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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY, 5
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, 6
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 7
WASHINGTON, D.C. 8
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INTERVIEW OF: ANTHONY S. FAUCI 13
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Monday, January 8, 2024 17
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Washington, D.C. 19
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The interview in the above matter was held in room CVC -268, Capitol Visitor 22
Center, commencing at 9:58 a.m. 23
Present: Wenstrup, Griffith, Jordan, Malliotakis, Cloud, Joyce, Greene, Dingell, 24
and Castor. 25
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Appearances: 1
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For the SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC: 5
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MITCH BENZINE, STAFF DIRECTOR. 7
JOSEPH CIPOLLONE, COUNSEL 8
JACK EMMER, SENIOR COUNSEL 9
ERIC OSTERHUES, CHIEF COUNSEL 10
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ANNA -BLAKE LANGLEY, RESEARCH ASSISTANT 12
MINORITY STAFF DIRECTOR 13
MINORITY CHIEF COUNSEL 14
MINORITY COUNSEL 15
MINORITY SENIOR COUNSEL 16
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For the COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, 19
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS: 20
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JOHN STROM, SENIOR COUNSEL 22
MINORITY CHIEF COUNSEL 23
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For the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: 25
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PERRIN COOKE, SENIOR OVERSIGHT COUNSEL 2
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For the WHITE HOUSE: 5
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KEVIN BARSTOW 7
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For ANTHONY S. FAUCI: 10
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DAVID SCHERTLER 12
DANNY ONORATO 13
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ALSO PRESENT: 15
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GRACE MCMAHON (PARALEGAL) 19
MATT LAGANZA (PARALEGAL) 20
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Mr. Benzine. Dr. Fauci, my name is Mitch Benzine, and I'm the staff director for 25
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the majority staff of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. I want to 1
thank you again for voluntarily being here for this interview today and tomorrow. 2
I'm going to kick it to my colleague, Eric, who's going to read you the rules. 3
Dr. Fauci. Thank you. 4
Mr. Osterhues. Good morning, Dr. Fauci. 5
This is a transcribed interview of Dr. Fauci, conducted by the House Select 6
Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Committee on Oversight and 7
Accountability under the authority granted to them by House Resolution 5, House rule X, 8
and the rules of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability. 9
This interview was requested by Chairman Brad Wenstrup and Chairman James 10
Comer as part of the committee's oversight of the Federal Government's response to the 11
coronavirus pandemic. 12
Further, pursuant to House rule -- Resolution 5, the select subcommittee has 13
wide -ranging jurisdiction but specifically to investigate the origins of the coronavirus 14
pandemic, including but not limited to the Federal Government's funding of 15
gain -of-function research; the implementation or effectiveness of any Federal law or 16
regulation applied, enacted, or under consideration to address the coronavirus pandemic 17
and prepare for future pandemics; the development of vaccines and treatments and the 18
development and implementation of vaccination policies for Federal employees and 19
members of the Armed Forces; the societal impact of the decisions to close schools, how 20
the decisions were made, and whether there is evidence of widespread learning loss or 21
other negative effects as a result of these decisions; and executive branch policies, 22
deliberations, decisions, activities, and internal and external communications related to 23
the coronavirus pandemic. 24
Pursuant to House rule X, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability has 25
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jurisdiction to investigate any matter at any time. 1
At the discretion of Chairman Wenstrup, one member of the majority and one 2
member of the minority staff of the Committee on Energy and Commerce have been 3
granted permission to attend and participate in this interview. 4
Further, the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and 5
Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, or their designee are also 6
granted permission to attend and participate in this interview. 7
Can the witness please state his name and spell his last name for the record? 8
Dr. Fauci. My name is Anthony S. Fauci, and my last spelling name is F as in Frank, 9
a-u-c-i. 10
Mr. Osterhues. Thank you, Dr. Fauci. 11
My name is Eric Osterhues. I'm the chief counsel for the majority staff of the 12
select subcommittee. I want to thank you for coming in today for this interview. We 13
recognize that you are here voluntarily, and we appreciate that. 14
Under the select subcommittee and Committee on Oversight and Accountability's 15
rules, you're allowed to have an attorney present to advise you during this interview. 16
Do you have an attorney representing you in a personal capacity present with you 17
today? 18
Dr. Fauci. Yes, I do. 19
Mr. Osterhues. Will counsel please identify themselves for the record? 20
Mr. Schertler. Yes. David Schertler. 21
Mr. Onorato. Danny Onorato. 22
Mr. Osterhues. Thank you. 23
Is there an attorney present representing the Department of Health and Human 24
Services with you today? 25
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Dr. Fauci. Yes. 1
Mr. Osterhues. Will counsel please identify themselves for the record? 2
Mr. Cooke. Perrin Cooke, senior counsel with HHS. 3
Mr. Osterhues. Is there also an attorney present representing the White House 4
with you today? 5
Dr. Fauci. Yes, there is. 6
Mr. Osterhues. Will counsel please identify themselves for the record? 7
Mr. Barstow. Kevin Barstow, White House Counsel's Office. 8
Mr. Osterhues. For the record, can additional staff please introduce themselves 9
with their name, title, and affiliation? 10
Mr. Benzine. Mitch Benzine, staff director for the majority staff of the select 11
subcommittee. 12
Mr. Strom. John Strom, senior counsel, Committee on Energy and Commerce, 13
majority, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. 14
Mr. Emmer. Jack Emmer, senior counsel for the majority, Select Subcommittee on 15
the Coronavirus Pandemic. 16
Mr. Cipollone. Joseph Cipollone, counsel for the majority, Select Subcommittee 17
on the Coronavirus Pandemic. 18
chief counsel for the minority, Energy and 19
Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. 20
minority counsel, the select subcommittee. 21
minority staff, select subcommittee. 22
chief minority counsel, select subcommittee. 23
Democratic staff director of the select 24
subcommittee. 25
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Ms. Langley. Anna -Blake Langley, professional staff member, Select 1
Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, majority. 2
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Mr. LaGanza. Matt LaGanza, paralegal. 4
Ms. McMahon. Grace McMahon, paralegal. 5
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Mr. Osterhues. Thank you. 7
For the record, can the Members please introduce themselves? 8
Dr. Wenstrup. Brad Wenstrup, chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the 9
Coronavirus Pandemic. 10
Mr. Griffith. Morgan Griffith, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and 11
Investigations for Energy and Commerce. 12
Mr. Jordan. Jim Jordan, Ohio 4. 13
Ms. Malliotakis. Nicole Malliotakis, New York 11. 14
Mrs. Dingell. Debbie Dingell, Michigan, select subcommittee and E&C. 15
Mr. Osterhues. Thank you all. 16
Dr. Fauci, before we begin, I would like to go over the ground rules for this 17
interview. 18
The way this interview will proceed is as follows: The majority and the minority 19
staff will alternate asking questions 1 hour per side per round until each side is finished 20
with their questioning. The majority staff will begin and proceed for an hour, and then 21
the minority staff will have an hour to ask questions. We will alternate back and forth in 22
this manner until both sides have no more questions. 23
If either side is in the middle of a specific line of questions, they may choose to 24
end a few minutes past the hour to ensure completion of that specific line of questioning, 25
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including any pertinent followups. 1
In this interview, while one member of the staff for each side may lead the 2
questioning, additional staff may ask questions. 3
There is a court reporter taking down everything I say and everything you say to 4
make a written record of this interview. For the record to be clear, please wait until the 5
staff questioning you finishes each question before you begin your answer, and the staff 6
will wait until you finish your response before proceeding to the next question. 7
Further, to ensure the court reporter can properly record this interview, please 8
speak clearly, concisely, and slowly. Also, the court reporter cannot record nonverbal 9
answers such as nodding or shaking your head, so it is important that you answer each 10
question with an audible, verbal answer. 11
Exhibits may be entered into the record. Majority exhibits will be identified 12
numerically. Minority exhibits will be identified alphabetically. 13
This is not a secure room. If a question elicits a classified answer and you recall 14
the information, you should answer any unclassified portions to the best of your 15
recollection and affirmatively state, there is more information but it is classified. Do you 16
understand? 17
Dr. Fauci. I do. 18
Mr. Osterhues. We want you to answer our questions in the most complete and 19
truthful manner possible. If you have any questions or do not fully understand a 20
question, please let us know, and we will attempt to clarify, add context, or rephrase our 21
questions. Do you understand? 22
Dr. Fauci. I do. 23
Mr. Osterhues. If we ask about specific conversations or events in the past and 24
you are unable to recall the exact words or details, you should testify to the substance of 25
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those conversations or events to the best of your recollection. If you recall only a part of 1
a conversation or event, you should give us your best recollection of those events or parts 2
of conversations that you do recall. Do you understand? 3
Dr. Fauci. I do. 4
Mr. Osterhues. Although you are here voluntarily and we will not swear you in, 5
you are required, pursuant to Title 18, Section 1001 of the United States Code, to answer 6
questions from Congress truthfully. This also applies to questions posed by congressional 7
staff in this interview. Do you understand? 8
Dr. Fauci. I do. 9
Mr. Osterhues. If at any time you knowingly make false statements, you could be 10
subject to criminal prosecution. Do you understand? 11
Dr. Fauci. I do. 12
Mr. Osterhues. Is there any reason you are unable to provide truthful testimony 13
in today's interview? 14
Dr. Fauci. No. 15
Mr. Osterhues. The select subcommittee follows the rules of the Committee on 16
Oversight and Accountability. Please note that if you wish to assert a privilege over any 17
statement today, that assertion must comply with the rules of the Committee on 18
Oversight and Accountability. 19
Pursuant to that, committee rule 16(c)(1) states, for the chair to consider 20
assertions of privilege over testimony or statements, witnesses or entities must clearly 21
state the specific privilege being asserted and the reason for the assertion on or before 22
the scheduled date of the testimony or appearance. Do you understand? 23
Dr. Fauci. Yes. 24
Mr. Osterhues. Ordinarily, we will take a 5 -minute break at the end of each hour 25
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of questioning, but if you need a longer break or a break before that, please let us know 1
and we will be happy to accommodate. However, to the extent that there is a pending 2
question, we would ask that you finish answering the question before we take a break. 3
Do you understand? 4
Dr. Fauci. Yes. 5
Mr. Osterhues. Do you have any other questions before we begin? 6
Dr. Fauci. No. 7
Mr. Osterhues. Thank you. 8
Dr. Wenstrup. First of all, Dr. Fauci, thank you very much for volunteering to come 9
in today. I want to congratulate you on your retirement -- 10
Dr. Fauci. Thank you. 11
Dr. Wenstrup. -- and your many, many years of service. I appreciate it. 12
I haven't met you in person before, but I want to take this opportunity in person 13
to thank you for the time that you and Dr. Collins took during the pandemic. We did a 14
virtual meeting at NIH with the two of you to discuss mRNA technology and the creation 15
of vaccines during Operation Warp Speed, and that was greatly appreciated as you did 16
that with the Doctors Caucus. 17
I've looked at this entire event, if you will, not just your time here. The goal of the 18
select subcommittee is to be an after -action review so that we can have lessons 19
learned -- I guess that's my military background coming through on that -- with the goal of 20
being possibly able in the future to predict a pandemic, to prepare for it, to protect 21
ourselves from it, and possibly prevent it. And I think that's a lot of the goal. 22
I would say, due to the complexity of this entire situation, virology, et cetera, 2 23
days of discussion may not be really enough, but I appreciate you being here for these 2 24
days. 25
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Were there any additional titles -- I mean, America clearly recognized you early on 1
as the face of the government response to the pandemic under both administrations 2
during the pandemic. Were there any additional formal titles? Or what were your formal 3
titles in the Trump administration and the Biden administration? 4
Dr. Fauci. Are you asking only in that context or my title as the director of 5
national -- you want to know all my titles? 6
Dr. Wenstrup. Well, your titles within the administration during the pandemic, 7
related to the pandemic. 8
Dr. Fauci. Okay. Related to the pandemic. 9
In the Trump administration, I was a member of the Coronavirus Task Force, and 10
during the Biden administration, I was a member of the Coronavirus Response Team and 11
the chief medical advisor to President Biden. 12
Dr. Wenstrup. Okay. Well, thank you very much. 13
I do want to say one thing too. I'm sorry that there's been such a concern for your 14
security. I'm grateful that you have security with the marshals. As someone who has 15
been shot at at a baseball field, if not for Capitol Police being there, we might have had 20 16
Members of Congress killed that day. So I appreciate the situation you're in, and I 17
appreciate the marshals being here and serving all of us today. Thank you. 18
Dr. Fauci. Thank you. 19
EXAMINATION 20
BY MR. BENZINE: 21
Q Dr. Fauci, I want to open, again, by reiterating what the chairman just said 22
and thanking you for your decades of service and multiple public health responses that 23
you have responded to. 24
In your 55 years of government service, you've obviously seen and experienced 25
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quite a lot, so us picking a 4 -year chunk is probably very limiting in how influential you 1
have been. 2
Before we get started, I want to ask a few more baseline questions regarding this 3
interview. 4
As you have stated, you're represented by personal counsel but also accompanied 5
by both Department and White House counsel. Are you aware that those representatives 6
do not represent your interests but instead those of the United States Government? 7
A I do. 8
Q Are you aware that it's possible that your personal interests may diverge 9
from those of the United States Government? 10
A Yes. 11
Q These representatives may exert privileges on behalf of the government and 12
instruct you to not answer questions. Are you aware that the decision to answer 13
questions, even if instructed not to, resides solely with you? 14
A Yes. 15
Q Are you aware that if you refuse to answer any questions today, either as 16
instructed or otherwise, the select subcommittee has the authority to compel your 17
testimony? 18
A Yes. 19
Q Thank you. 20
The chairman did it a little bit, but I want to run through your education and 21
experience a little bit more, primarily the NIAID chunk, but we'll ask a few broader 22
questions. 23
Where did you attend undergraduate school and what degree did you graduate 24
with? 25
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A I attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and I 1
had a BA in Greek and philosophy and science. 2
Q Where did you get your medical degree? 3
A I got my medical degree at Cornell University Medical College in New York 4
City. 5
Q And then who is your current employer and current title? 6
A I am currently a distinguished university professor at Georgetown University, 7
with a joint appointment in the depar - -- in the School of Medicine and in the McCourt 8
School of Public Policy. 9
Q And then, very briefly, just probably titles and date ranges if that works for 10
you, run through your Federal career until you retired. 11
A After I finished my years of residency, I came to the NIH in 1968 as a fellow 12
in infectious diseases and immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious 13
Diseases. I left for 1 year to be chief medical resident, again, at the New York 14
Hospital -Cornell Medical Center from '71 to '72. 15
I came back to the NIH in 1972, and I started off as a senior investigator to a 16
section head in one of the labs to the chief of the laboratory of immunoregulation in 17
1980, a position I held until I stepped down at the end of 2022. 18
In 1984, I became the director of NIAID, and that was a position I held until I 19
stepped down at the end of 2022. 20
Q And then beginning in January of 2021, as you mentioned, you became chief 21
medical advisor to President Biden. Did you have additional responsibilities in that role 22
on top of your directorship at NIAID? 23
A My responsibility was to be -- as I mentioned to the chairman -- was to be a 24
member of the Coronavirus Response Team and to be the chief medical advisor to the 25
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President. 1
Q Did that come with more direct access to the President than -- 2
A Not any more than any member of the Coronavirus Response Team. 3
Perhaps I would get asked a question in which they were not there. Like, you know, any 4
kind of medical question. It was mostly just asking medical questions. 5
Q Did that role include a pay adjustment? 6
A No. 7
Q Do you currently hold any honorary positions? 8
A No, I don't. You mean at the NIH or anywhere? 9
Q Or anywhere. 10
A No. The only affiliation I have now is with Georgetown University. 11
Q Do you currently hold or have you previously held any positions on boards of 12
companies, nonprofits, publishers, or academic institutions? 13
A I have been a member of a charitable foundation -- a board of a charitable 14
foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. 15
Q Going to your time as director, did you report directly to the NIH director? 16
A I did. We report directly to the NIH director, but we often do it, in some 17
respects, through the deputy director. 18
Q Okay. And then for the course of the pandemic, the NIH director was Dr. 19
Collins the entire time. Is that correct? 20
A Yes, that is correct. 21
Q Was the deputy director Dr. Tabak the entire time? 22
A Yes, he was. 23
Q As director of NIAID, just really briefly, what are some examples of decisions 24
that you're able to make on your own versus ones that you would have to check with 25
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Dr. Collins or check with Dr. Tabak on? 1
A Well, for example, in the beginning of the -- a typical prototypic example 2
would be, in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic -- pandemic in 1981, I established within 3
my depar - -- within my institute the Division of AIDS because I felt that not enough 4
activity was being directed towards this emerging pandemic. So that's something that I 5
had the capability of doing within my own. And that's a typical type of thing. 6
Q Okay. Thank you. 7
In 2004, you received a permanent pay adjustment in accordance with an increase 8
in responsibilities. The increased responsibilities correlated to biodefense research 9
activities and response to bioterrorism. Can you explain what that role was? 10
A I'm actually not sure what you mean an increase in pay associated with that. 11
I don't recall what the reason for the increase in pay, but I don't believe there was an 12
increase in pay associated with new responsibilities. I believe it was just the usual Office 13
of Personnel Management type of increase, at least to my recollection. I don't recall that 14
it was associated with a particular -- it may have been, but I don't recall. 15
Q Okay. Did you have responsibilities outside of your NIAID directorship for 16
biodefense research activities? 17
A I had no official title, but when we had the anthrax attacks, we developed a 18
biodefense program mostly against smallpox, anthrax, botulism, et cetera. But I didn't 19
have a specific title associated with that. 20
Q At that point, did you receive a security clearance? 21
A I have received security clearances, yes. 22
Q What level did you have them? 23
A You know, I don't recall what the level was, but I think it was a pretty high 24
level. 25
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Q Okay. Do you -- 1
A I don't recall what it is, but -- 2
Q Does TS/SCI sound familiar? 3
A You know, I don't want to speculate about that. 4
Q Yeah. 5
A But I know it was more than just the regular -- 6
