Wenstrup defends coronavirus panel lab-leak address-up investigation from Democratic attacks

Gabrielle M. Etzel

August 01, 03:00 AM August 01, 03:00 AM

Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) defended his group's investigation into the lab leak idea of origin pertaining to COVID-19 versus Democratic accusations that the Republicans are producing a untrue story, saying the panel is obligated to abide by by means of, even if the results lead to controversy.

"Sadly, I sense in some means Democrats want to sweep under the rug a ton of points that transpire and just shift forward on ideas of the potential, but 1 of the tenets of this subcommittee is to do investigations," Wenstrup informed the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview with regards to the origins of the virus. "It is the Oversight Committee. Which is what we do.”

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Democrats on the committee issued a report previously this month that mentioned Republicans have been trying to "manufacture the narrative" of leadership at the Countrywide Institutes of Overall health intentionally suppressing scientific discussion pertaining to the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that will cause COVID-19.

Wenstrup, nevertheless, informed the Washington Examiner that "honesty is nonnegotiable," even if it is inconvenient.

"As we are on the lookout for items, it truly is not within just a political bent. It is really from a scientific bent that we can hopefully [prepare] far better in the foreseeable future," the chairman mentioned.

The central facet of the subcommittee's investigation into the coronavirus's origins has been inspecting the drafting and publication of the scientific paper "The proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2," which was printed in Character Medication in March 2020.

The paper explicitly denied the plausibility of the virus originating in a lab. The paper has been accessed more than 5.8 million instances and has turn into the fifth-most influential tutorial paper on history, obtaining been utilized by well known governing administration officials to suppress scientific debate.

The subcommittee subpoenaed the authors of the report, including Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry, on June 23, requesting all instant messages concerning the authors of the paper. The Republican report centered on the 8,000 internet pages of subpoenaed documents outlines the purpose of then-Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Conditions Anthony Fauci, then-NIH Director Francis Collins, and then-NIH ethics director Lawrence Tabak in the drafting of the eventual publication of the paper.

Documents point out that Andersen had a non-public cellphone contact with Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020, during which Andersen elevated the risk that the virus was engineered and involved the possible involvement of Chinese investigation at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

On Feb. 1, which Wenstrup told the Washington Examiner was "a date in [Pandemic] historical past," the authors of the paper engaged in a conference simply call with Fauci, Collins, Tabak, and other experts. Following this conference phone, instant messages amongst the authors of the report exhibit that their study was directed towards the interests of the so-named “Bethesda Boys” at the NIH to suppress information relating to the likelihood of a lab leak.

Whilst the authors agreed by means of immediate concept that they could not entirely rule out a lab leak speculation, they determined to deny any relationship in between SARS-CoV-2 and human experimentation in their paper mainly because of “the s*** present that would come about if any person significantly accused the Chinese of even accidental release.”

The subpoenaed instantaneous messages also unveiled that Character Drugs originally turned down their posting since the first language of the lab leak denial was not robust ample, prompting the authors to fortify their conclusions in favor of a purely natural-origin hypothesis in the ultimate printed model of the paper.

The Democratic report on the facts obtained from the investigation group mostly relies on the testimony from Andersen, Garry, and the other authors, not referring to instantaneous concept communications between the authors that deal with the motivations of "The proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2" or its problems in publication.

When requested about the accusations and articles of the Democratic report, Wenstrup highlighted that the minority report referenced celebration affiliation of committee members 34 moments in contrast to the the greater part report, which created no reference to political party groups.

‘We shouldn't even have a political bent, and we are just seeking at what was finished so that we as Us citizens in a bipartisan way can have a better community overall health strategy and coverage in location,” the congressman said.

1 point of attainable settlement involving the Republicans and Democrats on the subcommittee is the questionable position of the Environment Wellbeing Group in the drafting of "The proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2" and the address-up of the lab leak.

