BELLOTTI & ERNST: The Mask Of Fauci’s COVID Conspiracy Is Finally Coming Off

Truth is winning.

Not too long ago it would have been flagged as misinformation for daring to question the narrative about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic forced on us by those in Washington and China.

But now, experts — including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Energy Department and the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), plus 7 in 10 Americans — believe coronavirus gain-of-function experiments on humanized mice probably infected Patient Zero and prompted the pandemic.

As the real facts come out, the true COVID conspiracy increasingly appears to have been orchestrated by Dr. Fauci and the so-called “experts” who one by one are being exposed, discredited and defunded.

In fact, we are batting a thousand, folks!

First, we defunded China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and got the lab’s mad scientists blacklisted from receiving another cent of taxpayers’ money.

Then, we clipped the wings of EcoHealth Alliance, the shady group that was funneling federal money to Wuhan for the risky gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses that may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of this May, EcoHealth and its president have been suspended from receiving any taxpayer dollars for their batty research, and the government has proposed a years-long funding prohibition. We are working to ensure every federal agency funding EcoHealth has stopped.

We can now confirm that at least two have pulled the plug. In a July 31 letter, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) confirmed it did so: “ … in accordance with the best interest of the Agency, USAID has decided to end all ongoing activities with EHA.” Similarly, the National Science Foundation wrote in an Aug. 1 letter it had suspended all funding to EcoHealth. We are awaiting a reply from the group’s largest government funder, the Department of Defense (DOD). Taking nothing for granted, an Ernst amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2025 prohibiting the Pentagon from giving EcoHealth taxpayer dollars won approval without opposition in July.

This is welcome news, but long overdue.

In early 2020, EcoHealth and China stonewalled requests for information about the dangerous experiments being conducted at the Wuhan Institute. And National Institutes of Health (NIH) bureaucrats, like Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, stuck to their script that the virus didn’t leak from a lab, while being privately alerted early on the fact that “unusual features of the virus … look engineered.”

Right off the bat, after White Coat Waste (WCW) Project first exposed Fauci’s funding for the Wuhan lab, we called for the Chinese military-linked bioagent facility to be defunded. We also demanded an investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) that found EcoHealth violated numerous reporting requirements, including not immediately alerting NIH when they enhanced viruses in the Wuhan lab.

Rather than holding EcoHealth accountable, government agencies kept cutting checks to continue the group’s reckless virus-hunting and animal experimentation all around the world, including funding to set up a new bat lab like the one in Wuhan right here in the U.S.!

In total, we’ve uncovered how EcoHealth amassed $60 million of taxpayer money since March 2020 from the NIH, the Pentagon, NSF and USAID.

With overwhelming evidence of waste, fraud and abuse, how could this happen?

Well, when the Trump Administration canceled funding to EcoHealth in 2020 following WCW’s initial investigation, NIH helped the group get a new grant. Fauci and other senior NIH officials tried to fly under the radar by violating the Freedom of Information Act and using an illegal “‘secret’ back channel” for communicating with and about EcoHealth.

In a Congressional hearing in June, Fauci was asked about this and stated under oath, “I have never conducted official business via my private email.”

Now, emails obtained by WCW through FOIA show Fauci used his personal email to circumvent FOIA and communicate with a Washington Post reporter who wrote numerous stories spreading misinformation and defending Fauci’s funding of EcoHealth, the Wuhan lab and even beagle torture in Tunisia.

The Post and other media fawningly fell for Fauci’s dismissal of a lab leak and even helped police those suggesting otherwise. Undeterred, we stayed focused on following the money and the science.

There really was no way of hiding the facts — EcoHealth funneled more than $1 million of taxpayer money into China’s Wuhan Institute to make bat viruses more dangerous to humans, and the agencies funding the project knew it.

After years of denials by Dr. Fauci — and emails obtained by WCW showing EcoHealth and Fauci’s team coordinating to fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan with little oversight — NIH is even finally fessing up to it.

EcoHealth Alliance should never be allowed to put their hands on bats or taxpayer dollars ever again, and Fauci’s cabal need to be held accountable for years of misleading the public, press and Congress and breaking the law to cover-up their COVID catastrophe.

The world deserves answers to guarantee what happened in Wuhan is never allowed to happen anywhere else.

Joni Ernst represents Iowa in the United States Senate. Anthony Bellotti is the founder and president at the government watchdog group White Coat Waste Project.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.