Q Okay. 7
A -- security clearance. 8
Q During the pandemic, did you receive any classified briefings regarding the 9
origins of COVID -19 or China or COVID -19 in general? 10
A I did. I don't recall how many, but I did. 11
Q Do you recall about when they started? 12
A You know, it was -- I don't really recall. I hesitate to speculate when they 13
started. 14
Q You've said before, and I think everybody in this room would widely consider 15
you an expert in any number of things. As the chairman kind of alluded to, there's a lot of 16
different specialties in medicine. What is your specific expertise? 17
A I'm trained in infectious disease and immunology. My specific degree of 18
expertise is in HIV/AIDS and in immune -mediated diseases. 19
Q Beyond kind of the medical expertise, you've been in government quite a 20
long time as a director of an institute that has a multibillion -dollar budget. Would you 21
consider yourself an expert in anything nonmedical related? The appropriations process? 22
Policymaking? Anything like that? 23
A I don't think I would call myself an expert in that. I've obviously been the 24
director of NIAID for almost 40 years, so I've testified at a lot of Appropriations 25
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subcommittee meetings. So I don't think I know the ins and outs of appropriations, but I 1
know I've testified at Appropriations. 2
Q I don't know if the Appropriations Committee knows the ins and outs of 3
appropriations, if that makes you feel better, but I appreciate that. 4
I want to go ahead and start and introduce what'll be majority exhibit No. 1. 5
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 1 6
was marked for identification.] 7
BY MR. BENZINE: 8
Q So as this goes around the table, this is a March 16th, 2022 letter from, at 9
the time, Ranking Member Scalise to you inviting you to testify at a March 30th, 2022 10
hearing. The panelists at that hearing were Surgeon General Murthy, Assistant Secretary 11
O'Connell, and former CDC Director Walensky. 12
Do you recall receiving this letter? 13
A You know, I received a lot of letters that don't usually come directly to me. 14
They come from different channels. I can't say I recall specifically receiving this. Often, 15
letters, when they do come from the Congress, they don't come directly to us. So I can't 16
say I specifically remember this letter. 17
Q We'll go ahead and introduce exhibit 2. 18
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 2 19
was marked for identification.] 20
BY MR. BENZINE: 21
Q So this is a letter from you back to Ranking Member Scalise from March 22
28th, 2022. 23
Before I ask you if you recall this one, I've been here a while, sent a lot of letters, 24
and usually, like you just said, if Congress sends a letter directly to you, we get a letter 25
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back from the NIH or NIH Leg Affairs or HHS. This one came back directly from you. 1
Do you recall this letter? 2
A The only thing I recall about this -- I don't recall this specific letter. It has my 3
signature on it. But, again, as you mentioned, there were a large number of letters 4
coming in from the Congress through either the NIH or the Department. 5
But I do recall that there was -- upon reading this, it says, "In my roles as 6
director" -- yada, yada -- "I defer to Chairman Clyburn to issue invitations to testify before 7
the subcommittee. I am always willing to testify upon the request of the committee chair 8
and agreement by the administration to discuss ongoing critical efforts." 9
So the only thing I remember about this is that we were told that we should 10
not -- that we would not be allowed to testify unless it came from the chair of the 11
committee. 12
Q As much as you can recall, understanding it was a little while ago and a lot 13
has happened since then and you get a lot of letters, did you want to accept the invitation 14
to testify? 15
Mr. Cooke. Yeah, Mitch, I'm going to jump in here. To the extent that you're 16
getting into the details of discussions leading up to, you know, this communication, as 17
we've discussed in other TIs, those are deliberations for which the executive branch has a 18
confidentiality interest, and we're not going to be able to get into those details in this 19
setting. 20
Mr. Benzine. And, respectfully, whether or not he wanted to testify is not a 21
deliberation. That is a yes or no question. 22
Mr. Cooke. I take that to be, you know, an input into the deliberation over what 23
became of this response. So I would view that as deliberative. 24
Mr. Benzine. Okay. 25
19
BY MR. BENZINE: 1
Q You just testified that you were told that in order to accept a congressional 2
testimony invitation, it had to come from the chair. If the invitation had come from the 3
chair, would you have testified at that hearing? 4
A If the invitation came from the chair, yes, of course. 5
Q Okay. And along that same sentence, you said you were told that it had to 6
come from the chair. Were you told anything else regarding accepting this invitation? 7
Mr. Cooke. Yeah. Again, you're getting into the details of those deliberations. 8
We're not going to be able to get into that here. 9
Mr. Benzine. I want to introduce another letter. It will be majority exhibit 3. 10
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 3 11
was marked for identification.] 12
BY MR. BENZINE: 13
Q This is a letter from June 23rd, 2022. And it is front and back, just so you 14
know. And it's from Mr. Scalise, Mr. Comer, and Mr. Jordan, and it is inviting you to 15
testify at a transcribed interview. 16
Do you recall receiving this letter? 17
A Let me read it first. Okay. 18
Again, there were many, many letters. I mean -- 19
Mr. Schertler. Why don't we wait for the question. 20
Dr. Fauci. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. 21
BY MR. BENZINE: 22
Q Just, do you recall receiving this letter? 23
A Do I recall receiving the letter? Again, to be honest with you, I don't 24
specifically recall receiving this letter, because in the context of letters, many, many 25
20
letters were coming in through various channels. So I can't say, ah, I recognize this letter. 1
Q Do you recall any conversations about requests for you to testify for a 2
transcribed interview? 3
A I recall there were requests. I don't exactly recall what the discussions 4
around it were. 5
Q Perfect. Thank you. 6
I'm going to ask you to bear with me while I run through a long list of names, just 7
trying to set a baseline of the level of communications. 8
So it's, for now, a yes or no of whether or not you communicated with these 9
individuals regarding the origins of COVID, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or EcoHealth 10
Alliance. And for yeses, we'll come back, and if we need to refresh your recollection as 11
we go through, we can. 12
Mr. Schertler. And then just to be clear, so communications on, I think, those 13
three topics? 14
Mr. Benzine. Correct. 15
Mr. Schertler. Could you just repeat those again so that -- 16
Mr. Benzine. Yes. Origins of COVID, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or EcoHealth 17
Alliance. 18
Mr. Schertler. Okay. Thank you. 19
Mr. Benzine. Yeah. 20
Mr. Cooke. And, of course, this is to the best of his recollection. 21
Mr. Benzine. Yes. And it's just yes or no for now. We don't need to get into what 22
the conversations were. 23
Dr. Fauci. What if I don't recall? Then that's not a yes and it's not a no. 24
BY MR. BENZINE: 25
21
Q Yes, sir. So "yes," "no," or "I don't recall" works. 1
President Trump? 2
A EcoHealth, origins -- 3
Mr. Schertler. And Wuhan. 4
Dr. Fauci. -- and Wuhan. 5
I don't recall. 6
BY MR. BENZINE: 7
Q Vice President Pence? 8
A I don't recall specific conversations. 9
Q Mick Mulvaney? 10
A Again, the same thing. I don't recall specific conversations with Mick. Could 11
have been, but I don't recall. 12
Q Mark Meadows? 13
A Same thing. I don't recall specifically discussions. 14
Q Matthew Pottinger? 15
A I don't recall specifically talking about the three issues that you were talking 16
about, but let me answer it as honestly -- I'll say, a specific conversation of me with Matt 17
Pottinger about that, I don't recall. 18
Q Any conversations with him about China generally during the pandemic? 19
A The precisely correct answer to that question is, I don't recall the substance 20
of a conversation, but Matt spoke a lot about China, either directly in the Coronavirus 21
Task Force meetings or peripherally around, but I don't recall a specific back -and-forth 22
conversation. But I believe he was in China, so I believe he spoke a fair amount about 23
China. 24
Mr. Onorato. These are yes or no, remember? 25
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Mr. Benzine. Yeah. 1
BY MR. BENZINE: 2
Q Robert O'Brien? 3
A I don't recall. 4
Q Joe Grogan? 5
A I don't recall. 6
Q Phil Ferro ? 7
A I'm trying to remember who Phil is. 8
Q I think he was biodefense at the NSC. 9
A I don't recall a specific conversation with him about that. 10
Q Mark Milley? 11
A Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? I don't recall any conversations with 12
him about that. 13
Q Lieutenant General Robert Ashley? 14
A Robert Ashley, I don't recall any conversations with him. 15
Q Lieutenant General Scott Berrier? 16
A Again, I don't recall any conversations with him. 17
Q Anthony Ruggiero? 18
A I don't recall specific conversations, but to my recollection, the answer is no. 19
I don't recall a specific conversation with him. 20
Q Ambassador Andrew Bremberg? 21
A No, I don't recall any conversation. 22
Q Russell Vought? 23
A You know, I have to tell you, I don't recall who these people are. 24
Q Okay. That's fair. 25
23
A I can't recall. 1
Q Then that counts. 2
John Ratcliffe? 3
A No, I don't recall a conversation with him. 4
Q Gina Haspel? 5
A No, I don't know who they are. 6
Q Mike Pompeo? 7
A I don't recall. 8
Q Alex Azar? 9
A Yes, but I don't recall the substance of the conversation. 10
Q Brett Giroir ? 11
A Don't recall precisely. 12
Q Robert Kadlec? 13
A Yes. 14
Q Deborah Birx? 15
A Yes. 16
Q Robert Redfield? 17
A Yes. 18
Q President Biden? 19
A I don't recall a conversation with the President about that. 20
Q Vice President Harris? 21
A I don't recall. 22
Q Ron Klain? 23
A Again, I don't recall. 24
Q Jake Sullivan? 25
24
A I'm trying to think in my mind if I had a conversation about that, and I don't 1
recall specifically that I did. 2
Q That's fair. 3
Raj Punjabi? 4
A I don't recall, no. 5
Q Ashish Jha? 6
A I'm trying to take the three points that you're saying, and I don't recall a 7
specific conversation. 8
Q Jeff Zients? 9
A Again, not specifically. 10
Q Andy Slavitt? 11
A I don't recall specifically. 12
Q Rob Flaherty? 13
A Don't recall for sure. 14
Q Avril Haines? 15
A Avril Haines? 16
Q The current Director of National Intelligence. 17
A I don't recall that, no. 18
Q Bill Burns? 19
A I don't recall. 20
Q Christopher Wray? 21
A I don't recall, no. 22
Q Xavier Becerra? 23
A I don't recall. 24
Q Antony Blinken? 25
25
A Again, I don't recall specific conversations. 1
Q Jennifer Granholm? 2
A Again, I don't recall specific conversations. 3
Q Susan Rice? 4
A I don't recall specific conversations. 5
Q Neera Tanden? 6
A I don't recall specific conversations. 7
Q Shalanda Young? 8
A OMB? 9
Q Yeah. 10
A I don't recall specific conversations. 11
Q Major General Paul Friedrichs? 12
A I don't recall specific conversations. 13
Q Francis Collins? 14
A Yes. 15
Q Lawrence Tabak? 16
A Yes. 17
Q Hugh Auchincloss? 18
A Yes. 19
Q David Morens? 20
A Yes. 21
Q Ping Chen? 22
A I don't recall. 23
Q Cliff Lane? 24
A Yes. 25
26
Q Ian Watson? 1
A Don't recall. 2
Q Andrew Pope? 3
A Don't recall. 4
Q Victor Dzau? 5
A Don't recall. 6
Q Michael Lauer? 7
A Again, I'd have to say I don't recall. 8
Q Christian Hassell? 9
A You're talking about specific conversations with them. I mean, the 10
idea -- yeah, I don't recall. 11
Q Yeah. Understanding that there's sometimes a large number of people. 12
A Yeah, there's large people talking about things, but a specific conversation 13
with them, no. 14
Q Christian Hassell? 15
A No. 16
Q Gray Handley? 17
A Yes. 18
Q Greg Folkers? 19
A Yes. 20
Q Erik Stemmy? 21
A Yes. 22
Q Emily Erbelding? 23
A Yes. 24
Q Dr. Tedros? 25
27
A I don't recall a specific conversation with him. 1
Q Jeremy Farrar? 2
A Origins is one of the three? 3
Q Yes, sir. 4
A Yes. 5
Q Kristian Andersen? 6
A Yes. 7
Q Michael Farzan? 8
A I don't recall specifically talking to Dr. Farzan. 9
Q Eddie Holmes? 10
A Again, I want to make sure I'm precisely honest. When you say specifically 11
talking to them about origins, the answer is, I didn't specifically talk to him about origins, 12
but Eddie Holmes was on the phone call, so obviously. 13
Q But it wasn't -- Dr. Holmes was not a one -on-one or like -- 14
A No. 15
Q -- a group of three? 16
A No. 17
Q It was a larger group? 18
A No, no. It was a larger group. 19
Q Ian Lipkin? 20
A Yes. 21
Q Andrew Rambaut? 22
A Again, part of a larger group but not specifically. 23
Q Christian Drosten? 24
A Part of a larger group. 25
28
Q Were both of those part of the February 1st -- the conference call with the -- 1
A To my recollection, they both were. I'm not 100 percent sure, but the names 2
on the list sound familiar. 3
Q Is that the reasoning for the "yes", that that conference call, not any other 4
conversations? 5
A No. There were no other communications with him. 6
Q All right. 7
Mr. Schertler. And just to be clear for the record, we're talking about this 8
February 1st, 2020 conference call? 9
Mr. Benzine. Yes, sir. 10
BY MR. BENZINE: 11
Q Ron Fouchier? 12
A Part of the conference call. 13
Q Marion Koopmans? 14
A Part of the conference call. 15
Q Peter Daszak? 16
A I don't recall conversations about that. 17
Mr. Schertler. With him? 18
Dr. Fauci. With him. I don't recall a specific conversation with him about that. 19
BY MR. BENZINE: 20
Q Michael Worobey? 21
A Again, I'm not sure he was on the call, but the answer is, I don't recall any 22
specific conversation. 23
Q Jonathan Pekar? 24
A I don't recall specific conversations with him. 25
29
Q James LeDuc? 1
A Origins, Wuhan -- I don't recall a specific conversation, but I did talk to James 2
LeDuc about China, because apparently -- yeah, I did talk to him about China, but I don't 3
recall the substance of the conversation. 4
Q Do you recall about the timing? 5
A I don't. 6
Q Shi Zhengli? 7
A I don't recall any conversations with her. 8
Q George Gao? 9
A I know I spoke to George. I'm not sure if it was -- when it was. If it was after 10
the pandemic, I might have spoken to him about that, but I don't recall specifically. But I 11
have spoken to George Gao. 12
Q Ralph Baric? 13
A I don't recall speaking to Ralph about that. 14
Q I'm going to flip back to a couple and just see if -- I'll start at the top. And 15
just, again, the extent that you can recall content, give us a little bit more substance here. 16
Mr. Cooke. And, again, I'm just going to note that, to the extent you're asking 17
about details of conversations related to internal deliberations in the executive branch, 18
we're not going to be able to answer that here. 19
Mr. Benzine. But not just conversations generally. It has to lead to a decision, 20
correct? 21
Mr. Cooke. I mean, I don't know what type of question you're going to ask, but I 22
presume that if you're asking about his conversations related to some of these topics, 23
that you're ultimately interested in the deliberations. So, again, we wouldn't be able to 24
get into that here. 25
30
Mr. Benzine. All right. 1
Generally, what were the content of the conversations with Dr. Kadlec? 2
Mr. Cooke. And, again, you're asking just for general topics? 3
Mr. Benzine. Or what he can recall about the conversations. 4
Dr. Fauci. You know, I don't recall the specifics of the conversations, but -- I really 5
don't recall the specific of the conversation about those three topics, but Bob was the 6
assistant secretary for preparedness and response, and we were on the phone a lot back 7
and forth with the Department. So that certainly could have come up, but I don't 8
specifically -- 9
Mr. Benzine. Dr. Birx? 10
Mr. Barstow. I'm going to step in there. 11
Mr. Benzine. On what grounds? 12
Mr. Barstow. There are executive branch confidentiality interests in those 13
conversations. 14
Mr. Benzine. On these three -- on everything about these three topics? 15
Mr. Barstow. Do you have a more specific question? 16
BY MR. BENZINE: 17
Q What were the general conversations you had with Dr. Birx regarding the 18
origins of COVID, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or EcoHealth Alliance? 19
A You know, I don't recall having specific conversations about those three 20
things, but Dr. Birx was the coordinator of the COVID response team, and it is certainly 21
conceivable that that topic came up, but I don't remember a specific conversation I had 22
with Dr. Birx about that. 23
Q Thank you. 24
Generally, again, if you recall the content of the conversations with Dr. Collins? 25
31
A Well, I talk to Dr. Collins all the time, so I'm not -- 1
Q Well, we'll save him for later with more specific exhibits. 2
A Yeah. 3
Q And we'll save some of these others too. 4
Do you recall the conversations you had with Dr. Lipkin? 5
A Again, I have to be perfectly honest. I know I speak to Ian Lipkin 6
intermittently. He's an old friend. That subject may have come up, but if you were to ask 7
me, can I give you the content of the conversation, I can't. I don't recall. 8
Q All right. Thank you. 9
All right. We'll move on. And, again, just generally, to the best of your 10
recollection, kind of outside the specific people that we mentioned, do you recall any 11
conversations with anyone affiliated with Fort Detrick? 12
A I don't recall any specific conversations. 13
Q What about -- 14
A By the way, I'd have to add, like, who? 15
Q No, I know. 16
A I wouldn't know if they were from Fort Detrick. 17
Q I don't know who works at Fort Detrick either -- 18
A Yeah. 19
Q -- so, like, I just didn't know if you knew. 20
What about any conversations with anyone affiliated with the State Department? 21
A The State Department? You know, I'm trying -- again, I'm trying to -- 22
Mr. Schertler. We're still talking about the same three topics? 23
Mr. Benzine. Yes, sir. 24
Mr. Schertler. Okay. 25
32
Dr. Fauci. I don't recall specifically talking to anybody. The answer is that there 1
was a State Department person on the Coronavirus Task Force in the Trump 2
administration. I don't recall conversations that I specifically had with that person about 3
the three topics you're talking about. 4
BY MR. BENZINE: 5
Q Who was that person? 6
A Steve Biegun. Biegun. Biegun, I think it is. The first name is Steve, I believe. 7
Q What about any conversations with anyone affiliated with the Federal 8
Bureau of Investigation? 9
A You know, I don't recall FBI. There were a lot of security people that often 10
would come in and out and talk. I don't know if there was a specific FBI person. There 11
could have been, but I don't recall. 12
Q Do you recall any communications with anyone affiliated with the Central 13
Intelligence Agency? 14
A Yes. I was briefed once or twice in a secure facility at the NIH, and I believe 15
in the -- yes. The answer is yes to your question. 16
Q You said once or twice at the NIH, and then you were about to say 17
something else. At Langley as well? 18
A No, no. 19
Q No? 20
A No. The only thing I can recall is that there were two instances of briefing 21
with the CIA, possibly more. One was in the NIH SCIF and one was in the -- one of the 22
situation rooms in the White House. 23
Q Do you recall about the dates? Was it 2020 or 2021? 24
A I cannot recall. 25
33
Q All right. What about any communications with anyone affiliated with the 1
Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Center for Medical Intelligence? 2
A I can't recall, but I wouldn't know -- I don't distinguish these -- 3
Q Okay. 4
A -- security people. So it could have been -- 5
Q That's fair. There's a lot of three -letter agencies out there. 6
A Yes. Right. 7
Q We talked about a few, but do you recall any conversations with anyone 8
affiliated with the Department of Energy? 9
A I don't recall. 10
Q Vanity Fair reported recently that, in mid -2019, then -Deputy Secretary Dan 11
Brouillette alerted one of your top advisors that the coronavirus work funded at the 12
Wuhan Institute of Virology risked being misappropriated for military purposes. Do you 13
recall receiving that warning? 14
A I don't recall receiving that warning at the time. That has been brought up 15
subsequent, but -- in newspapers. 16
Q In newspapers? 17
A But I have not -- I certainly don't recall receiving any communications 18
from -- I can't even pronounce his name. 19
Q It's either Brouillette or Brouillette. I don't know if it's a double L. 20
A I don't recall specifically then, but it's been brought to my attention since. 21
Q Since the Vanity Fair reporting or before that? 22
A I think the Vanity Fair reporting was a big surprise to me when I heard it. 23
Q Okay. I'm going to keep walking through, and, again, if it's just the Vanity 24
Fair reporting, please let us know. 25
34
They also reported that, in October of 2020, he was then -Secretary Brouillette, 1
contacted you and told you that the Department of Energy scientists had evidence 2
suggesting that COVID -19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Do you have any 3
recollection of that? 4
A Contacted me? 5
Q Yes. 6
A Personally? I do not recall that at all. 7
Q They also reported that the Secretary offered Department of Energy national 8
laboratory resources and computing capacity to the NIH. Do you have any recollection of 9
that? 10
A I don't recall that. 11
Q Do you recall if NIAID ended up partnering or working with any of the 12
national labs during the pandemic? 13
A I don't recall. 14
Q Throughout the course of the pandemic -- I'm going to ask you a few entities, 15
and I know one of them -- we're going to exclude family members in this. If you had any 16
communications with anyone that worked -- like, is employed at these entities that is not 17
a member of your family. 18
Twitter? 19
A Employees of Twitter? No. 20
Q Yes, sir. 21
A No. 22
Q Facebook? 23
A Is Facebook Mark Zuckerberg? 24
Q Yes. 25
35
A Yes. So the answer is yes. I did some podcasts with Mark. 1