Relying on the testimony of the authors, the Democratic report outlines that Jeremy Farrar, the WHO's chief professional medical scientist, was instrumental in top and arranging the Feb. 1 meeting connect with.

Wenstrup advised the Washington Examiner that American scientists ended up denied spots on the WHO’s to start with investigation into the origins of COVID-19, which was largely led by Chinese researchers. Soon thereafter, Wenstrup been given a letter from the Chinese ambassador stating the United States really should accept the WHO-China study’s conclusion that the virus was not the consequence of a lab leak.

Whilst even more investigating the purpose of the WHO is a priority for Wenstrup, he reported the director-standard of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has been extra cooperative with American investigations as new conclusions emerge.

"The WHO requirements severe reforms, and it will not work with the finest interests of the United States in brain," Wenstrup stated. "It would seem in part managed by [Chinese Communist Party] passions, so maybe Tedros is hoping to go the other path. And I would hope that would be the circumstance."

In spite of partisan differences in the perceived value of the COVID-19 origins investigation, Wenstrup stated he remains optimistic about generating at minimum some cooperation.

Rating member Raul Ruiz (D-CA) and Wenstrup have managed cordiality throughout the process, even continuing to go to dinner as pals throughout this investigation, according to Wenstrup.

"Keep in brain that just after Kevin McCarthy identified as me and requested me to take this part I was honored to get, I known as Dr. Ruiz and mentioned get on this subcommittee. I mentioned, 'Matter of simple fact, test to be position member,' for the reason that we've labored so properly jointly on overall health charges, and I contemplate us to be pals," the Ohio Republican reported.

Irrespective of the issues, Wenstrup advised the Washington Examiner that he is committed to speaking the fact to the public.

"You will find major results that we are receiving all the time to the subcommittee," he said, "and it appears to be like when we glance below just one rock, we uncover one more rock. That's our career. That is what we want to do."

Biden NIH resumes funding group tied to Wuhan coronavirus lab: 'An outrage'

Gabe Kaminsky

Jerry Dunleavy

May 09, 08:41 PM May 09, 08:41 PM

President Joe Biden's National Institutes of Health has resumed a grant award suspended under former President Donald Trump for coronavirus bat research to a U.S. nonprofit group that has come under heightened scrutiny for partnering with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.

Trump's NIH informed EcoHealth Alliance in April 2020 that it was axing the grant, which began in 2014 and included a subaward of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Wuhan lab. The grant was renewed on April 26, 2023. EcoHealth contended it will not be collaborating at all with the WIV anymore, the group announced in a press release on Monday.

WUHAN LAB LEAK DEBATE — WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON’T

"It is an outrage that EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that potentially shares culpability for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, that has obstructed investigation of that disaster, and that has flagrantly and repeatedly breached US-government contracts, continues to receive U.S. government grants and contracts," Richard Ebright, laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University, told the Washington Examiner.

The grant to EcoHealth was suspended by the NIH in June 2020 due to “grant administrative non-compliance concerns.” EcoHealth was reprimanded by the NIH in October when the agency found that the organization delayed revealing that a U.S.-funded experiment conducted with the Wuhan lab determined that mice with implanted human cells became sicker with an engineered version of bat coronavirus. The NIH found more EcoHealth violations in January.

EcoHealth leader Peter Daszak was a longtime collaborator with the Wuhan lab and its "bat lady" leader, Shi Zhengli. Daszak steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in NIH funding to the Chinese institute and was also an integral World Health Organization-China joint study team member in early 2021 when it visited Wuhan. The NIH grants actually went to more than just looking at viruses and also included funding for Wuhan lab experiments on the viruses, which Republicans and some virology critics of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former top federal infectious diseases expert, have said were gain of function.

Daszak dismissed the lab leak hypothesis in March 2021 when he admitted he took Wuhan lab workers at their word. Meeting minutes from discussions between lab scientists in Wuhan and the WHO-China team reveal lab leak concerns were referred to as "myths" and "conspiracy theories."

