GOP Sends Letter To Fauci Starting Investigation Into Covid Origins

House Republicans began a probe into the origins of COVID-19 on Monday by sending several letters requesting information and testimony from current and past Biden administration officials.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was among the people who responded to a request for information from the Republican chairs of the House Oversight Committee and the subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic with the theory that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, leader of the virus subcommittee, said in a statement that “this investigation must start with where and how this virus came about so that we can seek to foresee, prepare for, or prevent it from happening again.”

Republicans will “follow the facts” and “hold U.S. government officials that took part in any form of cover-up accountable,” said Rep. James Comer, R-Tenn., head of the oversight committee.

The letters to Fauci, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Health Secretary Xavier Beccera, and other recipients are the most recent attempt by the newly elected Republican majority to keep the pledges made during the campaign for the 2022 midterm elections.

Wenstrup, a longstanding member of the House Intelligence Committee, has charged US intelligence with important hiding information regarding their coronavirus study.

In a staff report from the previous year, Republicans on the committee claimed that there are “indications” the virus may have been created as a bioweapon at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

That would go against a report from the U.S. intelligence community that was unclassified and issued in August 2021 and stated that analysts did not think the virus was a bioweapon, though it might have leaked in a lab accident.

The receivers of the letters sent on Monday are not required to cooperate. However, Wenstrup stated that lawmakers would issue subpoenas if potential witnesses didn’t comply when announcing the Republican staff report in December.

Even though it is highly challenging for scientists to establish with absolute certainty how diseases begin, research by experts worldwide has shown that COVID-19 most likely originated in a live animal market in Wuhan, China.

The theory that COVID-19 resulted from an unintentional lab leak was initially discounted by the majority of public health professionals and government authorities, but after President Joe Biden requested a study into the problem in May 2021, it started to get an examination.

The goal of the 90-day review was to encourage American intelligence services to gather new data and evaluate what they already had. Former employees of the State Department under President Donald Trump, as well as experts and the World Health Organization, had openly called for more research into the origins of viruses.

However, the investigation came up empty, with intelligence services stating that, barring an unexpected discovery, they would not be able to determine the origin either way.

Many scientists, including Fauci, Biden’s top medical advisor until December, say the virus most likely first appeared in nature and then spread from animals to humans, a well-known occurrence known as a spillover event.

The lab-leak concept has not yet been supported by any significant new scientific evidence that virus experts have publicly uncovered.

Republicans, meanwhile, had charged Fauci with lying to Congress when he denied in May that the National Institutes of Health had supported “gain of function” research at a virology facility in Wuhan, which entails boosting a virus in a lab to examine its possible effects in the real world.

Even Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, encouraged attorney general Merrick Garland to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Fauci’s claims.

Fauci, who held the position of chief infectious disease expert for the nation under both Democratic and Republican presidents, has dismissed the GOP accusations as unfounded.

Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have previously claimed that Fauci conflicts with a letter the NIH sent to Congress in October 2021.

However, there is no concrete proof or widespread agreement among scientists that the NIH supported “gain of function” research, and there is no connection between American-funded study and the creation of COVID-19.

The NIH has insisted time and time again that its money did not support studies that aimed to make pathogens more infectious and dangerous.

But Fauci said in November that if Republicans went through with their plans to look into the origin of COVID, he would “cooperate fully and testify.”