Q Instagram is also Mark Zuckerberg, but anyone else at Facebook or 2
Instagram? 3
A No, not to my knowledge. 4
Q What about -- 5
A The reason I say that is because I did interviews on Instagram, but I didn't 6
know if they were people who used Instagram or they were Instagram employees. 7
Q They were probably not Instagram employees. 8
A I don't know much about social media, so you have got to help me with that. 9
Q Yes. 10
Mr. Barstow. Sorry. Are we still talking about the three topics? 11
Mr. Benzine. Yes. 12
Any communications with anyone at YouTube? 13
Dr. Fauci. Not to my knowledge. I don't recall. 14
Mr. Benzine. Do you recall any conversations with anyone at -- within the Federal 15
Government regarding providing information to any social media platforms? 16
Mr. Cooke. On those three topics? 17
Mr. Benzine. On those three topics. 18
Dr. Fauci. On those three topics? 19
BY MR. BENZINE: 20
Q Yes. 21
A No. 22
Q No. 23
A few more baseline questions. The select subcommittee originally invited you to 24
testify back in February. We worked to then make these dates happen. 25
36
Outside of your counsel, Department counsel, and White House counsel, have you 1
had any conversations with anyone regarding this interview? 2
A Well, it's been in the newspapers, and people have called me up and said 3
good luck. 4
Q Okay. 5
A So, I mean -- but I haven't done anything more than that. 6
Q Have you had any conversations with Dr. Andersen about this interview? 7
A With Kristian? No. 8
Q Okay. What about Dr. Farrar? 9
A No. 10
Q Throughout the pandemic, did you ever have any off -the-record 11
conversations with anyone in the press? 12
Mr. Schertler. Mitch, just to -- so throughout the pandemic, you know, just 13
generally assume the timeframe from January of 2020 -- 14
Mr. Benzine. January until retirement. 15
Mr. Schertler. -- through the retirement in December of 2022? 16
Mr. Benzine. Uh-huh. 17
Mr. Cooke. And are we still referring to the same three topics? 18
Mr. Benzine. Yes, same three topics. 19
Mr. Cooke. So off -the-record conversations with the press regarding those same 20
three topics? 21
Mr. Benzine. Yes. 22
Dr. Fauci. You know, I can't recall off the record, on the record. I mean, obviously, 23
I've been on a lot of interviews with people directly asking me questions and make 24
accusations and all those sorts of things, but I can't separate the two -- 25
37
BY MR. BENZINE: 1
Q Okay. 2
A -- because the press is one big glob to me. So I'd say it's possible, but I don't 3
specifically recall. 4
Q Do you remember any times you had a conversation that wasn't approved 5
by HHS or the White House with the press on these three topics? 6
A All of my press things get cleared through the appropriate press people. 7
Q Thank you. 8
I want to introduce majority exhibit 4. 9
That one's got a bad staple. I'll use that one. 10
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 4 11
was marked for identification.] 12
Mr. Schertler. This looks like it's a little lengthy. 13
Mr. Benzine. Yes. I'm only going to ask about one particular section, though. 14
Mr. Schertler. Okay. Then I would like just to have -- 15
Mr. Benzine. He can flip through. While I identify it, if you would like to flip 16
through. 17
Dr. Fauci. Yeah, what is it? 18
Mr. Benzine. It is an email conversation from a number of individuals: Dr. 19
Holmes, Dr. Goldstein, Jason Gale, who's a reporter, Dr. David Morens in NIAID, Dr. Garry. 20
And for the record, it is Bates marked GARRY, G -A-R-R-Y, 1346 through 1352. The 21
email that I want to draw your attention to is on page 1347. 22
Dr. Fauci. Actually, I'm a little confused because this is a long email. I want to 23
make sure I get it in context. So let me -- sorry, but -- 24
Mr. Benzine. No, no problem. 25
38
Mr. Schertler. And, Mitch, just like most emails, it looks like the beginning -- 1
Mr. Benzine. The beginning is at the end and then it works its way up. 2
Dr. Fauci. So I want to make sure. So the thing that says, "Jason Gale, 27 July, 3
04:03," that's the first one? 4
BY MR. BENZINE: 5
Q Yes, sir. 6
A Okay. So -- 7
Q If it makes it easier, I won't necessarily be asking about the content of Mr. 8
Gale's email. 9
A I know. I'm a little confused about this email anyway, but let me read it at 10
least. 11
Who's Jason Gale? Is he -- 12
Q He's a Bloomberg reporter in Australia. 13
A Okay. I'm coming to the end of this. Hold on. 14
39
[10:59 a.m.] 1
Dr. Fauci. Okay. So that's Jason Gale to Buesching and Newman. Who are they? 2
Okay. 3
BY MR. BENZINE: 4
Q And on 1348, Mr. Gale appears to forward it to -- 5
A Right. 6
Q -- Dr. Morens and Dr. Garry, Dr. Holmes. 7
A Hold on a second. 8
Okay, that's that. And then -- okay. 9
Q So the email I want to ask about is from Dr. Morens on page 1347. 10
A Okay. He -- so I want to make sure I'm not missing something. So Jason sent 11
it to David and says, "Ahhh. This makes more sense! By the way, I'm making some 12
progress" -- 13
. And, Mitch, just so I know, does the hour include the preamble? 14
Mr. Benzine. No. 15
It does not. 16
Dr. Fauci. Okay. Yes? 17
BY MR. BENZINE: 18
Q Okay. I'm going to ask you about some specific lines in this email. 19
Starting off, Dr. Morens writes, "I can almost always talk on background or off the 20
record, and if needed I MIGHT be able to speak ON the record. In the US government we 21
all have to get approval from HHS or the Whitehouse to speak to the press." 22
Do you recall what NIAID's press policy was when you were the Director? Could 23
NIAID employees speak off the record to the press without approval? 24
A NIAID employees had to let the press office know and get approval. 25
40
You know, it really depends on -- it's a question with a complicated answer 1
because there are various levels. If the press is somebody asking you a factual question 2
about, by the way, what -- you know, what kind of mosquito transmits malaria, that's 3
something that's less needing approval than, do you want to go on "Meet the Press" on 4
Sunday? So there are really various -- various levels. 5
Q Okay. So it wouldn't necessarily, on its face, be a violation of a press policy 6
for someone to speak -- 7
A No. 8
Q -- off the record with a reporter? 9
A No. Again, it depends on what the issue is. If it's an issue that's a 10
factual -- and I gave an example. It may sound facetious, but it's actually a good example. 11
Calling up the subject -matter expert and say, you know, dengue in South America, what 12
do you know about that? That kind of thing. I don't think the press -- but if they're 13
talking about something that relates to policy or that has implications for the institute, 14
that requires approval. 15
Q Okay. 16
Finishing out that top paragraph, Dr. Morens writes, "Sometimes they are touchy 17
about certain issues" -- "they" referring to the HHS and the White House -- "and say no. 18
For many months, I have not been approved to talk about 'origins' on the record." 19
Do you recall -- this is July 2021. Do you recall whether or not there was a limit on 20
NIAID employees talking about origins on the record at that time? 21
A It depends on who the employee was. I don't think you could say all 22
employees. 23
The press office wants to make sure qualified people speak about things, because 24
sometimes press would call an inexperienced person and the person will say something 25
41
that winds up being not actually true or -- not that they're lying, but that doesn't really 1
reflect what's going on. So they're careful about that. 2
I don't know what he means about that, so you'd have to ask him -- 3
Q Okay. 4
A -- because I don't know what he meant by that. 5
Q Going to the next paragraph down, "... to my total surprise, my boss 6
Tony" -- I believe he's referring to you -- "actually ASKED me to speak to the National 7
Geographic on the record about origins. I interpret this to mean that our government is 8
lightening up but that Tony doesn't want his fingerprints on origin stories." 9
Did you have any conversations with Dr. Morens about what he could or could not 10
discuss regarding origins? 11
A No. I never tell somebody what they could or could not discuss, because 12
that's a press office thing. 13
Q He said that he interpreted your asking him to discuss origins as you didn't 14
want your fingerprints on origin stories. Any idea what that meant? 15
A I have no idea what he's talking about. Yeah. 16
Q Okay. 17
The eventual National Geographic story that Dr. Morens is quoted in, he said, 18
"There is a progenitor virus out there somewhere, and we should look for it. But at some 19
point, it crosses over from doing due diligence to wasting time and being crazy. We may 20
have seen that point already." 21
About a month after that story came out, the Office of the Director of National 22
Intelligence released their declassified origins analysis that stated, "All agencies assess 23
that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a 24
laboratory -associated incident." 25
42
Do you agree with Dr. Morens's characterization that, at that time, investigating 1
the origins was "wasting time and being crazy"? 2
Mr. Schertler. So -- and I know -- I'm sorry, that was a bit of a complicated 3
question. So you're really just asking -- you're quoting something that Morens said from a 4
National Geographic article, correct? 5
Mr. Benzine. Yes, sir. 6
Mr. Schertler. And then basically asking Dr. Fauci if he agrees with that? 7
Mr. Benzine. Yeah. 8
Mr. Schertler. I apologize. Would you just mind repeating the quote -- 9
Dr. Fauci. What's your -- 10
Mr. Schertler. -- from the National Geographic? 11
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. 12
BY MR. BENZINE: 13
Q The quote was, "There is a progenitor virus out there somewhere, and we 14
should look for it. But at some point, it crosses over from doing due diligence to wasting 15
time and being crazy. We may have seen that point already." 16
I am interpreting this, and I think a reasonable person would, as that by July 21st it 17
is now wasting time and being crazy, searching for the origins. And, I guess, do you 18
agree? 19
A I would disagree with that in the context of what I have repetitively said: 20
that we don't know precisely what the origin is, and we have to keep an open mind. And 21
I've said that many, many, many times. 22
So, with that as my statement -- 23
Q Uh-huh. 24
A -- that would disagree with what he's saying -- 25
43
Q Okay. 1
A -- that it's a waste of time. 2
Q Yeah. Thank you. 3
We are pretty close to our hour and at a good stopping point, so we can go off 4
the record. 5
[Recess.] 6
We can go back on the record. 7
Dr. Fauci, my name is I'm chief minority counsel for the select 8
subcommittee. Thank you for coming in today. We appreciate it. 9
Dr. Fauci. Thank you. 10
EXAMINATION 11
BY 12
Q I'd like to ask a few questions, organized by topics. And perhaps if we could 13
start with the broad topic of gain -of-function research and specifically in the context of 14
the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 15
There was and still is a NIAID grant to an organization called EcoHealth Alliance. It 16
was to study bat coronaviruses. That grant originally included a sub -award to the Wuhan 17
Institute of Virology. 18
Are you generally familiar with that grant? 19
A I'm familiar now, after all this, with the sub -award to the Wuhan Institute of 20
Virology from EcoHealth, yes. 21
Q Great. 22
There was certain lab work done in the Wuhan Institute -- I will just call it "WIV" -- 23
A WIV. 24
Q -- to shorten things -- that has been the subject of significant scrutiny and 25
44
attention. And a lot of that attention has focused on the question of whether or not that 1
work was, quote, "gain -of-function research." 2
And there's been significant attention but, I think, also confusion about that term 3
as a term of art and what exactly it means. And I think that a fair amount of that 4
confusion has been caused by the fact that we have heard people use the same term, the 5
same three words, to mean completely different things at different times with different 6
definitions. 7
And so I'd like you to help me untangle some of that, if you wouldn't mind. 8
I will lay out that we have heard that phrase, "gain -of-function," used in at least 9
three different ways, different definitions. 10
Firstly, we have heard I think what I would call a layman's definition. It's basically 11
just a literal usage. Has something been modified in a way that there has been a gain in 12
function? And some people seem to include the idea of a loss of function or a change in 13
function. But, regardless, this seems to be a very casual, sort of literal approach to the 14
question. 15
Are you generally familiar with that usage of the phrase? 16
A I am familiar with that. And I'm also familiar with the confusion that that 17
causes when you apply it to a specific set of experiments. 18
Q Great. 19
So, getting more specific from there, a second usage of the term that we have 20
heard is "gain -of-function" but specifically in the context of the 2014 Federal 21
gain -of-function moratorium. And this now includes specific limitations; it's just 22
particular viruses. It's a forward -looking test. 23
Are you generally familiar with that usage of the term? 24
A Yes, I am. 25
45
Q Great. 1
And then, thirdly, we have heard people use the phrase "gain -of-function" in the 2
context of the 2017 HHS P3CO framework, which replaced the 2014 moratorium, and that 3
now involves an even more specific set of definitions: potential pandemic pathogen, 4
which is a multipart definition, and all sorts of carve -outs. 5
Are you generally familiar with that usage of the term? 6
A Yes, I am. 7
Q Great. 8
So I'd like to talk in a little bit of detail about each of those three definitions, the 9
ways in which they are either similar or different and may be more or less useful from 10
each other -- 11
A Right. 12
Q -- starting with that layman's definition. 13
So I will introduce an exhibit that I think is a good example of that as minority 14
exhibit A. 15
[Fauci Minority Exhibit A 16
was marked for identification.] 17
BY : 18
Q And I'll give you some time to look that over so you're familiar with what 19
we're looking at. My focus will be on the first page, but, please, take your time to look at 20
the document. 21
A Okay. 22
Q All right. So, for starters, I don't know exactly what this is. I don't know if 23
you do. It looks like maybe it's some kind of informational toolkit or something of that 24
nature. 25
46
A Right. 1
Q Let's do this: If I direct your attention down on the first page under the 2
header "Gain -of-Function Research," I'll read out loud what seems to pretty closely track 3
the idea of a layman's definition. 4
"The term gain -of-function research describes a type of research that modifies a 5
biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent." It also says 6
that, "Some scientists use the term broadly to refer to any such modification." 7
I'll stop there. That feels like a relatively broad definition. 8
A Correct. 9
Q We read recently that there was some work done last year that genetically 10
modified bacteria so that they could detect tumors. 11
A Right. 12
Q That's great. 13
A Right. 14
Q It seems -- but, please, you tell me -- that that would also fit this definition. 15
Is that right? 16
A That is correct, as well as making an influenza vaccine. Yeah. 17
Q To the extent that you recall, maybe because of its breadth, did this 18
definition, in your time as Director, have any formal, regulatory significance? This is not a 19
policy -- 20
A No. 21
Q -- or regulation -- 22
A No. 23
Q -- that we're looking at? 24
A No. It's a broader definition. It did not. 25
47
Q Just on the idea of "new or enhanced activity," because it has helped me to 1
hear some examples, putting aside the "biological agent" concept, but agriculture 2
community messes around with strawberries to make them taste better. That is a new or 3
enhanced activity on the part of the strawberry? Is that fair? 4
A Right. 5
Q When you talk about this issue, this broader issue of gain -of-function and 6
Wuhan Institute of Virology, publicly -- for example, the high -profile exchange with 7
Senator Rand Paul -- 8
A Right. 9
Q -- and if you say that NIH, quote, "has not ever and does not now fund 10
gain -of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology," is this layman's definition 11
the definition that you are talking about in those occasions? 12
A No. 13
Q Great. What would you be talking about in those situations? 14
A What I was referring to when Senator Paul asked me and I repeated multiple 15
times that we were not doing gain -of-function research, no -- I said that the NIH 16
sub-award to the Wuhan Institute was not to do gain -of-function research. I was 17
referring specifically to the operative definition of "gain -of-function" at the time, which is 18
the P3CO framework. 19
And the P3CO framework is a policy and a framework that came out of a policy 20
guidance from 3 years of discussions led by OSTP, the National Academies of Sciences, 21
and multiple scientific working groups that came out with a very precise definition. 22
And the precise definition was: any experiment that is reasonably anticipated to 23
result in the enhancement of a -- and by "enhancement," it is meant an increase in the 24
transmissibility and/or the pathogenesis of a PPP. And what a PPP is is a potential 25
48
pandemic pathogen. So if you enhance it, it's referred to as "ePPP." 1
So then you ask the question, what is a PPP? And by the regulatory definition, it is 2
the following: It is a pathogen that is likely to be highly transmissible and spread widely in 3
a population and a pathogen that likely will cause a high degree of morbidity and 4
mortality in humans. 5
So, when I was asked the question, did the grant that was a sub -award to Wuhan 6
fund experiments that were enhanced PPP, that is what I was referring to when I said we 7
do not fund gain -of-function -- gain -of-function according to the strict definition, which I 8
refer to as the operative definition of "gain -of-function." 9
So, when someone asks me, as a scientist, are you doing gain -of-function, is that 10
gain -of-function, I always apply it to the operative definition of "gain -of-function." 11
Q That is very helpful. Thank you for drawing that distinction. 12
And at the time of that exchange, it was the P3CO framework. There was also a 13
time, I think from 2014 to 2017, when the gain -of-function moratorium was the operative 14
policy. 15
A Right. 16
Q So a similar analysis, I assume, would've been the case for that -- 17
A Right. 18
Q -- period of time. 19
A Yes. 20
Q So I think it might make sense to look in more detail at both of those sets of 21
definitions. You may end up repeating yourself a little bit. 22
A Right. 23
Q I think it's helpful for folks like me. 24
So I will introduce as minority exhibit B the 2014 moratorium. 25
49
[Fauci Minority Exhibit B 1
was marked for identification.] 2
BY 3
Q And although I imagine you are familiar with it, you're welcome to take a 4
glance at it and refamiliarize yourself with it. 5
A I'm pretty familiar with it. 6
Q I imagine you are. 7
A Yeah. 8
Q All right. So I think what I might do -- the operative language is on the 9
second page of the paper, the first page of full text, in italics in the middle of that page. 10
I'm just going to read that single paragraph out loud so that we're all working off of the 11
same thing. 12
"New USG" -- the U.S. Government -- "funding will not be released for 13
gain -of-function research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes 14
to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced 15
pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route. The research 16
funding pause would not apply to characterization or testing of naturally occurring 17
influenza, MERS, and SARS viruses, unless the tests are reasonably anticipated to increase 18
transmissibility and/or pathogenicity." 19
That's the end of the policy. 20
So my first question: Am I right that this was, for the time that it was in effect, a 21
formal and binding policy? 22
A Correct. 23
Q Great. Can you talk maybe just a little bit for us about what this policy is, 24
how it came to be, and what its purpose was? 25
50
A Well, the reason is that this followed the pause, which was the event that 1
caused people to take a good, serious look at gain -of-function that might be of concern, 2
that could be dangerous. So a policy was put forth that the viruses that were of concern 3
were threefold. They wanted to narrow it down so that you wouldn't get confused about 4
a broader. 5
So the policy at the time, as you correctly articulated, is any project, research 6
projects and experiments, that might be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to 7
three very specific pathogens -- influenza, MERS, and SARS -- such that that experiment 8
would have enhanced the pathogenicity or transmissibility in mammals via the 9
respiratory route. 10
So it was a restrictive regulatory description of what gain -of-function research of 11
concern would be, and it was restricted to three separate pathogens. 12
Q Out of curiosity, why those three in particular? Was there some particular 13
concern about those? 14
A Well, this was at a time when we were post the H5N1 concern about bird flu 15
that might evolve from an animal, predominant zoonotic in a chicken, to a human with a 16
higher degree of transmissibility, of pathogenesis. 17
Turn the clock back to the original discussions that were going on -- and still to this 18
day, actually -- about bird viruses, predominantly chickens, influenza viruses, that rarely 19
jump species but when they did they had a high degree of morbidity and mortality. And 20
the concern was that they would be more transmissible -- hence the word "reasonably 21
anticipated" to confer increased transmissibility or pathogenesis. 22
The next was that we had MERS in 2012 and SARS -- the SARS -1 in 2002 and 2003. 23
So those were the major concern of people doing experiments that have a reasonable 24
assumption to increase transmissibility and/or pathogenesis in mammals by the 25
51
respiratory route. 1
Q That's very helpful. Thank you. 2
And an additional aspect of the policy -- it's a nuance, but I think it gets lost 3
sometimes -- is that it seems to be a forward -looking policy. In other words, the moment 4
