Anthony Fauci, facing GOP accusers, says debate on Covid origins has been ‘seriously distorted’

WASHINGTON — Anthony Fauci, the former top U.S. infectious disease official and a longtime foil for congressional Republicans, on Monday came out forcefully against GOP accusations on a host of Covid-related issues, and said debate about the coronavirus’s origin had been “seriously distorted.”

Fauci, in one of his most closely watched appearances before a congressional committee, said allegations that he sought to influence scientists’ research about Covid’s origins — so that they would not conclude the virus was the result of a lab leak — were “simply preposterous.” But he also played down accusations that work funded by the National Institutes of Health had led to the emergence of the virus.

“One thing I can be sure [about], the viruses that were funded by the NIH bio-genetically could not be the precursor to SARS-CoV-2,” he told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Later, he added: “I don’t think the concept of there being a lab leak is inherently a conspiracy theory. What is conspiracy is the kind of distortion of that particular subject. Like it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne.”

Fauci also sought to explain a previous comment to the panel that the 6-foot distancing guideline “just appeared” at the start of the pandemic and that he “was not aware of studies” backing it up. He told the panel Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested the distance and the studies he was referring to were clinical trials. He maintained that social distancing “definitely” helped save lives.

In other comments to the committee, Fauci, who is now retired, was quick to distance himself from David Morens, the senior adviser recently targeted in the committee’s investigation for emails in part revealing he advised the president of an infectious disease research group, EcoHealth Alliance, to avoid email correspondence with government accounts, which can be obtained by the public. The warning was sent when discussing the furor over a grant by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency Fauci led, to a EcoHealth to study coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Morens and Fauci worked together on scientific papers over the years but Morens “was not an adviser to me on institute policy,” Fauci said. He later added that it is possible that he and Morens corresponded over personal email about their paper but not for “business.”

“I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about, there’s no backchannel at NIAID,” Fauci said. “I do not do government business on my private email.”

Republicans pushed back, asking Fauci if Morens directly reported to him and if he had knowledge of Morens’ advice to evade federal records requests — and did so himself in communications. Committee leaders have asked for a new trove of Fauci’s correspondences during the pandemic and launched a probe exploring tactics NIH officials could have used to evade federal records searches.

Fauci told the committee that “what you saw, I believe, with Dr. Morens was aberrancy and an outlier.”

The longtime infectious disease doctor appeared before a packed hearing room. A line for public seating snaked through the hallway; among the attendees filing in was a cluster wearing “Got Ivermectin?” T-shirts, a reference to the drug that was initially promoted as a way to treat or prevent Covid infections. Studies later showed it was not an effective therapy or preventative tool.

Two people were escorted from the hearing for causing disturbances, one of them after yelling, “Fauci, you belong in prison.” The hearing also briefly stalled over points of order after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) refused to refer to Fauci as a doctor.

Committee Republicans on Friday released nearly 500 pages of transcripts from Fauci’s January closed-door testimony. The records show that lawmakers questioned him extensively over the early days of the pandemic, when Fauci became the most visible face in federal health officials’ calls for shutdowns, masks, social distancing, and dismissals of the lab leak theory.

Many of the early questions Monday retread those issues, with some Republican lawmakers digging into the composition of the coronavirus and NIAID’s processes for funding viral research.

Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) began the hearing by commending Fauci for decades of public service and said that he, and other critics of Fauci, are not against science but the seeming dominance of his voice in pandemic policy.

“Almost overnight, you became a celebrity and a household name, in addition to being a public health official,” Wenstrup said. “Americans from coast to coast and beyond listened to your words. And this is where we could have done better. This goes to both sides of the aisle. We should have been more precise … and we should have been honest, especially about what we didn’t know.”

Democrats in the room blasted the hearing as the latest in an increasingly partisan effort to lay blame for the origins of the pandemic and its early fallout. Ranking member Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) lamented that under GOP leadership, the committee had probed the lab leak theory for 16 months without a “shred of evidence” for NIH officials’ involvement.

Ruiz did not learn “a single thing” from Monday’s hearing, he told reporters outside the room. “Just that [Republicans] want to continue to promote their false allegations and then continue to confuse the American people on Dr. Fauci’s word.”

Yet there could still be ramifications for the retired infectious disease official’s former agency. Besides the committee’s probe into email communications, several Republicans want to bar so-called gain-of-function research, a field of study in which researchers make viruses more transmissible to study their spread.

Fauci has maintained that the EcoHealth research, which was terminated during the Trump administration, did not meet this definition, but has also warned against broad bans on the field.

House Republicans attached such a ban to a funding package last year, before the measure and others were dropped in final negotiations. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has also sparred with Fauci about gain-of-function, and the topic came up during a Senate budget hearing with current NIH officials last week.