Opinion Another Committee to Confirm Our Conspiracy Theories comes up short

Old conspiracy theories never die. They just fade into the congressional record.

Last fall, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, made an incendiary public accusation that, “according to information gathered by the select subcommittee,” Anthony Fauci “was escorted into Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters — without a record of entry — and participated in the analysis to ‘influence’ the agency’s review” to say that covid-19 did not originate from a lab leak. “Wenstrup reveals new allegations,” his news release boasted.

Another Republican on the panel, Rep. Richard McCormick (Ga.) declared definitively: “We now know that Fauci had a secret meeting with the CIA.”

Fox News, the New York Post and the rest of the right-wing conspiracy machine ran with it. And then — nothing. The subcommittee came up with no evidence to support the claim, supposedly made by a whistleblower, and nothing to challenge Fauci’s testimony that he hadn’t been to the CIA in 20 years. Appearing before the panel in a public hearing on Monday, Fauci, now retired after decades leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, ridiculed the idea that “I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak.”

So what did committee Republicans do after their Fauci-to-CIA conspiracy theory collapsed? They pretended it never happened. The Republican staff director, Mitch Benzine, during his time to question Fauci at the hearing, announced: “That was not an allegation made by the committee.”

Why would anyone have thought otherwise?

This follows a pattern. The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, after holding several hearings that failed to produce anything other than warmed-over allegations about the so-called deep state, was panned even by right-wing media. The Oversight Committee investigation of Joe Biden’s “corruption” failed so thoroughly to find even a trace of wrongdoing by the president that Republicans have had to quietly shelve their impeachment ambitions.

On the covid panel, Republican House members had promised many a bombshell over the last year and a half.

“Evidence is mounting that American tax dollars helped develop COVID & Dr. Fauci purposely suppressed the lab leak theory to cover it up,” alleged Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.).

“While many lost their loved ones, their businesses, and livelihoods, Dr. Fauci made millions,” Michael Cloud (Tex.) accused.

Covid “was manufactured in a lab funded by Fauci,” asserted Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.).

Yeah, no.

Documents and testimony the panel gathered over 18 months, while finding misbehavior by a grant recipient and by an adviser to Fauci, produced nothing to substantiate these wild allegations. The United States did not fund research that created the pathogen. Fauci didn’t lie about the U.S. role in “gain of function” research at the laboratory in Wuhan, China. He didn’t try to suppress the lab leak theory, or bribe people to reject it. He didn’t get rich off the pandemic, either — although he testified that he earned about $120 a year from an antibody he developed years ago.

And, so, when Fauci appeared before Congress on Monday, Republicans on the panel hit him with whatever else they could come up with.

Malliotakis scolded him for “cruel, horrific animal research” at NIH on beagles, piglets and rabbits.

“I’m puzzled as to what that has to do with the origins of covid,” Fauci replied.

Greene didn’t care what it had to do with covid. “As a dog lover, I want to tell you this is disgusting and evil,” she said, recommending “prison” for Fauci. She further informed the scientist that she would address him as “Mr. Fauci, because you’re not Doctor.” Democrats objected, and the committee spent several minutes bickering over proper decorum.

The dispute about Fauci’s honorific (he’s an M.D.) was all the more absurd because the chairman, Wenstrup, made a point in his opening statement of stating that “I am a physician” who during covid was “researching with another physician in Ohio to try and understand the pathology.”

Wenstrup did not mention that he is a podiatrist. Was he researching covid’s impact on the metatarsals?

But the constant repetition of the conspiracy theories is anything but amusing for, as Fauci testified, it has caused endless harassment of him and his family, including the arrests of two people “on their way to kill me.” He said he needs full-time security.

Yet Republicans on the panel, rather than focusing on lessons about masks, vaccines, and school and business closures that could save lives in the future, kept returning to the same conspiracy theories that are endangering Fauci’s life in the present. And Fauci kept batting them down.

He informed Debbie Lesko (Ariz.) that “you said about four or five things … that were just not true.”

He advised Jim Jordan (Ohio) to “look at the facts.”

And to Benzine, the staff director, Fauci offered a chuckle and a simple critique: “I know where you’re going, and you’re not going to get there.”

They never do.