of decision -making -- 5
A Right. 6
Q -- occurs before -- 7
A Right. 8
Q -- the experiment has occurred. Is that correct? 9
A Exactly. 10
And the reason for that was, back when we didn't have these kinds of official 11
regulatory restrictions, the thing that triggered all of this, the H5N1 influenza ferret 12
studies, was only really brought to everyone's attention after the experiments were done 13
and the data was submitted to a scientific journal. 14
And that was a great concern, that we don't want that to happen again. So you've 15
got to essentially regulate before the fact, as opposed to make a harried decision after 16
the fact. 17
Q And so that also means that, when we think specifically about whether 18
particular research is or is not implicated by this policy, it's not as simple as looking at a 19
figure after the research has already happened -- 20
A No. 21
Q -- and measuring that. It's about putting yourself back into the shoes of the 22
decision -- 23
A Right. 24
Q -- before the research occurred. 25
52
A Right. In other words, the scope of research -- the scope of the research 1
project. 2
Q And I would imagine that that type of analysis would have to ask oneself 3
questions about, okay, what type of virus is this? Does it even come under the pause in 4
the first place? Is it novel? What do we know about it? How would we expect it to 5
behave in these proposed experiments? 6
Those would all be part of that decision -making process, right? 7
A Correct. 8
Q And, as we understand it, there was a system at NIAID for doing all of that. 9
There was a committee, at least in the DMID division -- 10
A Right, Division of Microbiology and Infectious Disease. 11
Q So, in that division, there was a gain -of-function and dual -use research of 12
concern committee -- 13
A Correct. 14
Q -- whose job it would be, it sounds like, to ask and answer all those types of 15
questions. 16
A Correct. 17
Q And we've heard a little bit about how that process would typically work. 18
And it sounds like -- I'm generalizing -- that, typically, a program officer would sort of flag 19
a question and maybe have a conversation with the grantee, have a discussion, ask for 20
some information, take that information back to the committee that we just described, 21
and then they would all sit together and make a decision on the moratorium question. 22
Is that basically your understanding as well? 23
A Yes, that's my understanding. 24
Q And specifically in the context of this EcoHealth grant, which is what we've 25
53
spent most of our time on, our understanding is that that is basically how that process 1
unfolded. 2
Is that your basic understanding, that that process happened -- 3
A Yes. 4
Q -- with respect to this grant? 5
A That is my basic understanding. 6
Q That was in the summer of 2016. Were you on that gain -of-function 7
committee that took a look at that question? 8
A No. 9
Q Were you the program officer on the grant? 10
A No. 11
Q Were you involved in that decision at that time, now 8 years ago, in any 12
way? 13
A No. 14
Q Just because it can help us to see what the org chart looks like, 15
approximately how many reporting levels, in the context of NIAID, would exist between 16
the folks who were making that decision and yourself, in your regular duties as Director? 17
A Multiple -- 18
Q Would you be anywhere near it? 19
A I wasn't even close to it. It was multiple layers, up through the chain of the 20
division and then to the Deputy Director. So I was not involved in that in any way. 21
Q So, for you, as Director, when folks come and ask, okay, well, was there or 22
was there not research that should or shouldn't have happened under that 2014 23
moratorium, how do you go about answering that question? 24
I would think it would basically be as simple as saying: Well, we have a 25
54
committee. Did the committee look at it? If so, what did they look at and what did they 1
find? 2
Is that basically what your process would be? 3
A Exactly. 4
Q Okay. 5
And, in this case, as we understand it, a program officer did flag the question, the 6
committee did look at it, and they decided that that answer was no. 7
Is that also your understanding? 8
A Yes, it is. 9
Q And I imagine -- you tell me -- that you might do some kind of spot -check. In 10
other words, you might say, "Hey, just walk me through the way that you guys 11
approached it." But I would not think that you would be starting over from scratch. You 12
would certainly have some degree of understanding that your folks, as subject -matter 13
experts, did things as they're supposed to do them. 14
A Right. 15
Q This is a little bit more of a comment than a question, but I will say that I 16
think we do think that it's fair for us now to be thoughtful about how the committee did 17
go about approaching that question. 18
And we have done that in, I'll say, almost excruciating detail with the program 19
officer. We've sat with that individual as well as with the grantee. We've talked about 20
the extent to which they were using this particular virus as a comparator for purposes of 21
increase or decrease, whether that was the right one. 22
We've heard explanations about, hey, wild -type SARS doesn't actually cause 23
disease in mice, so if we're talking about a mice experiment, there has to be some sort of 24
mouse -adapted -- 25
55
A Right. 1
Q -- strain. We discussed the extent to which that's apples -to-apples or not. 2
My only point is, I don't think that there's a need to go back over all of that with 3
you, but I do think those are important questions -- 4
A Right. 5
Q -- which we've done with the right folks. 6
A Right. 7
Q I think it would make sense maybe to look at the third definition, which is 8
the P3CO framework. So I will introduce that as minority exhibit C. 9
[Fauci Minority Exhibit C 10
was marked for identification.] 11
BY 12
Q And you described this in some detail, but, again, take your time to look back 13
over it. 14
A Okay. 15
Q Great. So this is probably the most complicated set of definitions that we 16
have seen yet. 17
A Yes. 18
Q I think what I will do is read not the whole thing but a core, key part of it, 19
which is on the second page, parts A and B, which you were alluding to earlier. I'll read 20
those out loud. 21
In part A, it says, "A potential pandemic pathogen (PPP) is a pathogen that 22
satisfies both of the following: 1. It is likely highly transmissible and likely capable of 23
wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations; and 2. It is likely highly virulent 24
and likely to cause significant morbidity and/or mortality in humans." 25
56
And then B, "An enhanced PPP is defined as a PPP resulting from the 1
enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen. Enhanced PPPs do 2
not include naturally occurring pathogens that are circulating in or have been recovered 3
from nature, regardless of their pandemic potential." 4
I'll stop there. 5
Could -- you did already a little bit, but if you wouldn't mind again just describing a 6
little bit about how this framework came to be, how it's interrelated with the moratorium 7
that we just looked at, and how it differs. This seems like an awfully high bar that is being 8
set. "Wide and uncontrollable spread," that's sort of a dramatic phrase. 9
So could you just talk a little bit about your view of this? 10
A Yeah. Well, what happened is that, as you mentioned in the description 11
of the second of the three definitions, namely the one that is the pause definition, an 12
integral part of that was an interim regulatory process that would lead to something that 13
would ultimately be more definitive and more specific. 14
So that's how we evolved from the pause, which was then stopped, to then have 15
all the experiments fall under this regulatory approach. 16
Q And am I right that one difference between this and the moratorium, the 17
moratorium was a pause? 18
A Right. 19
Q Work under that simply would not occur during the pause? 20
A Right. 21
Q And this, there's been established a framework -- 22
A Right. 23
Q -- to further review work that meets these definitions. Is that right? 24
A Right. In fact, an important point: HHS will periodically reevaluate and 25
57
modify this review process, as necessary, to reflect scientific advances, et cetera. 1
Q We've heard a little bit elsewhere about the system for sending projects to 2
P3CO review. In other words, in order for that further review to occur, there has to be a 3
decision to refer it. 4
A Right. 5
Q And it seems to be a multistep process that maybe involves some peer 6
reviewers and a program officer all discussing amongst themselves. 7
Is that generally -- I know I'm generalizing, but is that your general understanding 8
of how that -- 9
A Yes. 10
Q -- process works? 11
A That is the general understanding of how the process works. 12
Q And we understand that specifically with respect to this EcoHealth grant that 13
that process occurred. In other words, there was a conversation amongst the program 14
officer and other people that that person deemed appropriate about whether or not this 15
work should be referred for further review under the P3CO framework. And our 16
understanding is that the answer to that question at that level was no. 17
Is that also your understanding? 18
A That is correct. 19
Q We have, I think, significantly less paper on that decision. My assumption is 20
that's because that was not quite as difficult of a decision. In other words, "likely capable 21
of wide and uncontrollable spread in humans" seems like a relatively high bar that that 22
work would have to meet. 23
Is that generally fair? 24
A Yes. 25
58
Q Okay. 1
And would your analysis -- if you're asked, well, was any particular grant or the 2
EcoHealth grant, was that gain -of-function under the P3CO framework, I would assume 3
that your process for answering that question would be more or less the same as it was 4
for the moratorium, which is: We've got a committee; we've got folks. Did they look at 5
that question, and, if so, what was their answer? 6
Is that right? 7
A That is correct. 8
Q And, in this case, particularly since you helped us by explaining that in that 9
particular exchange with Senator Paul P3CO was what you were talking about, I would 10
think that that is what you were communicating. 11
A Right. I was communicating to Senator Paul when I used the word 12
"gain -of-function" my -- my definition of "gain -of-function" is the operative definition of 13
"gain -of-function," which we have just discussed now under the P3CO. 14
So, when I said to Senator Paul that we have not funded from EcoHealth with a 15
sub-award to Wuhan gain -of-function research, I was referring to the operative definition 16
under the P3CO. 17
Q And "operative," I think, is a really helpful term. That very first definition we 18
looked at off of a website pull, was that definition ever operative, that you can -- 19
A No. 20
Q -- recall, in your time as Director? 21
A No. That definition was not operative, because it includes, as you 22
mentioned, so many other things that are of benefit, such as the ones you mentioned. 23
Q Great. 24
If I could ask a quick, more global question, when it comes to EcoHealth Alliance 25
59
or Dr. Peter Daszak, there's been significant focus on him. There have been suggestions, 1
sometimes, that you and he somehow collaborated or conspired to hide something. 2
Let me just ask, what is the extent to which you knew Dr. Daszak prior to the 3
pandemic, let's say? 4
A Prior to the pandemic, I really don't recall any specific interaction with him. 5
In the course of all of these activities that were going on, someone -- I guess it was 6
in the press -- showed a picture of me with Dr. Daszak. I take probably thousands of 7
pictures with people at scientific meetings. 8
So the picture shows I've met him. If you ask me, do I have a relationship of 9
back -and-forth discussions with him, the answer to that would be "no." 10
Q Would that relationship, as you just described it, be pretty similar to other 11
well-known folks in their respective fields who have grants with the agency? 12
A I would say less so. And the reason I say "less so" is that there are people 13
who are grantees who are in an area of research that I am very familiar with and that I'm 14
involved with. 15
For example, my relationship with many people in the field of HIV/AIDS research is 16
something in which I talk to them all the time. Sometimes I collaborate with them on 17
research. I see them at the scientific meetings that I go to. 18
That is not the relationship I had with Dr. Daszak. 19
Q That's helpful. 20
Also, you touched on it, but you may want to expand on the idea that, under the 21
umbrella of NIAID, I mean, there are all sorts of grants on all sorts of different branches of 22
subject matter. You have this intimate relationship with HIV, professionally. How would 23
you describe your, sort of, links to the coronavirus field prior to, of course, the pandemic? 24
A Very little. 25
60
In the division of microbiology and infectious diseases, I would have much more 1
interaction with things like malaria and tuberculosis and things like that. 2
Coronaviruses, except for a brief period of time during that very small window in 3
2002 -2003 with coronavirus, I am not integrated, as it were, into the coronavirus field of 4
researchers. I know them now. Obviously, there's a lot of discussion about them. But we 5
have thousands of grants and grantees, and on each grant there may be many 6
investigators. So we have a lot of people coming by, talking to me, meeting me at 7
meetings. 8
Q And that's helpful. 9
What is the extent to which you were familiar with not necessarily Dr. Daszak as a 10
person but this particular grant prior to all the scrutiny? 11
A Yeah. I do not recall any familiarity with this grant prior to the outbreak. 12
Q Would you recall approximately how many grants NIAID would have at any 13
given time? 14
A A few thousand, I guess, between 2 - and 3,000. I'll have to check that. I 15
don't know what it is now; I've been out. 16
But, around that time, there were grants that are new grants -- you know, there's 17
two types of grants. There's a grant that's submitted as a new grant, and then there's the 18
continuing grants for 5 years. So, if we look at all the grants, I would say it would -- my 19
recollection -- I'm not 100 percent sure, but my recollection is somewhere, a couple - up 20
to three thousand, I think. 21
Q Okay. 22
A Yeah. 23
Q Great. 24
So I'm going to attempt to summarize what we've talked about so far. 25
61
When we think about the term "gain -of-function," there are various definitions 1
which we have heard folks elsewhere mix and match by simply using the words 2
"gain -of-function" regardless of what exactly they mean. 3
One of those definitions is more of a layman's definition that we talked about. It 4
focuses more on the literal question of whether there has been a gain of function. It's not 5
particularly useful, as we saw with the tumor -detecting bacteria example. It was not 6
operative for your purposes as Director. And I would assume that nobody at the agency 7
ever looked into that exact question for that very reason. 8
Is that all basically right? 9
A That is correct. 10
Q Great. 11
As for the more significant question of whether the work under the EcoHealth 12
grant at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fit the regulatory and operative definitions in the 13
2014 moratorium or subsequently in 2017 and P3CO, the agency did look at those 14
questions, and the answer was "no" both times. 15
Is that correct? 16
A That is correct. 17
Q And when you attempt to answer this question in public forums, such as in 18
the exchange that we described with Senator Paul, you are referring to the operative 19
regulatory definitions, not the layman's definition. Is that correct? 20
A That is correct. 21
Q And, I suppose, lastly, you were not particularly aware of or focused on 22
perhaps at all this particular grant until everyone else was too, at which point you learned 23
about it along with the rest of us. Is that basically right? 24
A That is correct. 25
62
Q Great. 1
I think at that point it's a natural pivot to my colleague , who can discuss 2
some other topics. 3
Dr. Fauci. Thank you. 4
. Thank you. 5
Before I jump in, we had a member enter the room, and I would just like 6
for her to put herself on the record. 7
Ms. Castor. Thank you. 8
I'm Kathy Castor. I represent the State of Florida. From the Energy and 9
Commerce Committee. 10
All right. Good afternoon, Dr. Fauci. It just hit noon. 11
BY 12
Q In the prior hour, you discussed a little bit of your background with the NIH 13
and your long career there. So I just want to go over a little bit about prior pandemics 14
that you were a part of the response to in your role at NIAID. So I'm just going to go 15
through a couple one by one and ask for your experience and how that informed the 16
COVID response. 17
A All right. 18
Q So the first one -- you mentioned it a little bit -- is the SARS -CoV-1, or the 19
bird flu. What was your experience working on that pandemic? 20
A The primary responsibility of the institute that I direct is to do research and 21
study, either in our own scientists or quantitatively more our grantees, anything from the 22
pathogenesis to diagnostics to the development of vaccines and therapeutics. 23
So our first role in the SARS -1 would be to start to begin to develop a vaccine to 24
see if we can actually prevent it, if it turns out to be something that got out of control, 25
63
which it did not. The other would be to understand the pathogenesis of it through our 1
grantees and perhaps develop diagnostics and therapeutics. 2
So it was fundamentally the research effort associated with that outbreak. 3
Q And did anything about the SARS -CoV-1 outbreak inform the response to the 4
recent COVID -19 pandemic? 5
A I'm not sure what you mean by informing the response, but, you know, 6
there -- well, please explain, yeah. 7
Q I just mean, were any lessons learned during the SARS -CoV-1 response that 8
were useful? 9
A Well, it wasn't a lesson learned from the response, but it was -- the research 10
done by some of our grantees and others is that it was ultimately shown that it was a 11
zoonotic that jumped from an animal reservoir, from a bat to a civet cat to a human. 12
The lesson learned is that, yet again, another pathogen that originates in an 13
animal reservoir -- it is probably not particularly appreciated that anywhere between 70 14
to sometimes 80 -- I don't think it's 80, but probably 70 to 75 percent of all the new 15
pathogens are zoonotic, in that they jump from an animal reservoir, sometimes with a 16
one-off little blip; sometimes with a slightly sustained, as we saw with the original H5N1, 17
where a few humans got it; and sometimes it explodes into an outbreak, as happened 18
with HIV, which went from a chimpanzee to a human. 19
Q And my next question was actually about the H1N1 or swine flu pandemic. If 20
you can tell us anything about NIAID's role in the response to that? 21
A Well, H5N1 is a chicken virus. And in the beginning, when we had individuals 22
that were getting infected, there was little indication of human -to-human transmissibility 23
but there were a number of species jumps, from the chicken to the human, with a high 24
degree of mortality. 25
64
So we put a 1
major effort in developing vaccines for H5N1, bird flu. And, in fact, in 2
collaboration with other elements of the Department, namely BARDA at HHS, we 3
developed a vaccine that was actually put into a Strategic National Stockpile. So that was 4
HVN2. 5
And the other one you asked about was the swine flu. 6
Q Yes. 7
A Exactly the same with the swine flu. I mean, our investigators were out 8
there determining pathogenesis, looking about the virus, how it binds, and all the kinds of 9
fundamental basic research. 10
Something not very well -appreciated, for example, is what we do versus other 11
agencies like the CDC. Our responsibility is to conduct and fund basic and clinical 12
research into the pathogenesis, diagnostic, prevention, vaccines, and treatment of 13
existing diseases and of emerging diseases. And that's what we did with virtually all of 14
the outbreaks. 15
Q And I've got a couple more on my list that you may want to lump together, 16
or not, the next being Ebola and Zika. 17
A Yeah. Same thing. In fact, it's very, very similar. 18
Very briefly, Ebola, we were involved in the development of a vaccine that our 19
team actually tested in West Africa during the West African outbreak of 2013, '14, '15. 20
We also did some studies on various therapeutic interventions, such as remdesivir and a 21
monoclonal antibody, that ultimately was used with Ebola. So that was that. 22
Very similar to Zika. When Zika came, we had our team of vaccine developers at 23
our Vaccine Research Center, which is a subgroup of the intramural program of NIAID, 24
which developed what looked like a promising vaccine for Zika. The only trouble is that, 25
65
when we were ready to test it in a phase 3 study, Zika had fell off the radar screen and 1
just stopped spreading in South America and the Caribbean. 2
But there still is work that's, you know, kind of smoldering along, waiting for the 3
next outbreak -- another example of the research and its ultimate application to 4
interventions in the form of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. 5
Q And I think you've been very clear that on multiple fronts vaccines were one 6
of the priorities. And it seems that, to me, when people are dying of a disease, it makes 7
sense that a vaccine would be a priority. Is that what the thinking is? 8
A Yeah. Well, that's the thing that we did immediately. In fact, we -- I guess 9
you're getting up to that -- with COVID. 10
So, as soon as we knew what the sequence of the virus was, we 11
immediately -- because we had been working, you know, I would say, for years on the 12
development of vaccine platforms and immunogen design, fundamentally but not 13
exclusively at our Vaccine Research Center -- we had a number of grantees throughout 14
the country, but -- we had a very high density of experts in the development of vaccine. 15
And, in fact, my team at the NIAID Vaccine Research Center, led by John Mascola 16
and Barney Graham and others, were actually the individuals that developed the 17
