NEW DELHI: Former US president Joe Biden’s ex-chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci funded a research lab in China’s Wuhan, which is widely said to be the laboratory that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, the outgoing US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard said on Thursday.
Releasing “never-before-seen” documents on her last day in the office, Gabbard said Fauci, who led the Biden government’s approach to the Covid when it hit the US in early 2020, provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund “dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Fauci worked with “politicised career leadership to suppress the truth about the virus’ lab-leak origins”, Gabbard’s office said in a statement.
“These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC (Intelligence Community) assessments on COVID-19 and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research,” the statement read.
Her office also said that 85-year-old Fauci, who headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for 38 years until he stepped down in December 2022, funded “risky coronavirus research” linked to big pharma and the pursuit of “universal vaccines” worth trillions of dollars.
“Fauci was the behind-the-scenes advisor who, with his hand-picked experts, pushed the IC to endorse a natural, animal origin to hide his dangerous research. Fauci became the nation’s pandemic “pundit” and publicly pushed lies, disinformation, and censorship,” the statement said.
“Throughout the pandemic, Fauci and politicised leaders within the IC created a self-serving circular reporting loop. He provided hand-picked NIAID-funded scientists to advise the IC. This input shaped official intelligence assessments, which were then publicly cited as scientific consensus to refute the lab-leak theory,” it added.
Gabbard’s office also said that Fauci promoted a “fraudulent paper”, whose publication he helped prompt, as legitimate information for intelligence community consideration.
Senior analysts praised Fauci not as a “policymaker” but as an unbiased guide to “the real coronavirus experts” while ignoring experts who might dissent from Fauci’s narratives, it said.
“Fauci Lied To Congress About Covid”
Tulsi Gabbard, who last month quit as Donald Trump’s intelligence chief to care for her sick husband, said that the tactics Anthony Fauci used to hide the truth are “straight from the deep state playbook”.
“The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous hardship and pain for millions of our fellow Americans and for countless people around the world. After years of lies, censorship, and cover-ups, the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability,” she said.
“The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook: politicised self-serving leaders like Dr Fauci covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected President by restricting his access to vital facts needed to keep the country safe,” she added.
Her office said that Fauci lied during his public congressional testimony in June 2024. In that hearing, Fauci was repeatedly asked whether he spoke to “FBI, CIA, DIA or any US intelligence agency concerning viral research” before, during, or after the pandemic.
