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Rep. Jim Jordan warned anew that should Republicans win back control of the House, there will be investigations into Dr. Anthony Fauci, the long-serving head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In particular, the Ohio Republican said that the GOP-controlled House will look into whether Fauci worked behind the scenes to downplay or undermine the theory that the COVID-19 virus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, The Epoch Times reported.
In January, GOP lawmakers unveiled a conference call that included Fauci along with his then-boss, former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, as well as other scientists who were in consultation with the Biden administration in which they talked about the pandemic’s origins.
Fauci also serves as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.
Fox News added in January:
Republican leaders on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees released excerpts of emails Tuesday that they say reveal National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Dr. Anthony Fauci knew that COVID-19 may have been intentionally modified and leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, pointed to a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call that included Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins in which the virus’s origins were discussed.
“It was on this conference call that Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the [Wuhan lab] and, further, may have been intentionally genetically manipulated,” the Republicans’ letter said at the time, adding: “It is unclear if either Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins ever passed these warnings along to other government officials or if they simply ignored them.”
Jordan on Monday told the Washington Examiner that Republicans would like to talk to 11 virologists who may have been on the conference call.
“Those are the first people you want to talk to. You want to talk to the 11 guys on that call, and you want to find out what exactly did happen. We’ve seen the emails and correspondence after the call, subsequent to the call, but what all happened?” Jordan said.
“We want to find out what exactly Dr. Fauci and Dr. [Francis] Collins may have had to say on that particular phone call. So that’s how you start investigations. You don’t bring in Fauci for a deposition right away,” he remarked, adding that Republicans will “start by looking” at the scientists who took part in the conference call and “get all the documents you can in unredacted form—so that’s something that needs to happen.”
Based on the emails they uncovered, Republicans are “convinced” that “Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and others knew right from the get-go that this thing most likely came from the lab, and I think they took real concerted steps to make sure the country didn’t get that information,” Jordan said.
Jordan argued recently released emails prove there’s a “need to investigate Fauci.”
“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, 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. 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.”
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