stabilized immunogen that has gone into virtually all of the vaccines -- Moderna, Pfizer, 18
J&J, all of them. That immunogen was developed by my team at the NIAID. 19
So our job was to develop a vaccine. We also did other things. We did the basic 20
and clinical research, sometimes -- often, actually -- in collaboration with industry, for the 21
development of Paxlovid, for the development of molnupiravir, and for the development 22
of remdesivir, and with the development of monoclonal antibodies. 23
So our job was to do the vaccine, which was highly successful, as we all know -- it 24
saved millions of lives throughout the world -- but also to develop certain of the 25
66
interventions, which were twofold: monoclonal antibodies and direct antiviral agents, 1
such as molnupiravir and remdesivir. 2
Q And I think we all thank you and your staff at NIAID for all that work on 3
vaccines that we've seen be so useful. 4
Similarly but slightly different, we know that most of your career has been focused 5
on HIV/AIDS and that epidemic. Can you please tell us about your work on that, 6
specifically related, first, to vaccine development? 7
A Yeah. 8
Again, AIDS is a very complicated disease. We did a lot of work -- I know myself, 9
personally, in my lab, worked on the pathogenic mechanisms of HIV. So we were 10
responsible -- not alone; a lot of other investigators did it; we weren't the only ones -- to 11
delineate the fundamental pathogenic mechanisms of HIV, which led to the ability to 12
design drugs that could actually treat -- and, ultimately, one of the major successes in 13
biomedical research is the combination of drugs for HIV. 14
That is what my institute did in collaboration with industry, was to develop those 15
drugs. 16
With vaccines, it has not been as successful. We have funded, literally starting in 17
1987, vaccine trials. Unfortunately, several of which in our network of vaccine trial 18
network, not only domestically but internationally, you've probably heard, a 19
few -- several -- three of the African trials did not actually lead to any substantial 20
protection. So we're now working on a much more sophisticated approach towards 21
developing broadly neutralizing antibodies. 22
And that's what we've done. But there are a number of other things that we did. I 23
mean, you might want to -- well, I'll wait for you to ask about them. 24
Q Well, I know there are a number of drugs on the market now to prevent 25
67
infection -- 1
A Right. 2
Q -- from HIV. I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit? 3
A Yeah. Yeah. The great, great success of what we did with HIV is that the 4
drugs that took -- the first drugs were in 1986 -'87 with AZT. By the time we got to 1996, 5
we had a combination of three drugs that were usually given in the form of multiple pills 6
that were difficult to take. We now have a single pill with three drugs in it that can drop 7
the level of virus in persons with HIV to below detectable and keep it there. 8
That has led to one of the most important breakthroughs in biomedicine in 9
decades, and that is what's called "undetectable equals untransmissible," which means, if 10
you treat someone who's infected, who's living with HIV, and get the virus to below 11
detectable, it is virtually impossible for that person to transmit the virus to somebody 12
else. 13
We also developed what's called pre -exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which is given 14
as one pill per day to a person who's at risk for acquiring HIV. Has a 99 -percent efficacy if 15
the pill is taken every day. 16
The most recent exciting advance is we now have a long -acting injectable, which, 17
given every 2 months and hopefully every 6 months, has greater than a 95 -percent 18
efficacy in men and women. 19
So a lot of success stories in what comes out of my in - -- my former institute with 20
HIV. 21
68
[12:13 p.m.] 1
BY 2
Q And I think that is definitely work you can be very proud of. 3
Another piece of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that you worked on was outreach to the 4
LGBTQ+ communities. I think everyone recalls -- 5
A Right. 6
Q -- back in the late '80s, there was a lot of frustration from that community 7
towards the Federal Government and you, yourself. But you were able to overcome that 8
and work with the community together to move forward. 9
A Right. 10
Q Can you tell us a little bit about that? 11
A Yeah. In the beginning of the outbreak, understandably but unfortunately, 12
the regulatory community, as well as the scientific community, including myself, 13
approached HIV in the standard rigid way of clinical trials that were designed with very 14
strict entry and exclusion criteria that would take a very long period of time to get an 15
answer. 16
The regulatory restrictions were very, very pristine. They worked well for other 17
diseases but not for a disease with someone who, when they present to a clinic, they had 18
a life expectancy of no more than 15 months. 19
And the gay community predominantly -- it was the activist community but mostly 20
the gay community -- felt that they wanted to be part of the discussion of the design of 21
the trials, the inclusion and exclusion criteria. And the scientific community didn't pay 22
any attention to them. So they demonstrated in a very iconoclastic, disruptive, and 23
theatrical way. 24
Most of the scientific community and the regulatory community withdrew from 25
69
that. I think one of the best things I've ever done in my career was to listen to them and 1
put myself in their shoes and say, "What would I do if I were in their shoes?" And I would 2
have done the same thing. 3
So I brought them into our fold, and I brought them in and met with them in a 4
conference room similar to this. And that was the first time any government official has 5
ever spoken to an activist in the gay community. 6
That led to, I think, one of the most important transformations in the relationship 7
between advocacy groups and scientists because now those populations -- mostly but not 8
exclusively of gay men -- are all integrated into the decision making of clinical trials into 9
the scientific agenda. 10
So what turned into a confrontative relationship turned out to be one of the most 11
productive involvements of advocacy communities in the scientific endeavor. 12
Q And we appreciate that work as well. 13
Another group where HIV/AIDS was of particular concern was the developing 14
world, particularly in Africa. 15
How did you work with researchers around the world to help solve the problem of 16
HIV/AIDS in those places as well? 17
A Well, we did it with science by developing and working with companies to 18
get drugs that were cheap enough to be used there. 19
But the contribution that I think was one of the most transforming contributions 20
and the thing that, of all the things in my five -and-a-half decade career that I'm most 21
proud of, is that I was one of the principal architects of the PEPFAR program, the 22
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, where President George W. Bush sent me to 23
Africa on a fact -finding mission and with the direction to come back to him with a 24
program that is accountable and transforming, because people in Africa, as late as 2002, 25
70
were dying at the same way that my own patients that I took care of in 1981, '2, '3, '4, '5, 1
not that there were no drugs available, but they could not afford the drugs and they 2
didn't have the drugs. 3
So he asked me to put together a program. And I spent about -- I went to Africa 4
multiple times. I met with the African physicians. And I came back and I worked with the 5
White House staff, mostly George W. Bush's staff, Josh Bolten and a bunch of people that 6
some of you may know, over a period of 7 or 8 months. And I put together a program 7
that initially was a $15 billion program over 5 years to treat 2 million people, prevent 7 8
million infections, and care for 10 million people, including AIDS orphans. 9
I convinced the President, to his great credit, George W. Bush, to put that program 10
into effect in 2003, announced it in the State of the Union address in January 28th, 2003. 11
And we just had a dinner in Washington a little bit over a year ago to celebrate the 20th 12
anniversary of PEPFAR. 13
And fast -forwarding from that time when I developed the program to then, has 14
spent $115 billion and is responsible for saving 25 million lives. 15
Q That's an impressive feat. 16
And now just to loop this all back to COVID -19, all of your work on SARS -CoV-1, 17
swine flu, Ebola, Zika, HIV/AIDS, I assume all of that informed the work you were doing on 18
the COVID -19 pandemic as well. 19
A Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's the question of using cumulatively all the 20
knowledge you learn about the development of vaccines, how you develop what's called 21
targeted antiviral therapy. I mean, I think AIDS deserves much of the credit for that 22
because an enormous amount of money was put into the AIDS effort. 23
And, for example, I know sometimes the lay public has difficulty understanding 24
that, but the two things that make a vaccine are, one, the platform -- in this case it was 25
71
the mRNA platform, it wasn't the only one, but it was absolutely suited to COVID; and the 1
other one is immunogen design, namely, what you put into the vaccine. 2
And many of the immunogens did not induce an adequate immune response. But 3
the immunogen that we developed at the Vaccine Research Center, which related to the 4
structure -based vaccine design that we were working on for years for HIV and for other 5
vaccines and, in fact, the recently approved respiratory syncytial virus that is now 6
recommended for people 65 -- 60 years of age and older, and for pregnant women, that 7
vaccine was developed by the structure -based vaccine design in my institute at the VRC. 8
That work with RSV totally informed us in how we could hit the ground running 9
and making a vaccine for COVID. And as you know, the story is very, very clear. When 10
the sequence became available on January the 10th, my team, I met with them, like, on 11
the 4th or 5th. I said, as soon as we get a sequence, let's get the vaccine going. 12
And we got a vaccine phase 1 trial in 69 days, a phase 2 trial in a 13
hundred -some -odd days. And 11 months later, in a completely unprecedented way, we 14
had a vaccine that was going into the arms of people that was more than 90 percent 15
effective and safe. 16
That is completely beyond any precedent. Mostly that would have taken about 7 17
to 10 years, and it was done in 11 months. 18
So all of those previous experiences that you referred to in those other diseases 19
allowed us to culminate in the situation with HIV -- I mean with COVID. 20
And I would love to talk to you for another hour about all of that, but 21
we are at ours. So we will go off the record. 22
[Recess.] 23
Mr. Benzine. We can go back on the record. 24
Dr. Wenstrup. Dr. Fauci, you know, as a doctor who's always treating patients, 25
72
you know, you don't always talk to your patients with the same terms and definitions that 1
you might with your fellow scientists or doctors, right, because it's a different level. 2
So I just want to go through some definitions and then at the end if you disagree 3
with any of them. But this is more for constituents or nonscientists that may be reading 4
what we're talking about. So I just want to go through them. I got them from a science 5
class, but we'll just see if you disagree. 6
It says science, a study of the natural world; scientist, a person that asks questions 7
about the natural world; observations, information collected using the five senses; 8
evidence, data gathered during an investigation; hypothesis, an idea or explanation that 9
can be tested with an investigation; investigation, a procedure carried out to gather data 10
about a subject or an event. Objective observations deal with facts. Subjective 11
observations deal with opinions. 12
Are you good with those? 13
Dr. Fauci. Sounds good. 14
Dr. Wenstrup. All right. 15
Just one question. Would assumptions fall under objective or subjective 16
observations, in your opinion? 17
Dr. Fauci. Assumptions? You know, I think there's varying degrees of 18
assumptions, depending upon what the assumption is based on. And, you know, I don't 19
want to expand too much on that. 20
But I think you're familiar with, when you do models, models are only as good as 21
the assumptions that are put into the model. Sometimes the assumptions are really very, 22
very close to what the reality is, and sometime s they're just wild -out assumptions. 23
But, in general, assumptions would fall more under the, what was not -- 24
Dr. Wenstrup. Objective or subjective. 25
73
Dr. Fauci. Subjective. Yeah. 1
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Appreciate it. 2
74
BY MR. STROM: 1
Q So, Dr. Fauci, just to reintroduce myself, I'm John Strom with Energy and 2
Commerce, majority. 3
I wanted to circle back on something that was touched on the last hour regarding 4
your exchange with Senator Paul at the hearing. 5
I believe that hearing was May 11th, 2021. Does that sound correct? 6
A I'm not certain. 7
Q Okay. 8
A Yeah. 9
Q I know you had help periodically, so -- 10
A Yeah. Right. 11
Q But in the May 11th, 2021, hearing, where Doctor -- Senator Paul, I think, 12
took exception to some of your testimony, when you were stating that no 13
gain -of-function work had been done at the WIV sponsored by NIAID, at that time, 14
though, you didn't -- NIAID did not have the year 5 progress report? 15
A Right. 16
Q Is that correct? 17
A I'm not certain about that. But just to correct -- 18
Q Yes, sir. 19
A -- my statement was that the grant that went through the EcoHealth as a 20
subaward did not fund gain -of-function research, according to my definition. 21
Q Okay. And I guess what I'm actually getting to is that I assume, given NIAID 22
has several thousand grants a year, or maybe even just several thousand issued every 3 23
months or so, 4 months -- 24
A Not several thousand every few months but the totality -- 25
75
Q Okay. 1
A -- is about two or three thousand, correct. 2
Q And so there's one grant, and there's a subrecipient of a grant. 3
A It's a $120,000 grant. 4
Q Yeah. 5
A And a budget of 5 billion. 6
Q Right. So I'm assuming that you had to rely on Dr. Erbelding's division to sort 7
of get you the relevant information for the -- on the grant, among maybe other sources. 8
A Yeah. I mean, I had no direct access into the grants. This was always, as was 9
said in the questioning before, this was handled very much at the programmatic level. 10
Q Sure. 11
A Right. 12
Q So, I mean, do you recall being sort of frustrated that when you were making 13
these -- when you were testifying at Congress that you -- well, let me not get ahead of 14
myself. 15
Do you recall when you first found out that the year 5 progress report was missing 16
from the EcoHealth grant? 17
A I don't recall precisely. It was somewhere in a briefing that the staff gave to 18
me. I don't know exactly when that was. It could have been later. I don't know. 19
Q Okay. Do you think, just to the best of your recollection, whether it was 20
before you were aware that the year 5 progress report was late before May 2021 or it 21
would have been after? 22
A I don't recall. 23
Q Okay. And I guess what I'm wondering of, and it's come up in a number of 24
our interviews with the program office staff, is it seems strange that they would miss that 25
76
progress report for so long. 1
We've had, I think, an explanation as to why that might be the case. But it does 2
strike me as odd that, when this grant gets a lot of scrutiny, that the program office staff 3
never went back and looked at the file and noticed that, you know, a progress report is 4
gone. 5
Is that something that is common for grants or -- 6
A I can't comment on that because that kind of compliance issues never raises 7
to the level of me, the director of the institute. So I would be hesitant to speculate on 8
something that -- a process that I essentially never get involved in. 9
Q Sure. And, again, I guess in context of your coming to testify to the Senate, I 10
guess it probably would have been nice to know whether or not the grant file was 11
complete at the time. 12
A I'm wondering if we're apples and oranges here, because whether 13
a -- somebody complies or not is not, in my mind, directly related to the question: Did 14
you, did NIAID fund a grant whose work scope was gain -of-function -- 15
Q Sure. 16
A -- according to the operative definition? 17
So in many respects a progress report or not does not change the answer to the 18
question: Was the grant that was funded with a work scope that was not gain -of-function 19
by the operative definition? 20
Q Uh-huh. 21
A So I didn't get -- and I don't know what the timeframe is of that, of that 22
progress report. I may have heard about it only after the fact. 23
Q Okay. 24
A Right. 25
77
Mr. Strom. We can move forward. 1
Mr. Benzine. Thank you. 2
78
BY MR. BENZINE: 1
Q I want to talk about, as much as you know, the NIAID grant process and what 2
individual terms mean. This is my first foray into what -- 3
A Right. 4
Q -- how the Federal Government does all these grants. 5
Can you just very briefly run from proposal to funding for -- how long that would 6
take, what the steps are, those kinds of things? 7
A Yeah, it varies, depending upon what the grant is and whether it's in 8
response to a request for application or whether it's a response to a de novo grant that 9
just comes in what we call investigator -initiated grant. 10
But the process of a grant being submitted, getting reviewed by a study section, 11
getting the grant either approved or not -- or, what happens frequently, it gets sent back 12
for revision and then resubmission, then it goes -- and that process takes months and 13
months. And then it goes to the study section, which makes the priority score. 14
And then the grant, which is usually the case, is funded on the basis of a priority 15
score cutoff. 16
So if you have enough money to fund something that has a priority score of X, 17
anything worse than that doesn't get funded. Anything better than that does. 18
Then it goes to the next level of review, which is approval by the National Advisory 19
Council of the institute. And that's how the grant ultimately then gets funded, which is 20
usually sometime after that. 21
So the process is several months, sometimes up to a year. 22
Q During the peer review process, which I -- the study section would be the 23
peer review, right? Is the advisory council government employees? 24
A The advisory council fundamentally are not, but there are some ad hoc 25
79
members that we have from different agencies that are part of the council. 1
But the predominant population of the council are outside scientists. 2
Q Would you describe both of those levels as peer review? 3
A The real hardcore peer review is the study section. The peer -- it would be 4
considered by some as peer review because these are peers that are reviewing the 5
decision of peers. So it's a secondary review of something. 6
For example, if you have a grant that gets sent to a study section, people sit 7
around a room like this, you get a stack of things like that, and they go over every single 8
page, and it takes a long period of time. They make their determination. 9
When you give it to the council, the council may look at the summary report and 10
put other things into that and then come to the conclusion. 11
Q So it would be kind of fair to say the study section is what most people 12
would look at as peer -- as the big peer review. 13
A Yeah, the big peer review. And the council looks at special issues, right. 14
Q During the study section, can -- if you know -- can those peer reviewers see 15
who the applicant is? So an example, EcoHealth, if I'm in the study section of EcoHealth -- 16
A Yeah. 17
Q -- does it say application number one by EcoHealth Alliance or does it just list 18
what the -- 19
A You know, that's a good question. I don't know where we are now. There 20
was a period of time when the person who is submitting the grant is known by the study 21
section. I had heard, I'm not sure, but I heard there's some talk now about anonymizing 22
that, but I don't know exactly where we are with that. 23
Q We've heard from Dr. Daszak that -- and I think the picture that you 24
referenced earlier -- was at an event that EcoHealth threw at the Cosmos Club about I 25
80
forget which virus it was. But Dr. Daszak mentioned that he threw those -- he threw 1
those events in order to meet funders and get kind of like face -to-face interactions with 2
funding agencies. 3
In your understanding, does kind of the reputation or name recognition of an 4
applicant matter in the peer review process? 5
A Again, it depends on w here you are in the process. The various different 6
criterias are originality, applicability, capability of an institution to carry it out. 7
And I believe, but I'm not a hundred percent sure, since I don't get involved in the 8
granting part of it, I believe that at one point track record was something that was 9
considered. 10
But right now, again, I'm saying I believe that they're moving away from that to try 11
and make it more just on the basis of what the proposal is. 12
Q Do you know if peer reviewers have to sign a nondisclosure agreement? 13
A I believe they do, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. 14
Q And then, you've mentioned it a couple of times in the scoring process, my 15
understanding is a low score is good. It's like golf. 16
A Yeah. It confuses people. 17
Q Yeah. 18
A The lower the score, the better you are, right. 19
Q And you mentioned some of the categories. They're -- 20
A Yeah. 21
Q Grants are scored on each of those categories. 22
A I don't know what they are. I'm picking them out empirically. I think that -- I 23
haven't looked at the menu of that recently. 24
Q But is that how the scoring process works in general? There's categories. 25
81
They're scored on each category? 1
A And they're weighted. They're not equally weighted. 2
Q Okay. 3
A They're weighted relatively. 4
Q And you touched on this a little bit. If a grant receives a fundable score, does 5
that guarantee funding? 6