NIH announced in August it was finally cutting off a sub-award through EcoHealth to the Wuhan institute after the lab continued to refuse to hand over lab notebooks and electronic files about the coronavirus research it conducted with U.S. funds, but NIH nevertheless gave EcoHealth further bat coronavirus funding the next month.

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had rejected a $14.2 million proposal by EcoHealth in 2018 over concerns the bat virus experiments involved "gain-of-function" research and "could have put local communities at risk."

In the last several years, lawmakers have demanded investigations into whether EcoHealth violated federal law in conducting bat coronavirus research. The Wuhan lab has notably conducted gain-of-function research, a process of altering viruses so they may be more deadly or infectious.

The resumed NIH grant, which Ecohealth will collaborate with Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School, will involve "identifying high-spillover risk bat SARSr-CoV sequences in southern China and assessing drivers of recombination," among other matters, according to EcoHealth.

"NIH takes its stewardship over the Nation’s investment in biomedical research seriously," Amanda Fine, a spokeswoman for the NIH, told the Washington Examiner. "This grant includes stringent stipulations that ensure it does not provide funding for research in China or with live animals."

Fine added, "NIH supports research, such as this, to better understand the characteristics of animal viruses that have the potential to cause disease — research that made it possible for the U.S. government to move so quickly to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, NIH has never approved any research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment last year stating that one U.S. intelligence agency assessed with "moderate confidence" that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a lab in Wuhan, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believed with just "low confidence" that COVID-19 most likely had a natural origin.

The Energy Department has determined with "low confidence" that COVID-19 likely emerged from the Wuhan lab, with FBI Director Christopher Wray noting in March, "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident."

Numerous former Trump officials believe COVID-19 began at the Wuhan lab. House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans concluded in 2021 that "the preponderance of evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory" in 2019, and Senate Health Committee Republicans assessed last year that the coronavirus "more likely than not" came from the Chinese lab.

WATCH LIVE: Senate Appropriations subcommittee holds hearing on 2024 budget for National Institutes of Health

Rachel Schilke

May 04, 10:10 AM May 04, 10:12 AM

A Senate Appropriations subcommittee will hold a hearing on Thursday to discuss President Joe Biden's proposed 2024 budget for the National Institutes of Health.

The subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies will hear from NIH Acting Director Lawrence Tabak and the directors from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Mental Health, National Institute on Aging, and National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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The hearing comes as Republicans continue to blast Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for his role in the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), one of Fauci's most outspoken critics, said in March that Fauci "weaponized" the federal government to cover up the origins of COVID-19.

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first-ever vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, to adults 60 years of age and older. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet in June to decide whether to give an official recommendation. If the recommendation is given, the vaccine will be available for seniors as early as October.

The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. on Thursday.

The clock is ticking for Biden on COVID-19 origins declassification bill

Haisten Willis

March 16, 05:55 AM March 16, 07:42 AM

President Joe Biden has less than a week to decide whether to sign or try to stop a bill declassifying COVID-19 origins intelligence that passed with veto-proof majorities.

Both chambers of Congress unanimously passed legislation that would force the Biden administration to declassify all the information it has gathered on how the virus started as federal agencies are split between whether it began in nature or a lab leak.

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“Transparency is a cornerstone of our democracy,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the intelligence committee's top Democrat, said during debate. “Because without transparency, the American people can’t make the sounds that they need to make responsibly as citizens of a democracy.”

The House passed the COVID Origins Act by a 419-0 vote and the Senate by unanimous consent, yet the White House has been noncommittal.

"We will continue to use every tool to figure out what happened here while also protecting classified information," press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. "We're going to take a look at the bill. I just don't have anything to share on how we're going to move forward at this time."

Biden said he hadn't "made that decision yet" when asked whether he'd sign the bill. The White House could have declassified the information on its own and has thus far chosen not to.

