OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Louisiana GOP Rep. Steve Scalise is calling out Dr. Anthony Fauci this week for his “reason” for not testifying before an important House Covid hearing.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy testified before the House Select Subcommittee to discuss a variety of topics.
In a letter, Fauci claimed that he could not make it because he needed to be formally invited by the Chairman of the Committee as well as get permission from the Biden administration.
“I’m glad that the Biden administration officials are here to testify at this public hearing before the subcommittee,” Scalise said. “It’s definitely been quite a while since we’ve had this kind of testimony. I appreciate all of you joining us.”
“I would like to note that we also invited Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to president Biden and the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But regrettably, he sent this letter that he was unable to attend because he would need to be invited by the Chairman with permission from the Biden administration,” Scalise added.
“So, Mr. Chairman, hopefully, you will invite Dr. Fauci,” Scalise said to Chairman Jim Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina. “I think we all want to hear from him. Just as a note, it’s been 309 days since we’ve heard Dr. Fauci testify before any committee in the House.”
“So, I don’t know if Speaker Pelosi is trying to silence Dr. Fauci,” he said. “We asked that he come, he was not ‘allowed’ to come, and I think he should be part of this hearing. I sure hope we rectify that soon.”
WATCH:
'It's been 309 days since we've heard Dr. Fauci testify before any committee in the House' — GOP Rep. Steve Scalise questioned if 'Speaker Pelosi is trying to silence Dr. Fauci' during a House briefing on the latest in the COVID-19 pandemic pic.twitter.com/bTrBhibuSx
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 31, 2022
Several Republican lawmakers indicated that if the GOP regains a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, they plan to open investigations into Fauci.
Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan said Republicans will “uncover” what Fauci knew about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
“If the American people put us back in charge, we are definitely going to do this,” Jordan said, adding that his colleagues would push for a congressional investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
“Because we now know without a doubt that Dr. Fauci knew on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 that this thing came from a lab,” Jordan argued. “The top scientists in the country were saying it came from a lab. One scientist says we got the notes now from the conference call on February 1st. One scientist says, ‘I don’t see how this can happen in nature, but it would be easy to do in a lab.’”
“And yet just in a matter of days, they changed their position, write the article that appears in Nature of Medicine Magazine, which then gets cited in the now-famous letter The Lancet, which became the gospel for the fact that Fauci can go out and tell people it didn’t come from a lab when in fact they knew it did,” Jordan continued.
“The interesting thing is. We point this out. We just learned this last week, from the two doctors who were most adamant that this thing came from a lab early on: one is Dr. Kristian Anderson. On Jan. 31, 2020, he says this to Dr. Fauci in an email: ‘Virus looks engineered. The virus not consistent with evolutionary theory.’ So, he knew it came from a lab,” he added.
“They changed their position,” Jordan argued. “And a few months later, guess what? They get an $8.9 million, both him and Dr. [Robert] Garry – the guy who said it couldn’t happen naturally.”
WATCH:
Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul vowed to investigate Fauci if Republicans win back the Senate in the midterms.
He also introduced an amendment that would eliminate Fauci’s position as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
