Fox News host Sean Hannity criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci for his initial resistance to claims that the coronavirus pandemic could have originated at a virology lab in Wuhan, China.
“Any idiot could have realized on Jan. 31, 2020, that a Wuhan lab leak was plausible and possibly responsible for the pandemic,” Hannity said during his monologue Thursday after newly released Fauci emails showed his skepticism about the lab leak theory.
Hannity said the new emails showed that Fauci was informed of a potential leak at the lab but publicly brushed any correlation to the coronavirus outbreak.
“If you brought the question up, you are a conspiracy theorist. You’re talking about debunked conspiracy theories. Not so debunked anymore, are they? Emails now prove that Dr. Fauci knew that everything was happening in the lab and he was showing great concern that, in fact, NIH money that he was in charge of was being used to do all of this,” the Fox News host said, suspecting Fauci that knew more information than what was found in the emails.
“We may have actually paid for this, and for months in public, Fauci treated the lab leak hypothesis as a Fox News conspiracy theory,” Hannity said. “He said there was no scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab, even though he got that note on Jan. 31 on 2020. He strongly implied that all signs pointed to the virus originating in nature, just the opposite of what he was told. So, why did he do this? What did Fauci know, and when did Fauci know it?”
Hannity claimed that Fauci continues to cover for China.
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“Even today, Fauci is still urging Americans don’t be too accusatory of China because they’re working hard to get to the bottom of what really happened. It’s in their best interest to tell the truth. He has emails that he got saying that they were covering up the number of people that were killed and then, in fact, their travel ban prohibited people from leaving Wuhan province and traveling anywhere within China or going to Wuhan province. You’ve got to be kidding,” the host said.
After the coronavirus made its way to the United States, prominent Republicans alleged that it could have come as an accidental leak from the Wuhan facility.
In February 2020, Sen. Tom Cotton claimed the virology lab was responsible and was subsequently criticized by legacy media outlets for peddling a”conspiracy theory” they claimed was “debunked.”
Fauci similarly downplayed the lab leak theory in April 2020, saying evidence of the coronavirus’s origins is “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”
BuzzFeed published more than 3,200 pages of Fauci’s emails written from January 2020 to June 2020, and the Washington Post published 866 pages of his emails written between March 2020 and April 2020.
