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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 (DAY 2) 14
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Tuesday, January 9, 2024 19
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Washington, D.C. 21
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The interview in the above matter was held in room CVC -268, Capitol Visitor 24
Center, commencing at 10:00 a.m. 25
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Present: Representatives Wenstrup, Griffith, Malliotakis, Jackson of Texas, 1
Cloud, McCormick, Ruiz, Ross, Dingell, and Castor. 2
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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
MADELINE BREWER, COUNSEL 8
ANNA -BLAKE LANGLEY, PROFESSIONAL STAFF MEMBER 9
ERIC OSTERHUES, CHIEF COUNSEL 10
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PETER SPECTRE, PROFESSIONAL STAFF MEMBER 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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ALAN SLOBODIN, SENIOR CHIEF COUNSEL 22
JOHN STROM, SENIOR COUNSEL 23
MINORITY CHIEF COUNSEL 24
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, SENIOR COUNSEL AND 7
SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT 8
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For ANTHONY S. FAUCI: 11
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DAVID SCHERTLER, PARTNER 13
DANNY ONORATO, PARTNER 14
SCHERTLER, ONORATO, MEAD & SEARS LLP 15
555 - 13TH STREET, NW 16
WASHINGTON, DC 20004 17
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ALSO PRESENT: 19
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GRACE MCMAHON (PARALEGAL) 23
MATT LAGANZA (PARALEGAL) 24
We can go on the record. 25
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Good morning, Dr. Fauci. 1
Dr. Fauci. Good morning. 2
Thank you for coming back. 3
Just a couple of housekeeping items. One is that all the same rules from 4
yesterday's conversation will also apply to today's conversation. Another is that the 5
exhibit labels, both majority and minority, will be continuous. We'll just pick up where 6
we left off yesterday. 7
And with that, I think we'll have folks in the room identify themselves. It might 8
be logical just to start here. chief minority counsel, select 9
subcommittee. 10
chief counsel for the minority, Energy and 11
Commerce Committee, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. 12
senior counsel, Democratic staff, select subcommittee. 13
, minority counsel, select subcommittee. 14
Democratic staff director of the select 15
subcommittee. 16
Mrs. Dingell. Debbie Dingell, select committee member, Energy and Commerce 17
Committee member, and the Representative for the University of Michigan. Go Blue. 18
Dr. Wenstrup. Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Second District. 19
Mr. Benzine. Mitch Benzine, staff director for the majority of the select 20
subcommittee. 21
Mr. Strom. John Strom, senior counsel, House Energy and Commerce 22
Committee majority, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. 23
Ms. Brewer. Madeline Brewer, majority counsel, select subcommittee. 24
Mr. Spectre. Peter Spectre, professional staff member, select subcommittee 25
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majority. 1
Ms. Langley. Anna -Blake Langley, professional staff member, majority, select 2
subcommittee. 3
Mr. Osterhues. Eric Osterhues, chief counsel, majority, select subcommittee. 4
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Mr. LaGanza. Matt LaGanza, paralegal. 6
Ms. McMahon. Grace McMahon, paralegal. 7
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Mr. Barstow. Kevin Barstow, White House Counsel's Office. 9
Mr. Cooke. Perrin Cooke, senior counsel at HHS. 10
Mr. Onorato. Danny Onorato, counsel for Dr. Fauci. 11
Mr. Schertler. David Schertler, counsel for Dr. Fauci. 12
Dr. Fauci. Anthony Fauci, former director of NIAID; currently, professor at 13
Georgetown. 14
Great. Thank you, all. We'll start our timer. 15
EXAMINATION 16
BY 17
Q Dr. Fauci, I will just start with a few pretty discrete , narrow questions about 18
a few things that were discussed in the last hour of yesterday's conversation. 19
And the first one of those is just, there was a conversation about Dr. Ping Chen at 20
NIAID and her trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology BSL -4 lab, and her observations as it 21
related to the training levels of the folks working at that lab. You provided a little bit of 22
