedicated to exposing and cutting government-funded research of bats and other animals, is running a truck ad that is circling Capitol Hill to demand Congress hold Fauci accountable for his actions and lies.

“Anthony Fauci is the poster child for waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government,” White Coat Waste Project senior vice president Justin Goodman said in a statement provided to National Review. “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.”