The House vote came last Friday, March 10, and presidents have 10 days, excluding Sundays, to sign or veto. That would land Biden's deadline on Wednesday, March 22.

Should the president veto, a two-thirds majority in both chambers would be needed to override, which could come at any point during the 118th Congress.

Only 106 out of 1,484 presidential vetoes from 1789 through 2004 were overridden, according to the Congressional Research Service. However, with a unanimous vote, Biden would likely not be able to sustain a veto.

Dr. Steven Quay hopes the information does come to light.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” said Quay, who favors the lab leak theory. “I’d like to see records from the fall of 2019 and more communications. The concept that the virus came from a market requires that it started in December. Any evidence that it’s anywhere else in the fall before that is evidence against it beginning in a market in December.”

If signed into law, the bill would require within 90 days the declassification of “any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease," including whether any researchers grew ill.

The legislation's passage marks a striking departure from the early days of the pandemic when the lab leak hypothesis was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Since then, the nation's 18 intelligence agencies have said both theories are plausible, yet the debate continues to divide the intelligence and scientific communities.

Although the bill garnered overwhelming support on the House floor, Democrats and Republicans engaged in a drawn-out debate before casting their votes. Several Republicans in their speeches sought to blame not only the Chinese government but also some U.S. officials, namely Dr. Anthony Fauci.

"Big government bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci abused their positions of power to disguise and distort the facts and a further tyrannical approach to our country," Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) said of the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Fauci knew as early as March of 2020 that coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China."

Some Democrats, on the other hand, urged caution.

"We shouldn't be so certain ... that we're willing to impugn the character and motives of other Americans, especially if those Americans are in positions of responsibility that need to be trusted in the next pandemic," said Himes. "We just don't know. And we're entitled to speculate, we're entitled to have a theory, but I would just urge caution about impugning people's motives, impugning their character, based on those theories."

There is a real chance Biden could veto the bill, argues Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Eddington, at which point the question would be whether GOP leadership can convince enough Democrats to override.

One concern Biden may have is that human sources could be compromised, for example, if a source within the Chinese government is named in the intelligence. However, any information released is subject to redaction.

The smart play, Eddington argues, is to let the bill pass.

"Biden would be wise to just sign the bill and direct [Director of National Intelligence Avril] Haines to comply," he said. "Asking for Democrats in House swing districts to fall on their sword over this issue would be bad political strategy, to say the least."

Fauci defends gain-of-function research: 'It needs to be regulated'

Misty Severi

March 09, 08:08 PM March 09, 08:08 PM

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, defended gain-of-function research on Thursday, but he warned that the practice should be regulated.

Some scientists believe China was conducting gain-of-function research when the COVID-19 pandemic began and that a lab leak from Wuhan resulted in the pandemic.

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WHD News's Neil Cavuto asked Fauci about his views on gain-of-function research.

Fauci has rejected the notion that the pandemic sprang from a lab leak and instead favored a theory that it came from an animal-to-human transmission.

"If you're looking at something where you deliberately make a pathogen more transmissible or more pathogenic — namely, causing more severe disease — there's very few reasons to do that," Fauci said.

"But if you look at the whole array of virologists and scientists that do research that's absolutely critical for the health of the country, some of that involves manipulating organisms that you can call 'gain-of-function.' When it is [gain of function], it needs to be regulated," he added.

Fauci continued, "Did you get the flu shot this year, Neil? If you did, and you got it from an influenza vaccine, that was gain of function that made that influenza vaccine. So that's what people don't understand."

Fauci added that the scientific community believes there is a need to manipulate organisms in controlled settings.

"I think the entire scientific community of virology and infectious disease would argue strongly that if you shut down all of that research, a lot of things that are important for the health of the country would not be able to be done," Fauci said.