A Well, you know, it depends on the fund -- which you say fundable score, it 7
depends on where you are in the budget process. 8
So, for example, when you set a pay line, which is a percentile, you could set it at, 9
like, 14, which is pretty good. If it goes to 18 -- see, it's the opposite with the pay line. So 10
if the pay line is the 14th percentile, then if you're in the 18th percentile you're in trouble 11
because you've got to go all the way down to the low percentile. 12
Percentiles are set. And then it depends on what the budget is. And the 13
appropriation process often, particularly when you have continuing resolutions, lags 14
behind. 15
So I could get a score that looks like it might be fundable. And then when the 16
money comes in, it's not fundable. And you can get a score that may look like it's not 17
fundable. And then you may get -- the Congress may give more money than what the 18
President's request is. So you might wind up being fundable. 19
So there's not a real guarantee depending until the money is there. 20
Q I guess that's what I'm kind of wondering, that if a grant could go through 21
the peer review process, it could go through the study section, receive a score, go 22
through the advisory council, receive a score, all check the right boxes, but then not 23
subsequently get funded, depending on what the appropriations look like. 24
A Yeah. It's almost -- the way it works -- and, again, there are always 25
82
exceptions -- but the way it works is it almost never is a situation that if a grant gets a 1
good score, and you have enough money, that you would not fund that grant. 2
There are other things called select pay where you might have a grant that's of 3
particular interest of something that was emerging that you would then, even though the 4
score wasn't a particularly good score, you would pay it. 5
BY MR. STROM: 6
Q Would you ever have a circumstance where, say, four grants are fundable or 7
get a fundable score, but because presumably each grant has a different sort of budget 8
proposal, you might pick one, three, and four, because two is really expensive, and you 9
can do more science if you spread it out a little bit out of order? 10
A That, again, I don't get involved at all -- 11
Q Sure. 12
A -- in that. That's a programmatic decision. 13
Q Uh-huh. 14
A But from what I hear, when it ever gets up to my level, which is not frequent, 15
it may be that, when you have three or four grants that have the same thing, that you 16
could tell the very expensive grant: We can't fund it at that level. You need to bring 17
down your costs if you want to fit into the funding scheme. 18
And they go back. They revise the grant. And they come in with a different 19
proposal. They cut out -- 20
Q Sure. 21
A -- one or two things. 22
Mr. Strom. Okay. Thank you. 23
BY MR. BENZINE: 24
Q And we got kind of through the National Advisory Council, and I'm just -- as 25
83
John has said, we've talked to a number of people in the program office, in DMID, and it's 1
kind of unclear who gives the stamp of approval. 2
Is it kind of by coalition in the advisory council, or is there a final approval for 3
funding a grant? 4
A We have a council agreement. We have a council meeting three times a 5
year. And the grants en bloc get presented to the different subcategories. There's a 6
DMID advisory group. There's an AIDS advisory group. And there's an EI, allergy, 7
immunology, infectious disease group. 8
They look at the grants, and they give their stamp of approval. Sometimes there's 9
a question of a grant. This is a grant that is on an extension or has some circumstance, 10
and the council usually handles that. 11
At the end of the council, they en bloc approve it, and then it just comes in for 12
final approval. 13
Q Who gives the final approval? 14
A You know, technically, I sign off on each council, but I don't see the grants 15
and what they are. I never look at what grants are there. It's just somebody at the end of 16
the council where they're all finished and they go, "Here," and you sign it. 17
Q Is it -- and as well as you know -- is it -- does it have to be unanimous from 18
the council? Is it 51 percent? How does -- 19
A You know, I'm not actually sure. I don't -- I don't think it has to be totally 20
unanimous. I think -- I'm not sure. 21
Q All right. 22
A Yeah. 23
Q Are there instances -- and, again, I'm posing a hypothetical. So if it never 24
happens, just let me know. But -- 25
84
A So, but, anyway, but when you get back to majority -- when these things are 1
en bloc, there almost never is, you know, majority versus unanimous. There's unanimous. 2
Q It's unanimous. 3
A Yeah, I don't think that there's a, "I object to 600 grants." 4
Q Yeah. 5
A I don't think that has ever happens. 6
Q Okay. 7
A Yeah. 8
Q If -- and, again, I'm sorry, it's a hypothetical -- but if the council is kind of 9
divided, how do you -- how is the division resolved? 10
A Yeah. I can't speculate on the hypothetical. I really have to know the real 11
details of the circumstance, and I've not really even heard of that. 12
Q Okay. 13
A To be honest with you. 14
Q No, that's totally fair. I appreciate it. 15
You mentioned this a little bit, and I want to ask again. Could a grant that did not 16
receive a fundable score end up getting funded? 17
A The answer is that's possible according to select pay mechanism, which 18
means that a grant might just miss by a point or two, but there's a really good reason to 19
want to keep that particular grant going because of the quality of the work or that 20
the -- maybe the study section missed something that was important in it. That's what's 21
called select pay. 22
Q Do you at NIAID have the authority to terminate or suspend a grant? 23
A Terminate a grant? 24
Q Or suspend. 25
85
Mr. Schertler. Do you mean director -- 1
BY MR. BENZINE: 2
Q Yeah, the director level. 3
A No. 4
Q Who would have that authority? Would that only be an NIH authority? 5
A Yeah, that's a compliance issue. So that's -- if they even have that authority. 6
I -- well, I certainly didn't as the -- 7
Q Okay. So we've walked through kind of the, I guess, the standard practice 8
of standard operating procedure of how a grant gets approved. 9
And you had testified previously that you do not individually approve grants, 10
which is substantially similar to what you just said, and they go through multiple levels of 11
peer review. "So I would not have by standard way things work, have seen this, read it, or 12
individually approved it." 13
You were discussing the EcoHealth grant. 14
The -- and, again, if I'm wrong, please correct me -- the use of "standard" there at 15
least implies that there is a not standard way that this would work. Is there -- are there 16
procedures where a grant could get funded without going through these steps? 17
A I've never heard of that. 18
Q Okay. Have there ever -- and, again, to the best of your recollection -- have 19
there ever been any grants that you individually approved outside of the en bloc process? 20
A I don't individually approve grants. 21
Q I want to -- we want to ask a couple questions about grants that involve a 22
foreign component. 23
Do you know the process for vetting or certifying foreign labs to then receive U.S. 24
taxpayer money? 25
86
A I don't think I could give you chapter and verse of it, but there is -- first of all, 1
whenever you have a foreign grant, the State Department has to know about it at least. 2
That's one thing. And the other thing, it requires special attention of the council. 3
Mr. Strom. Which council, just for clarity? 4
Dr. Fauci. The National Advisory Council of the institute. So often you see 5
something that gets special attention. And it'll be, you know, too much money, blah, 6
blah, blah. It says foreign grant. They have to get special attention of the council. 7
Q Does -- as much as you know, what's the involvement of the State 8
Department? 9
A You know, I don't know for sure. I'd hesitate to surmise. But there's some 10
involvement that I think has to do of at least making them be aware of it. 11
Q I guess what we're trying to learn going forward is, obviously, U.S. labs are 12
vetted, certified, and there's a standard of how U.S. labs operate. 13
Are foreign labs held to the same standard as U.S. labs when they receive U.S. 14
money, or are they the standards of the country in which they operate? 15
A I am not certain. I have heard -- again, I think it was subsequent to -- of 16
course, that was never brought up. 17
Q Uh-huh. 18
A When I was the director, no one ever asked me, you know, who determines, 19
you know, what the standards of a foreign lab are. 20
But so the answer to your question is I don't know, okay? 21
Q Okay. 22
A You can go on to that, but the answer is I don't know, yeah. 23
Q Did -- you kind of just alluded that it had gotten brought up since the 24
EcoHealth issue? 25
87
A Well, no, it got brought up about, someone mentioned that it's the standard 1
of the country involved that you give it to. 2
Q Do you recall who that someone -- 3
A I don't recall who that was, yeah. 4
Q Okay. So to your knowledge, NIAID wouldn't kind of independently verify 5
the biosafety of a foreign lab. 6
A Again, I'd have to say I'm not sure. To my knowledge, I wouldn't be able to 7
make a statement that I would be confident it would be. 8
Q No, that's fair. 9
And this question may be a compliance issue, so it may be better for NIH, and I 10
apologize if it is. 11
But is there a mechanism to even do that? How would -- obviously, it's kind of up 12
to the foreign country if they're going to let an American go into their lab. How would the 13
U.S. even go about vetting these labs? 14
A Again, speculation. I wouldn't know how we would do that. 15
Q Same kind of questions but for foreign collaborators. Do you know what the 16
process is for vetting a foreign collaborator? 17
A It depends on what you mean by a foreign collaborator. If we have grants 18
that are submitted as investigator -initiated awards or as a co -investigator together with 19
an American investigator, some of those are individual grants and some of them are part 20
of large consortia. 21
So the thing I would think about with regard to a large consortia is one of the 22
things I mentioned in questioning from the minority, that in the AIDS clinical trial groups 23
it's an international network of clinical trials. So you have investigators from South Africa, 24
you have investigators from Australia, and you have investigators from Canada and the 25
88
United States. 1
And that whole grant, to my knowledge, and I think I'm correct but there may be 2
some technical thing I'm missing, but that goes through the same peer review process as 3
if it were only an American grant. 4
Q Okay. 5
A But then the foreign -- when there's a foreign component, that's when the 6
council comes in and approves it. 7
Q I guess what -- and, again, it might be in the divisions and in the council that 8
this happens -- but trying to get an understanding of, like, if there's -- how individuals and 9
labs are getting vetted. If there's an Iranian nuclear lab listed on a grant -- 10
A Yeah. 11
Q -- is NIAID just going to check the box and move ahead? 12
A You know, I, honestly, Mitch, I -- that's not what I get involved with. 13
Q Okay. 14
A That's a compliance issue. So I would not have any knowledge of that. 15
Q Okay. I appreciate that. 16
Do you know if NIAID works with any agency other -- any agency on the vetting of 17
individuals? 18
A I don't -- I'm not aware. Possible, but I'm not aware. 19
Q You -- and this is from a long time ago -- you testified in front of HSGAC in 20
2012 that it was the Department of Justice that screens individuals. Does that refresh 21
your recollection? 22
A Department of Justice? 23
Q Screens foreign collaborators on U.S. grants. 24
A I don't recall saying that, yeah. 25
89
Q Do you know if NIAID grants go through any type of national security review 1
as part of the process? 2
A National security review? 3
Q So, like, through the National Security Council or -- 4
A No. 5
Q -- or anyone in the -- 6
A Not to my knowledge. 7
Q Okay. 8
A Again, I'm saying not to my knowledge. It's conceivable that at the 9
programmatic level, when something gets checked off, they put it through. But I am not 10
aware of anything going through national security. 11
Q Okay. And I want to talk about how stereotypically pandemics kind of 12
emerge or viruses kind of spill over. 13
Mr. Osterhues. Mitch, before we move on, can I ask? 14
Mr. Benzine. Yeah. 15
Mr. Osterhues. Dr. Fauci, understanding that you didn't get involved in some of 16
the compliance issues, can you ever recall in your time as the director an instance where 17
the council did not approve a foreign collaborator or lab or something that was proposed 18
for funding? 19
Dr. Fauci. I don't recall. It's possible, but I don't recall that. Yeah. 20
Mr. Osterhues. Thanks. 21
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BY MR. BENZINE: 1
Q And as we go through this section, I'm a lawyer, not a scientist, so bear with 2
me as I try to describe some of these things, and please correct if I am wrong. 3
My general understanding is that for a -- the two most viable pathways for a 4
spillover into humans is either zoonotic, so animal directly to human; animal -animal; 5
intermediary source -human; or some kind of laboratory or research -related accident. 6
Is that generally correct? 7
A The answer is generally correct, too. But there's different versions of 8
laboratory things. 9
Q I'll ask some. 10
A Okay. 11
Q And we'll go through it, yeah. 12
I'm going to start with zoonotics. And, again, my general understanding is two 13
kind of main ways that happens, direct from an animal, spillover into the humans, or 14
some kind of path with multiple animals into humans. 15
Have there been major zoonotic coronaviruses spilled over before? 16
A Major coronaviruses spillover before. 17
Q Uh-huh. 18
A Yes, there have been. 19
Q SARS and MERS being maybe the two that come to mind? 20
A Those are the two that come to mind. We don't know the historical etiology 21
of the common cold coronaviruses before. There's speculation that way, way, way, way 22
back it jumped over, and then it became part of the human system. But the ones that we 23
know of are SARS in 2002 -2003 and MERS in 2012. 24
Q Do you recall how many worldwide cases SARS has? SARS -1? 25
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A SARS -1 had about close to 8,000 with 784 deaths. 1
Q And do you recall with MERS? 2
A MERS was different because MERS was multiple introductions. It had a very 3
high mortality. But it was more like a spurt and there'd be an outbreak and a bunch of 4
people would get infected, a high percentage of death, go under the radar screen, a few 5
months later spurt up again, and then go back down. 6
So MERS was not a sustained outbreak that went down, whereas SARS -1 was one 7
that went up a little higher than MERS and then came back down. 8
Q And is that tracking -- and understanding every virus is different and maybe 9
my understanding is wrong -- that the viruses that are more infective aren't necessarily 10
more deadly because they want to keep their host alive so that they can infect more 11
hosts? 12
A That is generally what is the -- I'm trying to figure out the right word -- the 13
accepted narrative about that, but that's not quite so sure. 14
Q Okay. 15
A But, in general, when you have jump -overs, I mean, for example, historically 16
the H5N1 was able to jump but didn't adapt itself well to humans. It had a high degree of 17
pathogenesis and a low degree of tansmissibility. 18
But that's not always the case. When you have HIV, it transmits, but without 19
therapy it kills almost everyone. 20
So, you know, you can't categorize them, A, black and white. It's not that way. 21
Q Do you know, and off the top of your head, how many COVID -19 cases 22
thereabout there are now? 23
A You know, it's really interesting. We have a lot more handle on deaths and 24
hospitalizations than we do on cases because there are so many asymptomatic cases and 25
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mildly symptomatic cases. And what's going on right now -- and I believe in your 1
question, Mitch, you said "now" -- and right now many people are getting infected and 2
they don't even want to get tested. 3
So they just get a cold. They blow their nose. They don't tell anybody because 4
they don't want to be out from work. 5
But if you look at the wastewater, there are probably millions of cases per day 6
now. And we're not seeing hospitalizations and deaths because such a large proportion 7
of the populations have either been vaccinated or infected. 8
So the impact of an infection in 2024 on the population level is much less than the 9
impact on a virgin population that has no immunity either through vaccines or natural 10
immunity. 11
So the answer is the last time that they were doing a lot of testing, it was 12
something like there are, you know, 7 million cases worldwide and probably -- 7 million 13
deaths worldwide, probably 20 million cases. 14
Right now in the United States the last time they did a wastewater model they -- I 15
read it yesterday in the newspaper, that 1 in 24 people right now are currently infected 16
with COVID. 17
Q So two or three in this room? 18
A Yeah. 19
Q This is just my own curiosity. Do you think maybe, like, do you think it's 20
plausible that almost everyone in the world has had COVID once and maybe just didn't 21
know it? 22
A Yeah. You know, in biology, you know, you don't ever say never. 23
Q Yeah. 24
A There are going to be some people who maybe have some genetic 25
93
polymorphism that we're not familiar with yet that protects them the same way that 1
people have a Delta32 deletion on one of their genes are protected from HIV. So we 2
don't know, there may be some genetic polymorphism. 3
But right now, if you look at the estimate in the United States, is that, like, 98 4
percent of people have either been infected, vaccinated, or both. And there's no reason 5
to believe that in the rest of the world that we're seeing the same thing. 6
Q Another curiosity is, why the big difference between SARS, MERS, and 7
COVID? The last time I looked at the case numbers, understanding that it's based off 8
testing, it was 800 million -ish worldwide? 9
A Right. 10
Q SARS had 8,000, MERS 3,000 -ish? 11
A Right. 12
Q Why -- that's a really big gap for being in kind of a very similar virus. 13
A Yeah. I believe it's the ease and efficiency of transmissibility. So, for 14
example, if you look carefully at the cases that were reported in the literature with SARS, 15
it was mostly transmitted by people who were symptomatic, and a lot of it was associated 16
with the healthcare setting. 17
But when you got into the general population, it didn't seem to efficiently spread 18
at all. So there were cases of people going into a clinic and coughing around and 19
everybody in the clinic got infected. 20
But it wasn't the situation where you had individuals who were asymptomatically 21
infected, went out into the environment, and then infected everybody. 22
So the short answer to your question, Mitch, is the degree of what's called 23
efficiency of transmissibility and the ability to handle something by classical public health 24
measures, because SARS got handled, SARS -1, by identification, isolation, contact tracing, 25
94
and some quarantining, which did it. It shut it off. 1
Q The effective transmissibility, is that the R naught? 2
A Yeah. Yeah. 3
Q All right. Back to zoonotic and lab, just to kind of wrap my head around 4
what would be, like, the stereotypical zoonotic spillover of maybe a farm or a market has 5
a couple cases, probably a farm, and then the animals are shipped and a couple of cases 6
here, a couple of cases there, until it gets to a metropolitan area where there's a lot of 7
people where it could spread a lot. Is that -- 8
A That's one of the scenarios of it, yeah. 9
Q And then we haven't really seen this in this case, though, right? Is that just 10
because the backtracking hasn't been done? 11
A You know, yeah, the backtracking haven't been done. And it really varies. I 12
mean, there are some infections that, when they jump species, they just take off. I mean, 13
you hear people say, well, it's got to somehow adapt itself. 14
Swine flu, in 2009, just jumped out and, whew, it just went right across the world. 15
Fortunately for us, it didn't have a high degree of pathogenesis, but it had a high degree 16
of transmissibility right from the get -go. 17
Sometimes something needs to adapt itself sort of underneath the radar screen 18
before, as you say, you get into a population, then it explodes. 19
Q So it'd be possible that COVID -19 acted as one of those viruses, that it didn't 20
need the time to adapt to humans, or did we just not notice it? 21
A I think it's possible, and we don't know. 22
Q Okay. 23
A I just don't think we can make any speculations about that. There's not 24
enough known about it. 25
95
Q So you brought up kind of what a laboratory or research -related accident is. 1
A Right. 2
Q And I want to run through some scenarios, and you can say whether or not 3
you think it is or isn't. 4
A Right. 5
Q A researcher intentionally manipulating viruses like the construction of 6
chimeric viruses and getting infected. 7
A Well, I'm not going to say, because you're jumping into chimeric. 8
Q Okay. 9
A You're talking about a specific situation. 10
It depends on whether that virus is actually adaptable to be able to affect a human 11
because you can get somebody -- you could be playing with viruses in the lab and they 12
don't have the capability of infecting humans. 13
Q No, no, I'm saying if it does infect a human while they're doing that 14
experiment, would that be a lab accident? 15
A Lab accidents are much more common, much -- in fact, I'm pretty sure that 16
they're the only documented ones where people are working with a virus that is known 17
to infect humans, like they're working with tularemia or another bacteria or another virus 18
that's already well adaptive. 19
They're studying it in the lab, they're looking for an antibiotic sensitivity, or they're 20
trying to get the right confirmation for a vaccine, and they get infected. Then that's a lab 21
accident. 22
Now, if that's a pathogen that is not out in the community but it is well known to 23
