Partisan politics to make Fauci testimony irrelevant?
A house divided
Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the recent hearings featuring Dr. Fauci was not the numerous admissions that he made, but the diametrically opposed ways in which Republicans and Democrats reacted to Fauci's testimony.
This is, unfortunately, not a new occurrence. Dr. Fauci has been interviewed by Congress many times over the past few years; the Democrats have unwaveringly supported Fauci while the Republicans have sought to hold him to account for lying to Congress.
In August 2023, David Rufful, in an opinion piece for Analyzing America about what he considered Fauci's 3 biggest lies, stated:
Former White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci is officially the subject of a “criminal referral” sent by Congressman Rand Paul to the U.S. Department of Justice. Senator Paul says there has never been “a clearer case of perjury in the history of government testimony” after Fauci allegedly lied under oath.
. . .
“The problem is there are partisans littered throughout the legal system, and people are seeing this. You don’t get prosecuted if you’re a Democrat under this administration, no matter what you do,” Paul concluded.
In fact, not only do the two parties not see “eye-to-eye”, one would be forgiven for thinking they had frequently attended two different hearings.
A case in point is the most recent testimony that Fauci gave to members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, on January 8 - 9, during which they asked him questions regarding the origins of COVID-19 and the pandemic countermeasures.
Republican review of Fauci's testimony
Revelations from the testimony, as detailed by the Chairman of the subcommittee, Republican Brad Wenstrup, included: (Emphasis added.)
Dr. Fauci answered more than 100 times “I don’t recall” to pertinent COVID-19 information or conversations.
Dr. Fauci also “didn't recall” multiple times during a hearing held in November 2022. In his own words:
Dr. Fauci said the recommendation for “6 feet apart” social distancing was likely not based on any data. Fauci stated that “it sort of just appeared.”
Dr. Fauci testified that he signed off on every foreign and domestic NIAID grant proposal without ever reading any of them.
Dr. Fauci was forced to backtrack on his insistence that no gain-of-function research was conducted in Wuhan that was financed by the NIH, saying that he shouldn’t have stated that as fact.
Dr. Fauci could not confirm if NIAID has ANY mechanisms to conduct oversight of the foreign laboratories they fund.
Dr. Fauci acknowledged that the lab leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory. This comes nearly four years after prompting the publication of the now infamous “Proximal Origin” paper that attempted to vilify and disprove the lab leak hypothesis.[fn]"'Proximal Origin' is the 5th most impactful scientific paper in history. To date, it has been accessed over 5.8 million times and cited over 2,800 times. Given its colossal reach and its dubious conclusions, it is necessary to analyze the process and publication of this paper to prevent the suppression of scientific discourse in future pandemics." (Wenstrup, Brad. “Wenstrup Releases Alarming New Report on ‘Proximal Origin’ Authors, Nih Suppression of the COVID-19 Lab Leak Hypothesis.” United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, 11 July 2023, oversight.house.gov/release/wenstrup-releases-alarming-new-report-on-proximal-origin-authors-nih-suppression-of-the-covid-19-lab-leak-hypothesis/) [/fn]
Dr. Fauci “played semantics with the definition of a “lab-leak” to try to cover up the erroneous conclusions of “Proximal Origin.” Dr. Fauci can't defend the conclusion of the paper while at the same time acknowledging that a lab leak is possible.
Dr. Fauci admitted that vaccine mandates during the pandemic could be responsible for increased vaccine hesitancy in the future.
Dr. Fauci previously advocated for vaccines saying "that when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bullshit, and they get vaccinated".
Dr. Fauci advised American universities to mandate vaccines for their students.
Dr. Fauci denied allegations that he had “visited the CIA during the pandemic or influenced the CIA’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19.”
Watch the New York Post report below about Fauci's testimony stating that he did not believe that children suffered learning loss as a result of school closures (despite evidence to the contrary) and that the 6 ft distance guidance to slow the spread of the virus "sort of just appeared," and on which he ultimately backtracked:
What the committee learned - according to Republicans
Wenstrup summarized what they had learned over the two days about the US health system and health authorities, of Fauci’s censorship of differing opinions, and of lessons learned for addressing possible future pandemics:
“Dr. Fauci’s transcribed interview revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority. It is clear that dissenting opinions were often not considered or suppressed completely. Should a future pandemic arise, America’s response must be guided by scientific facts and conclusive data. (Emphasis added.)