context about how the French helped the Chinese build that lab. 23
I just want to ask, our understanding is it's not at all clear to us that that is the lab 24
where the EcoHealth work occurred. 25
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We understand that it seems much more likely to be the case that that work, the 1
year 5 report, all those experiments that we keep talking about, occurred in a BSL -2 or 2+ 2
or 3, whatever environment on a completely different campus that's like 45 minutes away 3
by car from the BSL -4 lab. 4
I don't know if you have a similar understanding. 5
A I have an understanding of the relationship between a BSL -4 lab and the 6
experiments that were conducted under the NIH subaward through Eco to the Wuhan 7
Institute of Virology, and those experiments would not have all been done or required to 8
be done in BSL -4. 9
So I think the confusion, if I might say, that occurs when people bring up reference 10
to a BSL -4 and/or the training that might be required of or requested for individuals who 11
will be working in BSL -4 is unrelated to the experiments that were done, which would 12
be either BSL -2 or BSL -3. 13
I'm not sure of the physical location of the two. But the one thing that's clear is 14
that what we're all talking about here are not BSL -4 experiments. 15
Q I appreciate it. Thank you. 16
My next question relates to majority exhibit 13, and that's an email starting with 17
Dr. David Morens. It does not have a Bates number, but I'll give counsel a moment to 18
find it and I'll give you a moment to flip back through it. 19
[Pause.] 20
A Okay. Yes. 21
Q My only item of interest is on the third page of the physical document. 22
Down at the bottom there's an email from Dr. Morens to Dr. Daszak that starts with, 23
"Great info, thanks." I don't know if you see that. 24
A I see it. 25
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Q I'm going to read the sort of pertinent part out loud. 1
"Great info, thanks. Tony doesn't maintain awareness of these things and 2
doesn't know unless program officers tell him, which they rarely do, since they are across 3
town and may not see him more than once a year, or less..." 4
So just setting a little bit of context, it's a little bit of what we talked about 5
yesterday. It sounds like this is sort of contemporaneous, late January even, Dr. Morens 6
is saying, hey, in general, Dr. Fauci doesn't know anything about a particular grant at any 7
given moment, and in this particular conversation about EcoHealth Alliance, he does not 8
have awareness of what we're talking about. 9
Is that what you read here, and is that what you recall? 10
A It's what I read, and it's what I recall. 11
As I mentioned yesterday, we have thousands of grants. We have very highly 12
trained subject matter experts at the program level that look at the grants and monitor 13
the grants. It would be physically impossible for me to get into and look at every grant. 14
And that's the reason why you have trained personnel at the program level, one of 15
which, for example, is Cristina Cassetti, who's the deputy director of the Division of 16
Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. She is Emily Erbelding's deputy. 17
And then, as we spoke yesterday, you have the people down the line in the 18
program, Erik Stemmy, Diane Post, and et cetera, et cetera. 19
Q I understand. Thank you. Great. 20
I also have a question or clarification about majority exhibit 17, and I'll give folks a 21
minute to flip to it. That's an October 20th, 2021, letter from Dr. Tabak to 22
Representative Comer. 23
Mr. Schertler. What exhibit number is that? 24
Seventeen is what I have. 25
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Mr. Schertler. Got it. Thanks. 1
BY 2
Q So I'll give you a moment just to glance back over that, if you'd like to. 3
A Is that the one dated October 20th? 4
Q It is. 5
A Okay. 6
[Pause.] 7
A Yes. 8
Q Great. 9
So my question is, on the second page of the letter, there's a little bit of 10
discussion. I might just read a few excerpts, starting with above those bullet points. 11
There's a sentence that reads, "The second document," which is not seen here but 12
was attached to the letter, "is a genetic analysis demonstrating that the naturally 13
occurring bat coronaviruses used in experiments under the NIH grant from 2014 to 2018 14
are decades removed from SARS -CoV-2 evolutionarily." 15
And then subsequent to that are a series of five bullet points describing five 16
