Overall, the Select Subcommittee for the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing featuring retired NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday was a dud. Many Republicans (with Marjorie Taylor Greene the notable exception) partook in some bovine excrement performative gyrations related to vaccines, the Democrats acted as we expected them to, and for the most part Saint Fauci answered questions the way he always has – lots of not-so-true statements, interspersed with weasel words.
Still, there were a few notable themes in the hearing that, in conjunction with pieces out in the media, show the direction the Democrat messaging efforts are headed. Those themes are:
- A lab leak origin for the pandemic is “possible” and “not a conspiracy theory”
- Fauci’s Senior Advisor Dr. David Morens’ efforts to avoid FOIA were undertaken in a vacuum, and nobody else at NIAID would have ever acted in such a fashion
- Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) are the real bad guys here, who didn’t report things on time or completely, and Fauci’s underlings at NIAID never alerted him to issues with EHA
- There were never any studies to back up CDC’s masking-in-schools requirement, but that’s OK since we were all just doing the best we could at the beginning of the pandemic – and we never forced states and municipalities to go along with them long-term
Now, by listing those out I am not saying in any way that I agree. But we should all be prepared for the mainstream media and those in the Cult of Fauci to embrace these talking points and to act like they always have, for example, entertained the lab leak theory. And, we should all be prepared for any NIAID failings that can’t be glossed over to be the fault of everyone at the agency except Fauci.
The messaging themes started Sunday, when Fauci’s opening statement was posted online. In it, he distanced himself from Dr. David Morens, who attempted to avoid FOIAs by using a personal email and other methods. Fauci said:
Dr. David Morens, whose title during my tenure as NIAID Director was Senior Advisor to the NIAID Director, has recently been investigated for conduct unbecoming a government official. Naturally, given his title, a connection is made to me. I knew nothing of his actions in assisting Dr. Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance or his conducting NIH business on his personal e-mail account or deleting emails to avoid FOIAs. Several years ago, Dr. Morens was transferred from a scientific division at NIAID to help me write scientific papers and review the scientific literature on infectious diseases. Following his transfer, we needed a title for him and the empirical title of “Senior Advisor to the NIAID Director” was chosen. It is important to point out for the record that, despite his title, functionally Dr. Morens was not an advisor to me on institute policy or other substantive issues. He is a scientist, science writer and historian. At NIAID we had a weekly executive committee meeting of the institute leadership, which to the best of my recollection he did not attend. We had a daily morning meeting of the immediate Office of the Director leadership staff, which to the best of my recollection he did not attend. Furthermore, his office is located in a different building from that of the NIAID Director.
Oh, sure, there’s only an inference that he’s connected to Fauci. You know what we haven’t seen in Morens’ produced emails? We haven’t seen a single one of the people he was corresponding with raise any question about the quality of Morens’ connection to Fauci. There’s nothing along the lines of, “Oh, you can take printed out emails to his home? I didn’t realize you worked that closely with Tony.”
And, of course, Fauci doesn’t need an advisor on institute policy or other issues because he is The Science, so Morens could not have truly been an advisor to Fauci (/sarcasm).
Fauci continued:
Finally, in a Majority Staff Memorandum of May 22, 2024, there is a statement: “Dr. Fauci may have conducted official business via personal e-mail”. Let me state for the record that to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email.
“To the best of my knowledge.” When records are eventually produced from Fauci’s personal email showing him conducting official business via that email address, he will undoubtedly say he did not lie because those instances had slipped his mind, or something like that.
The only problem was, we already have contemporaneous emails from Morens showing Fauci’s involvement.
On at least three occasions during Fauci’s testimony he sang a different tune on the topic of the lab leak theory, and in his pre-filed opening statement he claims he has always had an open mind related to the lab leak theory:
Also, my response to the ultimate question regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2 has received considerable attention: Was it a lab leak or a natural spillover from an animal reservoir? I have repeatedly stated that I have a completely open mind to either possibility and that if definitive evidence becomes available to validate or refute either theory, I will readily accept it.
During questioning, Fauci said that the lab leak origin theory is not a “conspiracy theory,” and at least a few prominent Democrat members of the committee – Rep. Jamie Raskin and Rep. Raul Ruiz – made statements along the same lines.
In addition, on Monday morning the New York Times published a guest essay by molecular biologist Alina Chan titled, “Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points.”
Sure seems like the signal is being sent.
Another signal is being sent related to Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. Since Dr. David Morens and Daszak are longtime friends it’s to Fauci’s benefit to distance himself from both of them and blame any malfeasance on them – and that’s precisely what he’s doing. He said during the hearing that he agrees with the debarment of Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance.
Fauci also admitted that EHA was late on their required reporting on the grant awarded to EHA and Wuhan Institute of Virology and he was unaware of that at the time. He also insinuated that the required reporting on the grant might not be complete, which could be foreshadowing the revelation of additional negative information about Daszak and EHA.
As RedState’s Bob Hoge covered on Sunday, over the weekend a transcript of Fauci’s two-day deposition (conducted in January 2024) was published showing that neither mask mandates or the 6′ social distancing requirement schools and businesses were forced to follow during the pandemic were based in science. All along, Fauci has maintained that all of the “mitigation” or “prevention” efforts were based on scientific research and shouldn’t be questioned. He finally had to admit that there weren’t any studies proving the efficacy of masks in stopping COVID when that CDC “guidance” was issued, but claimed that any study would have been unethical so we just had to go with it. Which, as we all know, is bunk.
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To make things worse, when confronted with the extreme and sometimes irreparable harm foisted upon the American people by these unscientific mandates, Fauci tried to weasel out of any accountability by claiming that various states and municipalities chose how long they carried out these measures and that they weren’t forced to.
If Fauci wasn’t on board with these measures being continued indefinitely, he sure had a funny way of showing it. Rep. Rich McCormick illustrated this perfectly during the hearing when he played audio from an interview Fauci gave to a biographer in 2020 in which he described objection to the COVID vaccine “ideological bulls**t” and said that people will let go of such ideological BS when their livelihoods or other important things in life are threatened.
Rational people who lived through the pandemic and still hope for accountability (which might be a vain hope at this point) need to be on their toes and ready to loudly push back when Fauci, Morens, Daszak, Walensky, and the rest all completely change their tune then act like they’ve been with us all along.
