Dr. Anthony Fauci will come under intense scrutiny in Congress later this spring after agreeing to testify before a House committee investigating the causes of the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s response.
Committee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) announced Wednesday that Fauci, who retires from public service at the end of 2022, is scheduled to testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on June 3.
It will be the first public appearance by an infectious disease expert in Congress since he retired as President Biden’s chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“Retirement from public service does not absolve Dr. Fauci from accountability to the American people,” Wenstrup said in a statement.
“On June 3, Americans will have the opportunity to hear directly from Dr. Fauci about his role in overseeing our nation’s pandemic response, shaping pandemic-era policy, and promoting a unique and dubious theory about the origins of COVID-19. “We’re going to get that,” the Ohio Republican said. Added.
Fauci, 83, is expected to face questions about his advocacy of social distancing and contradictory advice on mask-wearing early in the pandemic when he was a member of former President Donald Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force. ing.
The immunologist is also likely to be questioned about the multimillion-dollar federal grant given to EcoHealth Alliance to conduct coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A former senior adviser to Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recently issued a “confidential” statement between EcoHealth Alliance and EcoHealth Alliance about how the agency and Fauci are preparing to respond to the accusations. The sharing of communications was discovered by the House of Commons COVID-19 Committee. They funded dangerous gain-of-function experiments on the coronavirus in Wuhan.
In January, Fauci gave a transcribed 14-hour interview with a House committee in which he acknowledged approving NIAID grants without personally vetting project proposals and said that he had no concerns about the coronavirus outbreak. He admitted that the hypothesis that the disease leaked from a Chinese laboratory was correct. It’s not a conspiracy theory.
His answers related to social distancing guidelines and vaccination mandates imposed on Americans during the pandemic also raised concerns among some members of the committee.
“During Dr. Fauci’s private conference in January, he testified about serious systemic flaws in our public health system that deserve further investigation,” Wenstrup said. Closing small businesses and schools across the U.S. is “in some ways a product of now.”
“This raises serious concerns about the relevance of public health authorities and their policy recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added. “We also found that he believes the lab leak hypothesis, which he has publicly downplayed, should not be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.”
“As the face of the United States’ public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, these statements raise serious questions that warrant public scrutiny.”