be able to infect the community and the person gets infected accidentally, goes outside 24
and spreads it, that's a lab accident of a pathogen that's already pathogenic and 25
96
transmissible. Nobody did anything to it. It was an accident that that person got 1
infected. 2
The other one is the one that's hypothetical, that we don't see, at least I can't give 3
you any good examples of that, it may have happened, but I don't know any examples, 4
where somebody is manipulating a virus than has never infected anybody, that then 5
infects that person and then goes out. 6
I think that's theoretically possible, but I haven't heard of that as something that 7
did that and caused a pandemic. 8
Q Both of those scenarios, though, in your mind would be a laboratory 9
accident. I guess I'm not trying to -- I'm not trying to delineate, like, how it would spread. 10
A Right. 11
Q Just, like, what -- trying to get an understanding of what the term means, 12
because we've heard -- the last one on my list is a researcher in doing field work, getting 13
infected in the field, and bringing it back to the lab. 14
A Yeah. See, the only thing with that, that people get confused -- so, well, you 15
ask your question because, I mean -- 16
Q I guess, you would consider that to be a research -- 17
A Well, you got to be careful, because if somebody goes in the environment 18
and gets infected, okay, while they're out there, and goes into a laboratory, that person 19
has already been infected by something that has jumped from an animal to a human. 20
So if they go in the lab and then infect the people in the lab and then the people in 21
the lab infect other people, I wouldn't call that a lab accident. I would call that a natural 22
spillover that spread. But the natural spillover was someone who happened to be a lab 23
person who was out there looking for whatever they were looking for, right? 24
Q Okay. No, that is helpful. 25
97
One of the primary purposes of our subcommittee is to investigate this in order to 1
prepare for any future pandemics. 2
What do origins of a virus like COVID -19 tell us to help prepare for the next 3
pandemic? 4
A Oh, goodness. 5
Q Briefly. 6
[Laughter.] 7
A There are lessons learned. There are lessons learned that I've spoken about 8
in a lot of lectures, you know. 9
Q Uh-huh. 10
A The first lesson is in preparedness investment in the scientific community, 11
because, as I said in response to one of the questions, that if we had not made the 12
investment in platform technology and in immunogen design, we would not have had the 13
vaccine as quickly as possible. 14
The first lesson, when you're dealing, because with an outbreak there's 15
preparedness and there's response. So preparedness can be scientific preparedness. 16
Preparedness can be the preparedness of any of a number of factors that help you to 17
respond. 18
Responsiveness is a public health issue. How well do you control it? For example, 19
do you have the local public health capability of identifying, surveillance, communication, 20
those kind of things? So that's one of the lessons. 21
Dr. Wenstrup. What lessons learned on personnel? You talked about response. 22
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. 23
Dr. Wenstrup. That requires personnel. 24
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. 25
98
Dr. Wenstrup. So what are your thoughts there, how we can do better? 1
Dr. Fauci. Well, I think we need trained personnel. We need to make sure that 2
among the global population of personnel that there's transmiss -- excuse 3
me -- transparency among them. 4
I mean, one of the things that was so helpful to us -- I'm not sure we responded as 5
well -- was the South Africans, when they found omicron, they let us know in a phone call 6
on my Thanksgiving dinner to say, "Hey, we got to get together. We got something new 7
here." 8
That was really helpful because it allowed us to realize we now have a virus that's 9
so different from the alpha, beta, delta that we were going to have to start thinking about 10
isolating it and finding out does the vaccine work or not. 11
So we need trained personnel, and we need people who are transparent. 12
Dr. Wenstrup. Thanks. 13
BY MR. BENZINE: 14
Q I want to in the time we have left in this hour shift to when COVID first 15
emerged, it was reported on ProMED first on December 30th, 2019, and then China 16
reported it December 31st. 17
When did you first become aware? 18
A I first became aware of an outbreak in China, I believe it was the first day of 19
2020, January 1st. Yeah, I believe it was that. I may have vaguely heard about something 20
before, but I first specifically heard about it on January 1st. 21
Q Did you hear that, as it was reported, a pneumonia, or at that point you had 22
heard it was a new coronavirus? 23
A I had heard it was a pneumonia. You know, the first thing you think of when 24
you hear about a new pneumonia coming out of China, based on the experience with 25
99
SARS -1, is the first thing you want to think of is it a coronavirus. Could be something else. 1
Could be a strain. 2
You think of two things. You think is it influenza, I mean, because influenza 3
historically comes out of the Far East except for 2009 when it came from California and 4
Mexico but that's another story. 5
But the other thing you think of because of the history with coronavirus that could 6
it be a coronavirus. So the first thing I heard it was a pneumonia. So we thought, well, 7
what is it? 8
Q Is pneumonia kind of like a standard term for any respiratory disease? I 9
don't -- when I think of pneumonia I think of like in high school you have pneumonia and 10
you don't feel good. But to you, when you read pneumonia, does that read as this is a 11
respiratory virus? 12
A Yeah. Pneumonia to me means a respiratory virus of the lower airway, not 13
somebody just coughing and sneezing, but of the lower airway which, if you examine, you 14
hear crackles, you hear dullness. If you do an X -ray, you see either haziness or a cavity or 15
a pleural effusion. It's just objective disease in the lower airway. 16
Q Okay. Do you recall how you learned of COVID on the first day of January? 17
A You know, I was trying to remember specifically. But I believe it was a 18
reporter -- and I forgot, I don't know who it was -- who called me up and said, "Dr. Fauci, 19
there's a new pneumonia that's in China. Do you have any comment on it?" 20
And I said, "Well, I think we need to learn more about it before I have any 21
comment on it." 22
Q Do you recall when the sequence of the virus was released? 23
A Yes. 24
Q What date was that? 25
100
A I believe it was January 10th, I believe. 1
Q And what can the -- understanding it's just the sequence, it's not an isolator 2
or -- 3
A Right. 4
Q -- something more specific -- what can the sequence itself tell you about the 5
virus? 6
A Well, it was very important for us. And I know we don't have a lot of time 7
but I'll try to be -- 8
Mr. Schertler. We have plenty of time. 9
[Laughter.] 10
BY MR. BENZINE: 11
Q We can be succinct. We'll take succinct. 12
A No, I'll be succinct. 13
So apropos of what I had mentioned to a question about what we do at NIAID 14
versus what others do, the first thing that we think of is, if this is something that is going 15
to be a problem, we're going to need a vaccine. So see if we can mobilize. 16
And what I did before January 10th is I called a meeting with the senior members 17
of the Vaccine Research Center, Barney Graham, John Mascola, and others, and I said, 18
"Get prepared when we find out what this thing is." 19
And Barney said, and the reason I remember January 10th, he said, "Tony, get me 20
the sequence and we are now really perched because we have the platform and mRNA. 21
We've been working with Moderna. We have the immunogen because we've already 22
done it successfully for RSV and for MERS. So get us the sequence." 23
January 10th came. The sequence came. And we had another meeting. They 24
said, " Let's go do it. Let's get a vaccine starting to go." 25
101
And we had a conversation. He said, "That's great, but, you know, we don't have 1
any money." 2
And I said, "Let me worry about the money. Start the work on the vaccine." 3
So within 5 days we had the vaccine going, and then we had a phase 1 trial in 69 4
days, which was the record of ever getting into a phase 1 trial. 5
Q Yeah. No, it was impressive. If memory serves me, the Moderna vaccine 6
started within, like, a couple days of the sequence. 7
A Five days. 8
Q Five days coming out of the sequence. 9
In Dr. Farrar's book, he wrote about the sequence. I don't know if you've read his 10
book. 11
A I haven't. Is that -- it's called "Spike"? 12
Q "Spike." 13
A "Spike"? "Strike"? 14
Q Yeah. 15
A Something like that. 16
Q "Spike." 17
A Yeah, right. 18
Q He wrote: "Eddie" -- he's talking about Eddie Holmes -- "has screenshots 19
taken from social media in China about the coronavirus sequence. They suggest the full 20
genome was known by a genomics company in China by December 27th, 2019, and then 21
reported to the Chinese CDC and a hospital who provided the sample on the 27th and 22
28th of December." 23
Do you have any awareness of that? 24
A No, I'm not aware of it. 25
102
Q In our transcribed interview with Dr. Daszak this past November he testified 1
similarly that by December 31st, 2019, he was aware of a coronavirus that was 20 percent 2
divergent from SARS -1 circulating in Chinese. And he said that was strangely accurate 3
information because SARS -CoV-2 is 20 percent divergent from SARS -1. 4
So he had pretty solid information 12 days before the sequence was released. Did 5
you have any awareness of that? 6
A I did not. 7
Q Do you have any awareness of whether or not a sequence prior to January 8
10th or 11th was submitted to NIH or any other databases? 9
A To my knowledge, no. I mean, we were waiting for a sequence because of 10
what I said about getting my team together that needed a sequence to start the vaccine. 11
Q Do you recall who made the sequence publicly available? 12
A I believe it was on a publication from -- again, I didn't know it at the time but 13
it was shown to me after that. I think Eddie Holmes and a Chinese person. 14
103
[1:50 p.m.] + 1
BY MR. BENZINE: 2
Q Zhang Yongzhen, does that sound right? 3
A With no disrespect, they all -- that sounds the same to me. 4
Q Dr. Yongzhen's lab was shut down the next day after the sequencers 5
released by Chinese authorities. Do you have any awareness of that? 6
A No, I don't. 7
Q Shifting back to the sequence a little bit, one of the things that's interesting 8
and has come up in lots of conversations that I know you've had with some of these 9
scientists and we've had in Congress, is that in SARS -CoV-2's lineage, there's never been 10
at least an observed furin cleavage site before and that this would be the first one. 11
And you talked about that the kind of explosion of the cases compared to SARS -1 12
and MERS was the transmissibility. And, again, my kind of layman's understanding is the 13
furin site assists with that, that it can pierce the ACE2 receptor to bind with cells -- 14
A ACE1, ACE2. 15
Q Yeah. And then infect the host. Is that close to accurate? 16
A Well, yeah. I mean, the furin cleavage site creates a greater capability of 17
binding to the ACE2 receptor. 18
Q Could you tell that it -- maybe not you, but could a scientist tell that it has a 19
furin site by looking at the sequence, or would you need an isolate or more -- 20
A I believe -- that's not my lane. I'm not an evolutionary virologist, so -- 21
Q Do you recall any conversations where people said, here's the sequence, it's 22
got a furin cleavage site in it? 23
A You know, certainly furin cleavage sites are sort of like, you know, popcorn. 24
Q Yeah. 25
104
A They talk about it all the time. I don't recall when I first heard the word 1
"furin cleavage site." 2
Q We'll come back to it in the context of some other things, but I want to run 3
through some quick questions about kind of the initial outbreak, what you were hearing 4
out of China, what -- if you were aware of things that China was doing. 5
So I talked about Dr. Yongzhen's lab getting shut down. You didn't have any 6
awareness. 7
A No. 8
Q It was also reported that kind of the -- for lack of a better phrase, the original 9
COVID -19 whistleblower, Dr. Li Wenliang, who passed away from COVID, was forced to 10
sign a nondisclosure agreement to not publicly discuss the virus, and then there were 11
reports of China locking up journalists and gagging scientists. Did you have any 12
awareness on any of that? 13
A You know, I was hearing indirectly -- you know, you hear all kinds of strange 14
things about what goes on in China and their lack of transparency. I mean, that's not an 15
unusual thing. You know, there was lack of transparency early on with SARS when it was 16
in Guangdong Province. The Chinese tend to be nontransparent even when they don't 17
have to be nontransparent. 18
Q Another thing that was reported -- and I can introduce the exhibit if you 19
want me to, but did you have any awareness of China hoarding PPE early in the 20
pandemic? 21
A Not that I recall. 22
Q Okay. And some of this -- again, not a scientist, so if the words in the 23
scientific publications don't mean what I think they mean, tell me. 24
On January 3rd, ProMED came out with an update on this and said the number of 25
105
cases in Wuhan was rising and that there were now cases in Hong Kong. Does not only 1
the rise in cases but also shifting out of kind of the original metropolitan area within a few 2
days mean that there might have been human -to-human transmission already? 3
A Yeah. I think when you have spread like that, it has to, you know, 4
particularly when you have it disassociated in different places. That strongly suggests 5
human -to-human transmissibility. 6
Q Is that about the time that you would have started at least estimating that 7
there was human -to-human transmission of this virus? 8
A You know, again, I'm trying to recall now 4 years ago what the evolution of 9
my understanding was. And it was really evolving, because the first thing we heard was 10
that it was likely an animal to a human, and it wasn't particularly transmitted efficiently 11
from human to human. Then somehow, a week or so went by, and they said, well, maybe 12
it is transmitted human to human. And then another few days to a week goes by, and it's, 13
well, it's pretty well -transmitted from human to human. 14
And then you start hearing cases from the news media that there were cases over 15
here, that you say, well, it really is transmitted. And then you get the report that the 16
Chinese are building a thousand -bed hospital overnight. Then you say, I think it's 17
transmitted pretty fast. 18
BY MR. STROM: 19
Q Bearing in mind what you mentioned about the Chinese being not 20
transparent even when they don't have a reason for it, do you -- is it plausible there were 21
only 177 cases in December of 2019? 22
If you go back, the Chinese were fairly adamant -- and these were the 23
representations they made to the WHO -- that the earliest case was December 8th. And 24
so it's always struck me as remarkable that you can go from a handful of cases -- you 25
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know, 177 cases in December to hundreds of thousands of cases in January. 1
A Yeah. You know, I really hesitate, you know, to speculate on that at all 2
because there are many factors that we don't know. The degree of transmissibility 3
among asymptomatic people, how long that was going on, and where it was going on. So 4
this would be really speculation on my part. So I wouldn't want to guess on that. 5
Q I guess, you said -- I think you said earlier not enough is known about the 6
early cases. Are you referring to those 177 or just generally to -- because assuming even 7
if they were transparent and doing the best they could, they would miss some early cases. 8
A Yeah. 9
Q I mean, asymptomatic spread makes up a quarter thereabouts, maybe more 10
early on. 11
A I wasn't getting any -- first of all, as the director of NIAID, I have to make sure 12
that you understand and I reconfirm. What my job was was to develop a vaccine and 13
wasn't the surveillance of what's going on at different places. It was not that. I mean, I 14
was interested in it. 15
Q Sure. 16
A I'm an infectious disease person. Of course, I'm interested in what's going 17
on. But I don't really -- I can't really speculate about, you know, whether this number of 18
cases was truly reflected. All I knew, it was kind of like a moving target in the first few 19
weeks. That it went, you know, like I told you, from something that generally was 20
reported as not particularly transmissible to something that, weeks down, clearly was 21
spreading rapidly. 22
Q I guess last thing I'll say is, we're trying to understand, because we get a lot 23
of -- we've reviewed a lot of emails both from Dr. Daszak, from people in NIH and HHS 24
writ large, where they're saying, oh, I think -- they basically seem to be thinking it's going 25
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to be SARS -1 all over again. That you'll have sustained but sort of stuttering transmission, 1
and eventually, the interventions will work and it'll die out. 2
Was that your initial expectation? 3
A Well, you know, you never make final conclusions because emerging 4
infectious diseases continue to fool you. For example -- again, not to belabor this -- but, 5
for example, when -- I was one of the first people in the country to take care of persons 6
with HIV, and when we first started taking care of patients, we only saw the patients that 7
were really critically ill that were brought to the attention of a hospital. Little did we 8
know that that was the tip of the iceberg of people who were infected for years. 9
And when we finally got the diagnostic test, my heart sank because, you know, 10
instead of the several hundred people that I was taking care of at the NIH personally, 11
there were thousands of young men out there in the Castro and in New York and in L.A. 12
that were infected. 13
So, right now, when you talk about what was going on then, it was the moving 14
target of trying to understand just what the scope of this was. And it did sort of -- like, 15
every -- when you hear "coronavirus," the people who would -- and there were several 16
that were making what I think was your suggestion. Oh, it's a coronavirus. It's like SARS, 17
you know. It'll go boom, and then it'll go down. 18
Q Yeah. Really unlucky if you get it, but it'll be fine. 19
A Well, you know -- but if you do it, you could identify, isolate, contact -trace, 20
and then we're done. But it became clear as the weeks went by that this was different. 21
Q Thank you. 22
Mr. Benzine. We have about a minute left, but I know the chairman has one or 23
two questions to finish out the hour. 24
Dr. Wenstrup. Yeah. We were talking about transparency. I always refer to 25
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Reagan's line of trust but verify. 1
And, yeah, there was a tremendous concern, at least on my part, that the CDC was 2
not allowed boots on the ground in early 2020. And the WHO called it, it's a regional 3
problem only. So it seems like we were getting misinformation. 4
Were you suspicious that they weren't being totally transparent? And you kind of 5
alluded to that maybe that wasn't your lane in your work on the vaccine, but who should 6
be in that lane? 7
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't my lane for sure, but, I mean, I could not help 8
but wonder why we're not going to be allowed to go in there. But, again, Mr. Chairman, 9
the Chinese fundamentally in every lan e -- and the point I was just making -- even when 10
they don't need to be opaque, they're opaque. 11
Dr. Wenstrup. Yeah. And they had this Li Wenliang. He was warning about this 12
dangerous virus, and he later published a letter that reprimanded him for issuing that 13
warning. He later died. 14
But I do have one question before this ends. When our CDC was not allowed in 15
China, was your relationship with George Gao affected? You know, did you trust him 16
after that, the way he was telling you things? 17
Dr. Fauci. You know, I never had what one would call a relationship with George 18
Gao. I knew him. I met him at a meeting here in the United States once, that I recall. I 19
may have seen him at other scientific meetings, but it wasn't like I had a relationship. 20
I mean, he had a position of significance in China. He was the director of the 21
Chinese CDC, which was essentially, you know, the Chinese equivalent of the United 22
States CDC. 23
Dr. Wenstrup. So maybe that's a better question for CDC then? 24
Dr. Fauci. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. 25
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Dr. Wenstrup. All right. Thank you. 1
Mr. Benzine. All right. We can go off the record. 2
[Recess.] 3
We can go back on the record. 4
BY 5
Q Dr. Fauci, I wanted to discuss and ask a few questions about another topic 6
that's been of significant interest, and that is the proximal origin paper, which I imagine at 7
this point you are generally familiar with what that paper is. Is that correct? 8
A That is correct. 9
Q Great. I will say at the beginning of this conversation, I do not think it makes 10
sense to drag you all the way into the details of the science of that paper. We have flown 11
all over the country to interview the authors of the paper, and we have done all of that 12
with them. We have discussed furin cleavage sites and receptor binding domains and 13
O-linked glycans -- 14
A Wow. 15
Q -- and pangolins. We have done it all with them, so I'm not going to repeat 16
all of that with you. 17
I will say, however, just because it's interesting, we had a discussion with one of 18
the coauthors about the furin cleavage site and the extent to which it has been found to 19
go away in serial passage, which has created a little bit of confusion about the role that it 20
actually is or is not playing in transmission. But whatever. Neither here nor there. I'm 21
not going to do that with you unless you really, really want to. 22
A I don't. 23
Q Okay. Great. What I think would make sense to discuss is the separate 24
