Top Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee are calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci and a slew of other senior
administration officials
involved in the government’s pandemic response to
provide documents
and written testimony as the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic launches its inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.
The Republican-led subcommittee sent letters to Fauci, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, White House acting Science Adviser to the President Dr. Francis Collins, and EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak on Monday, raising concerns that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used at a lab in China to “conduct risky gain-of-function research.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), the subcommittee’s chairman, argued that the Biden administration has been “less-than-forthcoming” in its responses to House Republicans, who made the same requests in the 117th Congress when they were in the House minority. House Republicans believe the virus may have come from a facility in Wuhan, China.
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“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again,” Wenstrup said in a statement. “We can’t accept more years of stonewalling; the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is committed to conducting a proper investigation that the American people have demanded.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) echoed Wenstrup’s comments, arguing that further investigations need to be conducted.
“Evidence continues to mount pointing to the virus leaking from an unsecure lab in Wuhan. We know EcoHealth Alliance acted as a middleman, improperly funneling thousands of taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan lab to conduct risky gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses which could have started the pandemic,” he said.
“Dr. Fauci was alerted early on that COVID-19 had markings of a manipulated virus yet may have chosen to cover it up instead of blowing the whistle,” he added. “We will continue to follow the facts to determine what could have been done differently to better protect Americans from this virus and hold U.S. government officials that took part in any sort of cover up accountable.”
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GOP lawmakers have been highly critical of Fauci’s leadership in leading the federal government’s COVID-19 response, with Republicans regularly taking aim at his policy prescriptions.
The acting director of the National Institutes of Health
testified
last week before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that viruses being researched at the Wuhan facility bear no resemblance to the strain that caused the coronavirus pandemic.