Democrat review of Fauci's testimony
In contrast to the Republicans, the Democrats weren't disturbed by Fauci's testimony. They did not have a list of takeaways or discuss any of what was learned from Fauci about the countermeasures. Instead, they responded to the Republicans' comments on the hearings and what they saw as the motivation behind them. They were incensed with the Republicans’ line of questions and their conclusions, as StatNews reported:
Committee Democrats, meanwhile, have painted the two-day session as a politically-motivated probe that is stalling progress in infectious disease preparedness and vaccination efforts.
. . .
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said that Fauci “made it very clear that he is open-minded about wherever this virus came from, from the market, or it came from the lab,” but also clarified the definition of the gain-of-function field, which involves making viruses more transmissible or potent to study their spread. This type of research was reauthorized in 2017 under the Trump administration. (Emphasis added.)
Dingell obfuscated. The issue wasn't whether Fauci was open-minded about where the virus came from but whether or not the NIAID had funded gain of function research.
Watch as Rand Paul and Fauci clash over gain-of-function research in July 2021:
Dingell also said that the Republican statements were disinformation without explaining specifically why and that the NIH process for grant reviews was followed. As The Hill writer Joseph Choi reported,
Dingell said the GOP statements following the first day were “disinformation.”
“They did not reflect the discussion that — I was feeling at the end of the day when I left here, that it had been a respectful discussion and we had had good conversations,” Dingell said.
. . .
“When you are a supervisor or you are a manager, you have certain responsibilities. And his institute and NIH has a process that is followed where the appropriate people with authorities review things. And that’s the process that he laid out,” Dingell said. (Emphasis added.)
While implying that it was okay that Fauci himself never reviewed any of the grant proposals he signed, Dingell did not address Fauci's admission that he could not confirm if there was any way of overseeing foreign laboratories.
Watch as Fauci explained to Senator Kennedy, in May 2021, how he knew that Wuhan was not conducting gain-of-function research with U.S. funds:
Democrats' statement
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Ranking Member Raul Ruiz, M.D. released a statement after the first day of testimony stating:
“. . . Republicans have relied on conjecture to build their extreme, conspiratorial narrative to vilify Dr. Fauci under the guise of determining the pandemic’s origins with nothing to show for it. Today, we are no closer to better understanding how COVID-19 came to be.
“While Republicans used today’s transcribed interview to continue their politically driven fishing expedition, Democrats focused on examining lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that could inform forward-looking reforms, including strengthening efforts to prevent future outbreaks—regardless of their origin—and bolstering our pandemic preparedness and public health infrastructure. (Emphasis added.)
After the second day's testimony, Ruiz again stated that the hearing had reaffirmed what was already known about the origins of COVID-19 and that Republicans had gone on a fishing expedition:
The second day of Dr. Fauci’s voluntary transcribed interview has once again reaffirmed the same conclusion . . . [of] every COVID-19 origins hearing that we’ve had to date. Nothing we have heard over the last two days or in any of these proceedings has shown that there was a cover-up of the pandemic’s origins, suppression of the lab leak theory, any effort to influence the CIA’s origins assessment, or plot to orchestrate the Proximal Origin paper on the part of Dr. Fauci.
“So that the American public can see through this extreme fishing expedition for themselves, I urge my Republican colleagues to make the full transcript of Dr. Fauci’s 14-hour testimony public as soon as possible.” (Emphasis added.)
Inconvenient truths best ignored
Dingel and Ruiz neglected to comment on the more than 100 times that Dr. Fauci could not recall information, his admission that he had no data to back up the requirement for 6 foot social distancing, and many of his other admissions listed by Wenstrup in his takeaways.
What U.S. citizens have learned
While it may be useful for Americans to read the testimony and see for themselves what actually transpired during the hearings, in the end, it may not matter.
It may be that the greatest takeaway from this testimony is that no progress will be made in addressing future health concerns or any other problems that might arise if partisan politics and “the blame game” cannot be set aside to address the American public's best interests.