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, a virologist, rejected Fauci's assertion that some gain-of-function research was necessary. During a hearing in front of the House COVID-19 origins select committee, Redfield claimed gain-of-function research was too risky and said he is not aware of it ever causing a "life-saving vaccine."

"On the contrary, I think it probably caused the greatest pandemic our world has seen," Redfield said.

Redfield also alleged that he was purposely kept out of COVID-19 talks because he had a different point of view on the origins of COVID-19 than the narrative Fauci espoused. Fauci, however, denied the allegation Thursday.

"I really feel badly about that because I've known Bob a long time," Fauci said of the accusation. "He is totally and unequivocally incorrect in what he's saying that I excluded him. I had nothing to do with who would be on that call."

The Department of Energy and the FBI recently gave more credibility to the theory that a lab leak likely caused the virus, and other agencies are still investigating.

The theory that the virus stemmed from a lab leak has been speculated since the start of the pandemic. The theory was partly fueled by the fact that the virus was first identified near the Wuhan Institute of Virology. However, some scientists dismissed the lab leak explanation as a "conspiracy theory" in the early days of the pandemic.

Bombshell COVID-19 origins hearing will feature Wuhan lab leak and Fauci silencing effort

Jerry Dunleavy

March 08, 05:51 AM March 08, 05:52 AM

The Wuhan lab leak hypothesis will be front and center during a new House hearing on the coronavirus, with its witnesses featuring prominent voices who have argued COVID-19 likely originated in a Chinese lab.

The Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will be hosting a hearing on “Investigating the Origins of COVID-19” on Wednesday, and it is likely to touch on not just the Wuhan Institute of Virology but also gain-of-function research funded by the National Institutes of Health, the attempted silencing of the lab leak hypothesis by officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Chinese obfuscation and obstruction.

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“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to ‘predict, prepare, protect, or prevent’ it from happening again,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Government scientists and government funded researchers have so far been less-than-forthcoming in their knowledge and actions, including work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and potential pandemic pathogens."

The witnesses for the Wednesday hearing include Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has said COVID-19 “clearly” began in a Wuhan lab, as well as Nicholas Wade, the former science and health editor at the New York Times, who has written about the “substantial” evidence of a lab leak.

Also testifying is Jamie Metzl, a former Clinton White House National Security Council member who has long argued a Wuhan lab leak is at minimum plausible and must be investigated.

The hearing comes after FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed last week that the FBI has long believed COVID-19 originated at a Chinese government lab and after it was recently revealed the Department of Energy now believes with “low confidence” that the coronavirus started at a Wuhan lab.

The assessments in favor of a lab leak are the first movement since the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment in 2021 stating that one U.S. intelligence agency, the FBI, assessed with "moderate confidence" that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a lab in Wuhan, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believed with just "low confidence" that COVID-19 most likely had a natural origin.

The witnesses are sure to speak to those assessments on Wednesday.

Redfield told WHD News last month that the FBI and Energy Department both have “an enormous, powerful, scientific workforce” and “a lot of science depth” at their agencies. The former Trump CDC director added, “I think that clearly the origin of this virus was a leak from the Wuhan lab, and eventually people will come to realize that. … COVID came into man and immediately was enormously transmissible, which in my view meant that it was educated in a laboratory on how to infect human tissue.”

The former CDC director’s comments last month built upon his March 2021 public assessment, which also hinted that COVID-19 was a product of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.

Wade, also a former editor at Science and Nature, penned a lengthy essay for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in May 2021, which helped keep the Wuhan lab leak possibility in the spotlight after Fauci and many in the media had attempted to dismiss the hypothesis.

“The available evidence leans more strongly in one direction than the other,” Wade wrote at the time of the lab leak hypothesis. “It seems to me that proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS-CoV-2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence.”

Wade added, “If the case that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? ... There are many people who have reason not to talk about it. The list is led, of course, by the Chinese authorities. But virologists in the United States and Europe have no great interest in igniting a public debate about the gain-of-function experiments that their community has been pursuing for years.”

