Fauci emails show he prompted study to disprove COVID-19 lab leak theory

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's leading infectious disease expert, had long sought to promote the idea that the virus had a natural origin. In April 2020, he cited a study that found the virus's mutations were "consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human." However, new emails have now been revealed that tell a different story.

Revelations of Fauci’s new emails come following the US Energy Department’s conclusion that the COVID-19 virus probably leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Despite the agency stating that it was a "low confidence" conclusion, the report — along with similar conclusions from the FBI — has raised the previously dismissed conspiracy theory and appears to have vindicated those who questioned the virus's origin.

The update to the intelligence assessment “was conducted in light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature, and in consultation with experts outside the government,” a senior US intelligence official said to the Wall Street Journal.

House Republicans released emails showing that Fauci had commissioned a paper entitled "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" and had final approval of the scientific paper. The emails show that Fauci "prompted" the study to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, the New York Post reported.

The paper was written four days after Fauci and his NIH boss, Francis Collins, held a call with the four authors to discuss reports that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan lab and "may have been intentionally genetically manipulated."

The paper's co-author, Dr. Kristian Andersen, said that Fauci "prompted" him to write the paper with the specific goal to "disprove" the lab-leak theory.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, believes that extensive hearings are necessary to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

"We need to do extensive hearings," he said on NBC. “I hope our Democratic colleagues in Congress can support that. I know the Republicans in the House are certainly supportive of that. Think about what just happened over the last three years, one of the biggest pandemics in a century. A lot of evidence that it's coming from the Chinese."