“We spend our whole life trying to determine the causes of infectious diseases, and stop them to protect the American people,” Fauci said, adding that he did not pressure colleagues to reach a conclusion about the origins of the virus and disputing other Republican charges.
The former medical adviser is testifying Monday before the House panel investigating the nation’s coronavirus response. The hearing is unfolding amid a battle between the panel’s Republican and Democratic leaders over whether its focus on Fauci is necessary to understand the virus’s possible origins, or a waste of time that is propagating unproven theories about the pandemic and damaging confidence in public health.
It is the first time Fauci has faced a GOP-led panel to publicly answer questions about the covid-19 pandemic, which is linked to the deaths of more than 1 million Americans. Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees U.S. health agencies, also joined the hearing. Fauci privately testified before the lawmakers for 14 hours in January.
The panel has not found evidence that Fauci led a coverup or that the virus leaked from a laboratory. Most U.S. intelligence entities probing the pandemic favor the theory that the virus emerged naturally, via animal-to-human transmission.
Republicans on Monday pushed on the relationship between Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that received funding from Fauci’s agency to conduct risky virus research in Wuhan, China. Federal officials halted funding to EcoHealth last month, saying the organization failed to monitor and report on that work. Republicans also focused on David Morens, a former Fauci deputy who deleted emails and took other steps to evade federal records law as he emailed with EcoHealth officials and other colleagues.
“We have senior officials from your office, in their own writing, discussing breaking federal law, deleting official records and sharing private government information with grant recipients,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the panel, said in prepared remarks. Fauci distanced himself from Morens, saying he “knew nothing” about his former colleague’s actions regarding EcoHealth or his emails.
Democrats rallied around Fauci, with Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), the panel’s top Democrat, and others defending the 83-year-old scientist’s government service and saying that his work to combat HIV and other viruses saved countless lives in the United States and around the world. Fauci testified that he and his family have faced persistent death threats over allegations that he played a role in sparking the covid-19 pandemic.
Republicans have “wasted significant time and taxpayer money” pursuing conspiracies about the pandemic, said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight panel. She called on lawmakers to pivot to other efforts, such as stalled legislation to reauthorize funding for public health preparedness programs. “It’s not too late for Republicans to join us,” Castor said.
The hearing with Fauci, widely viewed as the face of America’s coronavirus response, drew a circus-style environment to a covid panel that has often struggled for attention as the public has moved on from the pandemic. A line of would-be spectators snaked around the Rayburn House Office Building, seeking a seat in the standing-room-only hearing; a man sitting in the front row wore a T-shirt emblazoned with “JAIL FAUCI.”
Lawmakers also packed the roster, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a member of the covid panel who skipped seven of its last 10 hearings.
Some prominent scientists have accused Congress’s covid panel of feeding conspiracies and intimidating virologists, saying that Republicans are damaging a workforce that will be needed when the next pandemic inevitably arrives.
6/n and it is anti-science for a committee to create such an atmosphere of intimidation against American virologists and infectious disease experts that we will have no workforce in place when the next pandemic comes to America.
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) May 25, 2024
But other outside experts said they understand the panel’s questions — even if they don’t think there’s a covid coverup at the highest levels of government.
“I don’t agree with the tone and sort of breathlessness” behind Wenstrup and other Republicans’ questions, said Holden Thorp, editor of the journal Science. “At the same time, I think that the scientific community has made a number of mistakes that don’t look super good for us all … [and] that have made it easier for them to make this case.”
Thorp testified before the panel in April about how academic journals had approached their coronavirus coverage and whether officials such as Fauci had pressured them to downplay the lab-leak theory, a charge that Thorp denied. Like many of the coronavirus panel’s recent hearings before Monday, it drew scant attention, including from Republicans who had called the hearing; just three of the panel’s nine GOP members attended.