Scientists consulting with the U.S. government early in the pandemic in 2020 believed COVID-19 originating from a lab in Wuhan was possible or even likely, but emails indicate Fauci and then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins worked to shut the hypothesis down.

Wade wrote for City Journal in January 2022 that “the medical-research establishment in Washington” attempted to dismiss as “conspiracy theorists” anyone who had considered a Wuhan lab leak escape but that the unearthed emails were “making it seem increasingly likely that there was, in fact, a conspiracy, its aim being to suppress the notion that the virus had emerged from research funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Fauci.”

Newly released emails also show Fauci and others "prompted" an influential scientific paper that pushed back on the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Metzl called it “inexcusable” that there still hasn’t been a full investigation into COVID-19’s origins in a Wall Street Journal piece last month. Metzl wrote the piece with Trump deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who has been saying publicly as early as early 2021 that the evidence for a lab leak “far outweighs” that of natural origin.

“While Chinese obfuscation and misdirection is chiefly to blame for the lack of understanding of how the novel coronavirus swept the globe, the U.S. could do far more to get to the bottom of what happened,” Metzl and Pottinger wrote, emphasizing that “in the early days of the pandemic, a small group of Western virologists came together to consider the pandemic’s origin. Emails that eventually came to light revealed their plan to push the public conversation away from the lab-accident hypothesis.”

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has continued to deflect from the Wuhan lab leak possibility by pushing the baseless conspiracy theory that COVID-19 originated from a U.S. military base, including as recently as this week.

CPAC 2023: Eric Schmitt recounts Fauci lashing out at reporter for sneezing

Ryan King

March 02, 07:40 PM March 02, 07:40 PM

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) recalled how Dr. Anthony Fauci lectured a reporter to wear a mask after sneezing during a deposition several months.

Schmitt won court approval last year to depose Fauci and a bevy of other current and former Biden administration officials for his sweeping lawsuit over the government allegedly "colluding to suppress freedom of speech" with Big Tech. At the time, Schmitt was serving as the attorney general of Missouri; he won his Senate seat in the 2022 cycle.

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"In the middle of that deposition, I'm kidding you not, a court reporter sneezed. What did Anthony Fauci do? He demanded that she wear a mask. I am not making this up. This was just a couple of months ago, and this is the temperament, by the way, of the guy who was in charge of all of this, who wanted power and control — a guy who claimed he was the science."

In the lawsuit, Schmitt and fellow Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry accused the government of impeding upon people's First Amendment rights by flagging content, including posts related to the pandemic, for Big Tech companies to evaluate — something the duo argued amounted to censorship.

He deposed Fauci and others to learn more about their behind-the-scenes activities and communications with social media companies during the pandemic.

Fauci stepped down as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden late last year. At one point, he contracted COVID-19 and blamed his infection on a brief slip-up at a college reunion party where he briefly removed his mask.

During the beginning stages of the pandemic, Fauci encouraged civilians not to wear masks, fearing that doing so would limit the supplies available for medical professionals at the onset of the pandemic. Later on in the pandemic, he later encouraged everyday people to wear masks to slow the spread of the virus. He has since defended the apparent reversal.

"When he was privately messaged in an email we confronted him with by a colleague in early 2020 about whether she should wear a mask on a plane or not, he said they were ineffective. But for the rest of us, we were required to wear them on planes, and our kids had to wear masks in schools all day long," Schmitt chided.

"When Fauci speaks, Big Tech censors, and this can never happen again,” he added

Now that he is in the Senate, Schmitt vowed to continue his work to safeguard First Amendment rights for everyone and issued a clarion call for conservatives to do the same.

"We — conservatives, the people in this room — we have to be the guardians of free speech. That is our vision. That is our goal. If you control the flow of information to limit speech, you can control [us], and that's exactly what their aim is: power and control," Schmitt said to applause.

