A taxpayer watchdog sued the National Institutes of Health, seeking emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci and other officials from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases dating back to 2013.
The release of the documents requested in the White Coat Waste Project’s lawsuit filed on Tuesday would provide insight into what the NIH knew about how EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research group, “was spending the agency’s money at the Wuhan animal lab, and what NIH and EHA knew about a potential lab leak in late 2019 and early 2020,” the group said.
“Taxpayers have a right to know what the NIH knew about how its money was being spent at the Wuhan animal lab, and what NIH knew about a potential lab leak in late 2019 and early 2020,” said Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy at the White Coat Waste Project. “Transparency and accountability at home and abroad are critical in the quest to identify the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to prevent another outbreak.”
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Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, which secured a grant to perform coronavirus research in Wuhan before the pandemic, thanked Fauci for dismissing the hypothesis that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins,” Daszak wrote, referring to a Fox News reporter who asked then-President Donald Trump about the theory earlier that week.
Fauci, who earlier that day said the scientific evidence “is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human,” replied to the email, which came April 18, 2020, to thank Daszak for his “kind note.”
The exchange appeared in one of the more than 3,200 pages of Fauci’s emails that BuzzFeed obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and posted online Tuesday.
Though Fauci previously laughed off the possibility the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, his public tone has shifted. When asked by Politifact about whether he was still confident that COVID-19 emerged naturally, President Joe Biden‘s chief medical adviser said he was uncertain.
“No, actually. … No, I’m not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened,” Fauci said during the May 11 interview. “Certainly, the people who’ve investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could’ve been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.”
In light of the emerging evidence in support of the lab leak hypothesis, Biden said last week that he ordered his intelligence community to further investigate the origins of COVID-19 and report back to him in 90 days. The EHA told the Washington Examiner that same day that it so far had received no requests for information from the Biden administration.
As media coverage of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis has shifted, Daszak’s role in steering public opinion away from the possibility has come under scrutiny. At the outset of the pandemic, he orchestrated a letter from several scientists that rejected the idea of a lab accident, and he did not disclose his potential conflict of interest as the head of EHA when signing the letter.
Daszak, who directed at least $600,000 in NIH funding to the Wuhan lab for bat coronavirus research, was tapped by the World Health Organization to join its team investigating the origins of the virus.
After the joint WHO-China study suggested a jump from animals to humans was most likely, Daszak said during a 60 Minutes interview in March that he and the rest of the WHO team had taken Chinese officials at their word during the investigation.
Officials from the Trump and Biden administrations have said that the Chinese government worked for over a year to thwart the investigation, and in March, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the WHO, acknowledged the joint team had not fully investigated the potential of COVID-19 originating through an accidental leak from a Wuhan lab, a hypothesis that he insisted needed further study despite it being deemed “extremely unlikely” by the team.
House Intelligence Committee Republicans released a report on the coronavirus pandemic in May that pointed the finger directly at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Unfortunately, Beijing has hindered the conduct of a full, credible investigation. There is overwhelming circumstantial evidence, however, to support a lab leak as the origination of COVID-19, while there is no substantive evidence supporting the natural zoonosis hypothesis,” the House GOP report concluded.
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In light of the emerging controversy about the lab’s funding, there have been renewed calls for Fauci to step aside.
“Told you,” Sen. Rand Paul, a frequent Fauci critic, wrote Tuesday on Twitter, along with the hashtag “#FireFauci.”
A representative for NIH did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