question of who organized this paper. Of course, the authors wrote it, but there has been 25
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some discussion of whether there was anybody else who had the idea that it should be 1
written or maybe helped organize it. That might be of slightly more interest to our 2
colleagues in the majority than ourselves, but we've tried to take a close look at that 3
question. 4
And for us, when we read the documents and we've done these interviews with 5
the authors of the paper, it feels as if -- our perception is that Dr. Jeremy Farrar, who's a 6
British scientist -- to the extent that anybody was playing that sort of a role, it seems as if 7
he was playing that role. 8
I'll just start with, from 30,000 feet, is that your general -- 9
A Yeah. 10
Q -- recollection? 11
A Yeah. Dr. Farrar, who you correctly mentioned, is a -- at the time was the 12
director of the Wellcome Trust, which is a scientific funding organization in the U.K., was 13
the one who initiated the process, both the original call that these evolutionary virologists 14
were on, and about, what are we going to do about it? So you are correct in saying that 15
he was the prime mover of getting people together. 16
Q Okay. Great. I'd like to go into a little bit more detail. This whole sequence 17
occurred over a few different phases. 18
A Right. 19
Q That first phase, I think, is an initial phone call between yourself and 20
Dr. Kristian Andersen, I think on January 31st -- 21
A Correct. 22
Q -- 2020. 23
Our understanding is that Dr. Farrar reached out to you, said that you should talk 24
to Dr. Andersen. 25
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A That is correct. 1
Q Is that your general recollection? 2
A Yeah. I got a call from Jeremy in the afternoon, evening of the 31st of 3
January saying, I just got off the phone with Kristian, and I believe he said Eddie Holmes 4
was also in the discussion. He said, you really need to call Kristian. 5
So Kristian called me up and -- or I called him. I think I called him. I'm not sure. 6
And he explained to me that when a smaller group of these evolutionary virologists were 7
looking at the sequence of the virus, they were disturbed that there was something about 8
it that looked like it could have been engineered. And my response was, wow, we have to 9
look into that much more carefully, and we should probably get, you know, a group 10
of -- broader group of evolutionary virologists together. 11
And that's what happened the next day on February 1st. And I think I responded 12
to Jeremy right after that. 13
Q If you'd like, I can save you the trouble, because there's an email chain, I 14
think, that draws out this entire sequence of events. So I'll just introduce it, for ease of 15
reference, as minority exhibit D. 16
[Fauci Minority Exhibit No. D 17
was marked for identification.] 18
BY 19
Q And although it's probably familiar to you, I'll give you a moment to look it 20
over. Like other chains, it starts at the back and works its way forward. 21
A Right. Yeah, well, the emails accurately project what I just mentioned, that 22
Jeremy called me and suggested that I call Kristian Andersen. 23
It says here, "Can you phone Kristian Andersen?" And I do. 24
And after I get off the phone call with Kristian, I wrote an email to Jeremy. And, 25
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you know, the email, I guess, tells us about where my mind was, and it says, "I just got off 1
the phone with Kristian, and related to me his concern about the furin site mutation in 2
the spike protein of the currently circulating 2019 -nCoV. I told him that as soon as 3
possible he and Eddie Holmes should get a group of evolutionary virologists together to 4
examine carefully the data to determine if his concerns are validated. And he should do it 5
very quickly, and if everyone agrees with this, they should report it to the appropriate 6
authorities. And I would imagine that, in the United States, that would be the FBI, and in 7
the U.K., that would be MI5. And it would be important to quickly get confirmation of the 8
cause of his concern by experts in the field of coronaviruses and evolutionary biology. 9
And in the meantime, I" -- me, Tony -- "will alert my U.S. Government official colleagues 10
of my conversation with you and Kristian and determine what further investigation they 11
would recommend. Let's stay in touch." 12
So it was my response to the call that I had with Kristian. 13
Q So as a reader, I take away from that that you are communicating, hey, if you 14
think that this could be from a lab, specifically the product of deliberate manipulation, 15
you need to learn more and tell somebody, alert the authorities. 16
A Right. 17
Q Is that right? 18
A Absolutely. I said it very explicitly in the email. 19
Q This is sort of speculative, but that feels not consistent with what we would 20
expect to see if you were somehow trying to suppress the idea that it might have come 21
from a lab? 22
A I think that's obvious, yes. 23
Q We have heard from Dr. Andersen that, in this phone conversation, as far as 24
the question of writing any kind of paper went, his recollection is your only remark that 25
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would fall into that category was, if you think this was from a lab, you should write a 1
paper about that. 2
A Right. 3
Q In other words, that that remark was specific to the idea that the paper 4
would be arguing that it may have come -- 5
A Right. 6
Q -- from a lab. Is that generally your recollection? 7
A Yeah. No, I said if -- almost exactly what you're saying. But my thinking was 8
that, if, in fact, you think this is the case, put out all the information in a peer -reviewed 9
paper so that it could be publicly scrutinized, because of my -- you know, as a scientist, 10
peer review is the openness of it. Let the peers look at it and scrutinize it and put the 11
information and what opinions they're having and see what happens. 12
Q So as we understand it, subsequent to that conversation, Dr. Farrar goes and 13
organizes another larger phone call for February 1st that's got all sorts of folks from all 14
over the world on it. Do you generally recall that phone call? 15
A I do. 16
Q Great. 17
A I do. 18
Q So there's been some question -- before even getting to who said what on 19
the call, there's been some question of, whose call was it? And we've seen some 20
documents on that question, so I'm just going to introduce minority exhibit E. 21
[Fauci Minority Exhibit No. E 22
was marked for identification.] 23
BY 24
Q I'll give you a second to look that over. It's a pretty short email exchange. 25
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A Right. Yes. 1
Q So I would just sort of -- the part that I'm focused on in the middle of that 2
first page -- which is Bates labeled SSCP_NIH -796 -- we've got an email from Dr. Farrar on 3
February 1st to yourself. 4
Subject is "Regarding conference details," and the email is, "Could you join? 5
Trying to set up an initial call with" -- and then he lists a bunch of the folks that ended up 6
on that call. 7
Is your recollection, if you can remember, that it's the February 1st -- 8
A Yeah. 9
Q -- conference call? 10
A No, I remember very clearly. He called me and asked me could I join, and 11
told me he has a bunch of these other people who are listed there that he's trying to get 12
on the call. 13
Q So it's not a difficult question, but is it fair to say from this or from your own 14
memory that it was Dr. Farrar who set up that call? 15
A Yes, it was Dr. Farrar who set up the call. 16
Q All right. With respect to the question of what happened on the call and 17
how did that call unfold, we have also seen some documents that help us understand that 18
question. And so I will introduce minority exhibit F. 19
[Fauci Minority Exhibit No. F 20
was marked for identification.] 21
BY 22
Q And I'll give you a moment to look that over as well. 23
A Okay. 24
Q So this email chain includes within it, it looks like dial -in details for the call, 25
115
an agenda, list of participants. I'll just sort of walk through it maybe in reverse order 1
starting on the first page, but we've got an email starting with from Dr. Farrar with the 2
dial-in code. 3
And it's neither here nor there, but the +44 we understand certainly not to be 4
your dial -in code, right? That's an English phone number? 5
A That is correct. 6
Q All right. And then in the email preceding that, again, from Dr. Farrar, it's got 7
a lot of content. 8
So he lays out -- and the recipients here, I think, are the folks who end up joining 9
the call. He lays out the dial -in details starting at the top of the second page. He explains 10
that he'll be on email throughout the call. 11
He says to email Paul or I -- and Paul is somebody who works for Dr. Farrar, based 12
on the cc line -- if there are any problems. If somebody can't make it, they're supposed to 13
call Jeremy. 14
There's an agenda here, which starts off with an introduction and a focus and 15
desired outcomes. That's Dr. Farrar. It wraps up with a summary as well as next steps. 16
That's also Dr. Farrar. 17
So in between there, some of these other evolutionary virologists do some of the 18
content and the substance, but in terms of who is sort of the master of ceremonies here, 19
it feels to us as readers that that is Dr. Farrar. Is that generally your recollection as well? 20
A That is correct. 21
Q We've talked to some of the folks who were on that call, and Dr. Andersen 22
told us that the call was organized by Dr. Farrar and that he did not remember you, Dr. 23
Fauci, chiming in. Dr. Garry told us that it was Dr. Farrar's call and that you, Dr. Fauci, 24
identified yourself, said, I am here, at the beginning, but then didn't say much or anything 25
116
of substance. 1
Again, is that consistent generally with what you remember about the call? 2
A That is correct. 3
Q Great. As far as you as a listener on the call in terms of what actually 4
happened and the content, I think you have written a little bit contemporaneously about 5
the content of the call. And so I think it would be useful to introduce that document as 6
minority exhibit G. 7
[Fauci Minority Exhibit No. G 8
was marked for identification.] 9
BY 10
Q And I'll give you a moment to look that over and familiarize yourself with it. 11
A Okay. 12
Q So the part of this email chain -- which, for the record, is Bates labeled 13
SSCP_NIH -1796 -- the part of interest is on the second page, 1797. And this is a pretty 14
lengthy email from yourself to other colleagues who I think have HHS sort of email 15
branches. 16
Do you generally recall this email? What was the context of it? 17
A Yeah. The email was -- as you said, I virtually said nothing but introduced 18
myself. This was a report of that February 1st conference call with the evolutionary 19
virologists, and I was reporting what I had heard and what I had witnessed on the call, 20
and I was doing it because it was part of what I had suggested in a prior email that I want 21
to notify my superiors at HHS. 22
And if you look at the people to whom it was sent, it was sent to Garrett Grigsby, 23
who's the director of the Office of Global Health Affairs. It was sent to Brian Harrison, the 24
chief of staff to the Secretary of HHS. It was sent to Larry Kerr, who was in the office 25
117
of -- I think he's a biosecurity kind of guy in HHS. And to Robert Kadlec, who was the 1
assistant secretary for preparedness and response. And it was sort of like -- you know, 2
you talk about trip reports? This was a phone call report. 3
Q That's really helpful. 4
And although the email is lengthy, I think it's all connected to itself. In other 5
words, it's hard to take one sentence out of this and read it. So I'm just going to read the 6
email out loud, which might take a little time -- 7
A Sure. 8
Q -- but the record will be clear. 9
It reads, "Folks, the call with Jeremy Farrar (Wellcome Trust) went very well. 10
Francis Collins joined, and there were several highly credible scientists (including and in 11
addition to the two that I spoke with last night) on the call with expertise in evolutionary 12
biology. One point to make clear, and this was brought up on the Task Force call. Most of 13
the rumors that are going around relate to the paper by an Indian group saying that there 14
are HIV gene sequences inserted into the 2019 -nCoV virus. All of the scientists on our call 15
felt that this was not credible, and they dismissed it as they the two did last night. That is 16
not what they were concerned about. They were concerned about the fact that upon 17
viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus 18
that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a 19
suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted. The suspicion was heightened by 20
the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on 21
gain -of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with 22
bat viruses adapting to human infection and the outbreak originated in Wuhan. Upon 23
considerable discussion, some of the scientists felt more strongly about this possibility, 24
but two others felt differently. They felt that it was entirely conceivable that this could 25
118
have evolved naturally, even though these mutations have never been seen in a bat virus 1
before. The reasons for each side of the argument are too complicated to bother you 2
with. Bottom line is that they all agreed with my strong suggestion to gather an even 3
larger group under the auspices of an internationally credible organization. After some 4
discussion, they all felt that the WHO would be the most appropriate convener of such a 5
group and that the scientific experts be broadly representative of the global scientific 6
community. Jeremy Farrar and Francis Collins will contact Tedros and ask him to do this. 7
They hope to initiate this in the next day or so. 8
"They pass no judgment at all at this point and feel that the group's mandate 9
should be: 'What are the evolutionary origins of 2019 -nCoV, important for future risk 10
assessment and understanding of animal/human coronaviruses.' In this way, there is no 11
assumption of foul play or guilt on anyone's part and merely an intense scientific look at 12
the evolutionary origins of this virus. Where that leads remains to be seen. Happy to 13
chat with any of you about this. Best regards, Tony." 14
That's the end of the email. I think for some folks what jumps out to them is the 15
mention of, "Scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on 16
gain -of-function experiments." 17
Could you, if you recall, discuss a little bit what that sentence meant by you at the 18
time? 19
A Yeah. Yeah. I was reporting what I had heard by -- and I don't know exactly 20
who it was. You know, it could have been Kristian. It could have been one of the others. 21
But in the discussions back and forth. 22
And if you look at the wording, it says they were concerned about the fact upon 23
viewing the sequences, that there was mutations that most unusual naturally in the bats, 24
and there was suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted. 25
119
And the suspicion by them on the call was heightened by the fact that 1
apparently -- at least during the call -- I used the word "by the fact." Probably shouldn't 2
have used the word "the fact." But saying, but the discussion that scientists at Wuhan 3
were known to have been working on gain -of-function experiments to determine 4
whatever. 5
So it was a report of what I had heard on the call that someone -- and certainly 6
someone said it. I think it was Kristian. I'm not sure. But said that they had heard that 7
there was gain -of-function research going on and, therefore, that makes it even more 8
compelling to look into this. 9
Q And so you are basically repeating something you heard in this remark? 10
A Absolutely, yeah. 11
Q And so if you are repeating something that you heard somebody else say, 12
when we go back to this long conversation about what exactly the term 13
"gain -of-function" means, particularly here, if you're just parroting the fact that you heard 14
somebody else say the words "gain -of-function," would you have known -- do you have 15
any idea which version of gain -of-function? 16
A Absolutely not. I mean, it was sort of like -- in fact, I'm not even sure they 17
used those words. They could have said manipulated the virus, and I interpreted it as 18
gain -of-function of some sort. I don't really recall. But it was what was said by them on 19
the conference call. 20
Q And it seems like a lot of this discrete conversation about intentional 21
manipulation on this call, it seemed to revolve around the furin cleavage site. 22
A Right. 23
Q Is that right? 24
A That's correct. 25
120
Q I think -- in our conversations with the coauthors of the paper later on, I 1
think it is not clear the extent to which, at this point, they had their arms around the idea 2
that furin cleavage sites may not have previously been observed in sarbecoviruses per se, 3
but they are perhaps not so unusual when you move up to beta coronaviruses. 4
A Right. 5
Q It's not a question. It's just an observation, if you feel this way, that the body 6
of knowledge upon which this whole conversation is based evolved subsequently to this 7
call. 8
A Right. Yeah. The thing I do remember about the call -- and I think I may 9
have been alluding to it -- there was discussion back and forth about what some people 10
thought and what other people thought. But the underlying theme was, we don't know 11
all that needs to be known right at this moment. We have to go back and start looking at 12
a whole bunch of other sequences to see similarities or not. 13
So there was a feeling not of what we talk about on this call is the final 14
determination. It's, we need to be thinking about it more and looking more into it. 15
Q And is it right that -- I think from the email we can tell -- there was already 16
disagreement amongst this group to begin with on February 1st, right? 17
A Oh, there were those in there who felt that this most likely was a 18
manipulated or created virus, and there were those in the group who felt, no, they have 19
no concern at all, and there were those in the group that were somewhere in the middle. 20
It was definitely -- it was not a unidimensional discussion. 21
Q Could I ask -- this reference to HIV gene sequences, we've seen passing 22
mentions of that. What was that conversation about? 23
A Yeah. There was an Indian paper that came out that was making claims that 24
there were HIV sequences or similar repeat sequences in the published sequence of 25
121
SARS -CoV-2. That the reason that -- even the ones who thought this may have 1
manipulated, those who didn't think so, and those in the middle, everybody universally 2
said, anybody that knows anything about molecular virology knows that that is a 3
completely ridiculous assumption. 4
So that's the reason why I said, that's not what they were concerned about. They 5
said that that's nonsense. There's nothing that resembles HIV in those sequences. So 6
that's when they went on to talk about what they were really concerned about. 7
Q That's very helpful. Thank you. 8
So after that February 1st call, what we've heard is that the authors of the paper 9
went off and wrote the paper. And as far as the paper itself went -- who was writing it 10
and who was guiding it -- we've talked about that with the coauthors. 11
Dr. Andersen told us that Dr. Farrar was a, quote, father figure to the paper, which 12
is sort of a curious but illustrative phrase, and that you played no role in the paper, as far 13
as he could see. 14
Dr. Garry has called Dr. Farrar a leader, an amazing leader of the paper, but 15
reported that, from his vantage point, he didn't influence the paper in any way. 16
And Dr. Ian Lipkin, who joined the paper a little bit later than the others, told us 17
that nobody suggested to him that you were even involved in the paper. 18
So as far as the substance of the paper went, is that generally consistent with your 19
recollection of your own role? 20
A That is correct. 21
Q We have seen emails where sometimes the authors would write up a draft, 22
and they would share the draft with Dr. Farrar, and he would occasionally forward those 23
drafts on to yourself or on to Dr. Collins. 24
When that would happen, just as a general matter -- we can look at a few 25
122
examples -- but, in general, if you recall, how would you have seen your role as the 1
recipient of those forwarded emails? Is it more that, oh, Jeremy is sending me this so 2
that I can open up a version, go in, and make line edits? Or is it, from your point of view, 3
more of an FYI situation? 4
A Absolutely, an FYI and a courtesy. 5
Q So we can look, I think, at an example of that. And so I will introduce 6
minority exhibit H. 7
[Fauci Minority Exhibit No. H 8
was marked for identification.] 9
BY 10
Q And I'll give you a second to familiarize yourself with that. For the record, 11
the Bates label of this email chain is SSCP_NIH -751. 12
I won't take too long with the exhibit itself. I won't quiz you on the contents of 13
the draft. 14
So this is February 4th. So we're now 3 days out from the conference call. And at 15
the top of the first page, it looks like we have what we just talked about. Eddie Holmes, a 16
coauthor of the paper, sends to Jeremy Farrar, hey, "Here's our summary so far." 17
And then Jeremy Farrar forwards that on to yourself and Dr. Collins and says, 18
"Please treat in confidence. A very rough first draft from Eddie and team. They will send 19
on the edited, cleaner version later." 20
Is this basically an example of exactly what you were just saying? 21
A Yeah. To me, this was an FYI and a courtesy to let you know where we are in 22
the process. 23
Q So when it comes to -- that's helpful in terms of your process role, the role or 24
lack thereof that you were playing. 25
123
When it comes to the substance of the paper, I do want to say there's been a fair 1
amount of discussion about whether or the extent to which the authors somehow 2
flip-flopped. That on February 1st, these folks were saying, hey, gosh, I think this came 3
from a lab, and just merely days later, they somehow changed their minds. All of a 4
sudden, they're saying it couldn't have come from a lab and that there must be 5