Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. scientist who helped COVID-19 pandemic response, is set to face off 鈥� again 鈥� with a Republican senator probing the
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky subpoenaed Fauci to appear before a Senate committee Wednesday. It鈥檚 part of Paul鈥檚 that the now-retired infectious disease expert had lied about the pandemic, something
Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than a thousand pages of Fauci鈥檚 personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci 鈥渨rote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.鈥�
Some of the diary entries 鈥� including his uncertainty in the pandemic鈥檚 earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created 鈥� already were reflected in Fauci鈥檚 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.
But they鈥檙e likely to further inflame a partisan divide that, years after the pandemic, still makes Fauci a from people who blame him for mask mandates and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.
In an earlier letter to Paul, Fauci鈥檚 attorneys called his allegations 鈥渁bsolutely baseless鈥� and part of an 鈥渙bsessive and groundless vendetta.鈥�
Scientists scrambled to Fauci鈥檚 defense ahead of the unusual hearing 鈥� the second time the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins since leaving the government in 2022. While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced him to millions of Americans, he talked the nation through numerous outbreaks over decades, including HIV, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks, while advising seven presidents.
In a public letter, more than 150 infectious disease experts and other scientists wrote that 鈥渘o credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges鈥� and that they are 鈥渦rging our elected representatives in Congress stop these witch-hunts.鈥�
The expected crux of Wednesday鈥檚 hearing: whether NIH-funded research in China may have played any role in how the pandemic started.
Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There鈥檚 no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 did not find any evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.
Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories, but that there鈥檚 more evidence supporting COVID-19鈥檚 natural origins, the way other deadly viruses including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS jumped into people.
Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded 鈥済ain of function鈥� research 鈥� the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact 鈥� at a lab in Wuhan.
NIH for years gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance that used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. But the definition of 鈥済ain of function鈥� covers both general research and especially risky experiments to 鈥渆nhance鈥� the ability of potentially pandemic pathogens to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment definition and that “it would be molecularly impossible鈥� for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.
The Trump administration last year paused some federally funded gain-of-function research and on Tuesday announced new rules to tighten oversight.
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