Fauci to Testify Monday Morning

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jun. 3, 2024) — Former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci will testify to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic beginning at 10:00 AM EDT Monday.

It is widely expected Fauci will be grilled on whether his and other related public-health agencies conspired to conceal communications from public scrutiny by taking steps to avoid the FOIA inquiry process as the “pandemic” unfolded and American businesses, schools, universities and other places were shuttered due to the fear of an alleged deadly virus having its beginnings in a Wuhan, China wet market.

Live streaming is available on YouTube and on the website of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability here.

On January 8 and 9 of this year, Fauci sat for two transcribed interviews which can be read here and here, respectively.

Fauci has long claimed to represent the interests of “science” while imposing draconian restrictions on Americans through his advisory role to President Trump’s coronavirus task force formed in the wake of the discovery of the virus’s presence in the United States in January 2021.

In 2022, Fauci refuted probing questions from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), also a medical doctor, who accused him of “taking down people” who disagreed with him on his insistence that the virus could not have originated in a laboratory, as evidence now shows is likely.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, chairman of the subcommittee and a podiatrist, opened Monday’s hearing at approximately 10:04 by thanking Fauci for his “decades of service” and apologizing to him for Fauci’s reported “threats” against his personal safety, as Wenstrup said he, too, has experienced.

Wenstrup is not seeking reelection in November.

As Wenstrup noted by reading a transcript of Fauci’s previous testimony, Fauci and former NIH Director Francis Collins admitted there was no “scientific data” behind the “rule” imposed on Americans in virtually all public places to position themselves six feet apart.

On Monday morning, OpentheBooks reported:

…In 2022 and 2023, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies paid the National Institutes of Health a sum of $710,381,160 in third party royalties. These were payments to NIH, its leadership and scientists by healthcare entities licensing inventions created in federal, taxpayer-paid labs. The two-year average of such payments over the prior decade was less than $5 million, for an increase of more than 175 times.

Fauci’s institute, The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) received $690,218,610 of the $710 million, or 97%. In the same period, the other 26 institutes under the NIH received some $26 million in total.

At 10:14, addressing himself to the witness, Wenstrup enumerated the restrictions Fauci had supported, including what he said were “coerced vaccinations” and of “deleting official records” regarding government communications.

“You were the highest-paid person in the government…you became so powerful that any disagreements…were censored…this was fundamentally un-American,” Wenstrup continued.

“We all need to be held accountable…,” Wenstrup continued.

After Wenstrup completed his opening statement, ranking subcommittee member Raul Ruiz (D-CA), an emergency-trained physician, defended Fauci and gave congressional Democrats credit for a number of accomplishments supporting public health in the U.S. in the wake of the pandemic.