Pence bashes Fauci over COVID-19 response under Biden

Brady Knox

November 21, 08:56 PM November 21, 08:56 PM

Former Vice President Mike Pence is bashing Dr. Anthony Fauci and Democratic governors for their responses to COVID-19.

Pence defended the Trump administration's decisions, including Fauci's role, instead turning his criticism to the Biden administration. While defending Fauci's role during the Trump administration, Pence said that Fauci was only effective then because he "stayed in his lane" and that the Biden administration's policy of turning over the crisis to Fauci resulted in an expected catastrophe.

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"I think in the early days of the coronavirus task force, Dr. Fauci was a great source of comfort to millions of Americans," Pence said in an interview with Meet the Press. "He had an easygoing bedside manner through which he communicated at the podium. And as I said, we had a good rapport in those days. Because Dr. Fauci, in my time leading the task force, always stayed in his lane."

"When the Biden administration came in and essentially turned over the management of COVID to Dr. Fauci, I was not surprised to see them put all of their emphasis on vaccines, then after having promised that they would not mandate vaccines, then seeking to mandate vaccines on Americans. ... That was the doctor approach," he said. "And I think when President Biden came in and essentially empowered Dr. Fauci, I think the American people recoiled at that approach. And sadly, the Biden administration lost more Americans in their first year with COVID than we did in our first year, a year where we had none of the tools, few supplies, no testing, ultimately no medicines until the end."

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Pence served as the head of the White House's coronavirus task force at the beginning of the pandemic, turning over control of the task force to the Biden administration in 2021.

The former vice president has defended the record of the Trump administration despite distancing himself from former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot. He has since given several hints that he plans to run against his former boss for president in 2024.

Gentleman who threatened to destroy Fauci sentenced to 3 many years in federal prison

Cami Mondeaux

August 05, 11:04 AM August 05, 11:04 AM

A West Virginia male who despatched email messages to Dr. Anthony Fauci and other federal officers with threats to hurt or even kill them has been sentenced to a few years in federal prison.

For much more than 6 months, Thomas Patrick Connally Jr. sent anonymous email messages to Fauci, President Joe Biden’s best medical adviser, and other federal officials with threats to hurt them and their family associates, according to the Office of Justice. Connally admitted to sending the email messages as a way to intimidate or interfere with their obligations and retaliate towards federal COVID-19 mandates.

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“Everyone has the correct to disagree, but you do not have the right to threaten a federal official’s existence,” said Erek L. Barron, U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland. “Threats like these will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the regulation.”

Connally was arrested in July 2021 after investigators connected him to the messages that have been sent by an anonymous encrypted email account. Law enforcement also executed a look for warrant at his house, recovering 5 laptops and two cellphones, officials said.

From December 2020 by way of July 2021, Connally despatched several email messages to Fauci with threats he would be “dragged into the street, crushed to dying, and established on fire,” according to the DOJ. In a single instance, Connally sent 7 of these e-mails in fewer than two hours.

Moreover, the West Virginia resident admitted to sending e-mails to Dr. Francis Collins, who was the director of the National Institutes of Health and fitness at the time. In his messages, Connally threatened to attack Collins and her family members if she did not stop promoting “mandatory” COVID-19 vaccinations, officers explained.

Connally ongoing to email other outstanding wellness officers, like Dr. Rachel Levine, who was the secretary of health for the condition of Pennsylvania at the time and now serves as the U.S. assistant secretary for well being.

“Today’s sentencing demonstrates that men and women threatening violence versus federal officers and other individuals will be held accountable for their crimes,” said Christian J. Schrank, deputy inspector normal for investigations of the U.S. Division of Wellness and Human Products and services Workplace of Inspector Normal. “The public, such as community servants, deserve the utmost safety and the assurance that they can complete their duties with out interference. Our company, operating carefully with our law enforcement companions, will go on to provide all those who threaten violence to justice.”