At Select Subcommittee Hearing with Dr. Fauci, Democrats Debunk Republicans’ Extreme COVID Origins Claims and Defend America’s Public Health

Washington, D.C. (June 3, 2024)—Today, Rep. Raul Ruiz, M.D., Ranking Member of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, led Select Subcommittee Democrats in debunking Republicans’ extreme claims linking Dr. Fauci to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and pushing back against the vilification of America’s public health officials, whose crucial work during the pandemic saved lives.

“Under the guise of investigating the pandemic’s origins, House Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to objectively examine how COVID-19 came to be—and instead weaponized concerns about a lab-related origin to fuel sentiment against our nation’s scientists and public health officials for partisan gain. And they have done so with one particular public health official in mind:  Dr. Anthony Fauci,” said Ranking Member Ruiz in his opening statement.

Today’s hearing included testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief Medical Advisor to the President.

Ahead of today’s hearing, Select Subcommittee Democrats released a staff report revealing their findings regarding Republicans’ baseless allegations linking Dr. Fauci to the origins of COVID-19 pandemic.  Select Subcommittee Democrats’ report found that:   

• Dr. Fauci was not aware of NIAID’s grant to EcoHealth Alliance or the grant’s subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) until after the COVID-19 outbreak, and there is no evidence that the viruses studied under that grant caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
   
• Dr. Fauci’s prior Senate testimony explicitly referred to the regulatory definition of the term “gain-of-function,” rather than to an informal usage of the term, and his testimony was accurate. 
   
• Dr. Fauci did not orchestrate the “Proximal Origin” paper, he did not bribe its authors, and he did not direct NIAID staff to manipulate public media coverage regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Select Subcommittee Democrats debunked Republicans’ extreme claims that Dr. Fauci funded research through the EcoHealth Alliance grant that caused the COVID-19 pandemic; lied about gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China; and orchestrated a campaign to suppress the lab leak theory. 

• In response to questions from Ranking Member Ruiz about gain-of-function research and the various definitions of that term, Dr. Fauci reaffirmed the accuracy of his May 2021 Senate testimony: “As you said, Congressman Ruiz, according to the regulatory and operative definition of P3CO, the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
  
• Ranking Member Ruiz said: “I want to be clear, no evidence provided to the Select Subcommittee demonstrates that the work performed under NIH funding including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2. The Majority has failed to demonstrate or even credibly suggest that any of the viruses studied under the grant could even possibly have been the progenitor virus.”
   
• In a press conference announcing Select Subcommittee Democrats’ staff report, Congresswoman Deborah Ross said: “For months, Republicans have claimed that Dr. Fauci deliberately campaigned to shift the findings in the Proximal Origin paper, despite witnesses stating that Dr. Fauci did not contribute meaningfully to any meeting regarding the paper, and the paper’s authors themselves testifying that they were not influenced by him.”

Select Subcommittee Democrats highlighted how public health officials worked with limited and evolving information during the COVID-19 pandemic to save lives and revealed how baseless allegations against Dr. Fauci have contributed to threats and harassment against America’s public health officials. 

• Congressman Robert Garcia underscored Dr. Fauci’s role in saving thousands of lives through his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: “We lost 1.1 million American lives.  1.1 million American lives, 7 million lives around the world.  We were having 9/11 like events death events daily in this country—losing 4000, 5,000 every single day… Thousands of people were dying a day, and you and your team of the best and the brightest scientists in this country and the world were doing everything that you could and working night and day to save more and more of those lives.”
   
• In response to Congresswoman Dingell’s questions regarding threats he and his family have faced since the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Fauci explained: “There have been everything from harassments by e-mail, texts, letters of myself, my wife, my three daughters.  There have been credible death threats leading to the arrest of two individuals. Credible death threats means someone who clearly was on their way to kill me. It has required my having protective services essentially all the time. It is very troublesome to me.  It is much more troublesome because they've involved my wife and three daughters.”
   
• In her questions to Dr. Fauci, Congresswoman Ross highlighted the lifesaving role of the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout: “That was also confirmed by a Commonwealth Fund December 2022 report which came out two years after the Biden Administration's effort to get COVID-19 vaccines in arms—and your effort too—that it prevented more than 3 million deaths and averted 18 million hospitalizations.  And that came out in 2022 but it seems to corroborate what you're saying.”
   
• In her questions to Dr. Fauci, Congresswoman Jill Tokuda warned about the dangers of proposals that departed from public health best practices: “The Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t some academic exercise. It was real. It was in real-time. It was about saving lives in real-time. Theories like herd immunity may seem plausible on paper but we have to remember that it is based upon the assumption that enough people would have to be infected. And that would likely have meant that our family members, our friends, our neighbors, our constituents especially those in our most marginalized, multi-generational, rural communities would have died.”

In contrast to Republicans’ extreme probes, Select Subcommittee Democrats reiterated their commitment to forward-looking policies that protect and advance public health and pandemic prevention and preparedness.

• In his opening statement, Ranking Member Ruiz called for the Select Subcommittee to change course and prioritize forward-looking work to prevent and prepare for future pandemics: “it has been my hope that Republicans would join Democrats in the forward-looking work that will better protect our constituents.  Strengthening oversight of potentially risky research domestically and abroad is an essential part of this conversation, and so is closing pathways for zoonotic transfers of viruses in nature and investing in our public health infrastructure to ensure that when future viruses arrive, we are ready.”
   
• In response to questions from Congressman Jared Moskowitz regarding the current state of pandemic preparedness, Dr. Fauci told the Select Subcommittee: “In some respects we are, but in others I’m still disappointed.  And I think one of the things that was really a problem with the response was the degree of divisiveness that we had in the country about a lack of a coherent response where we were having people, for reasons that had nothing to do with public health or science, refusing to adhere to public health intervention measures.”