different viruses. The fourth bullet point there is RaTG13. I'm just going to read that 17
one. 18
"RaTG13, one of the closest bat coronavirus relatives to SARS -CoV-2 collected by 19
the Wuhan Institute of Virology." 20
In the paragraph following that, there's a discussion of how a 96 or a 97 percent 21
match actually represents decades of evolutionary distance; therefore, the conclusion is 22
the bat coronaviruses studied under the EcoHealth Alliance grant could not have been the 23
source of SARS -CoV-2 and the COVID -19 pandemic. 24
There was some discussion yesterday about this general part of the letter. I 25
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don't know to the extent to which you're familiar or not, but I just wanted to ask, we're 1
not sure, and, in fact, I think we think that RaTG13, although it has gotten lots of interest 2
because it's sitting at that 96 percent match, it's not clear to us that that had anything to 3
do with the NIH grant or the EcoHealth work. It seems that that was collected in -- 4
A Right. 5
Q -- field work done by the Wuhan Institute on its own time, on its own dime. 6
Do you have any sense of that? 7
A That is my understanding. The virus that was part of the experiments that 8
were funded through that subaward is WIV -1. That's different than RaTG13. 9
Q Precisely. And so I only clarify it because the phrasing of the letter could 10
lead a reader to think that every virus named here was part of the NIH work. I don't 11
think that that is actually the case. 12
A That is not the case, yeah. 13
Q All right. Great. 14
The last question or clarification from me is that -- there's no exhibit for this. I'm 15
just going to read something to you. 16
There was some discussion towards the end of the day yesterday about the 17
previous exchanges that you have had with Senator Rand Paul on the general topic of 18
gain -of-function, the extent to which those exchanges were either clear or not so clear. 19
I'm just not sure that they are as unclear as maybe it seems like, listening to our 20
conversation yesterday. So I just want to read a few excerpts from those conversations, 21
if it's okay with you. 22
In the May 2021 Senate HELP hearing, which I think is the same hearing that has 23
the initial quote that we discussed yesterday that we did not ever fund gain -of-function, 24
Senator Marshall asked you, "My point is, is there national security implications with 25
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something as theoretically lethal as viral gain -of-function?'" 1
You answered, "Sure, there is. That is why we have committees. We have a 2
P3CO committee, which is the Potential Pathogen" -- "Pandemic Pathogen Care and 3
Observation" -- "and Oversight," excuse me. 4
So my point is just to note that it does seem as if within the context of that 5
hearing you pointed folks to the P3CO framework. 6
A Yes. I did. 7
Q Great. 8
In a separate hearing, in November 2021, where yourself and Senator Paul again 9
discussed this same topic, you said the following to Senator Paul. 10
Quote, "Senator, with all due respect, I disagree with so many of the things that 11
you have said. First of all, gain -of-function is a very nebulous term. We have 12
spent -- not us but outside bodies -- a considerable amount of effort to give a more 13
precise definition to the type of research that is of concern that might lead to a 14
dangerous situation. You are aware of that. That is called P3CO." 15
That's the end of the quote. 16
So I just wanted to highlight that to emphasize it. It seems to us that for a 17
listener -- 18
A Right. 19
Q -- of those exchanges -- 20
A Right. 21
Q -- there would have been some degree of clarity -- 22
A Right. 23
Q -- about what you were talking about. 24
A Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. It didn't come into the conversation 25
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yesterday. But it isn't as if P3CO was never brought up in the discussions that I had. As 1
you said there, it was brought up twice, at least, maybe more. 2
Q And there are others that -- 3
A Yeah. 4
Q -- I won't bother to sit here and read them. 5
A Maybe more, at least once to Senator Paul and clearly once to Senator 6
Marshall. 7
Q It looks like you may have read him out loud the whole definition about 8
highly transmissible and uncontrollable, et cetera. 9
A Yeah. 10
Q Great. That was all, I think, I had. And with that I'll turn it over to my 11
colleague Will. 12
Great. Thank you. 13
Before I start on questions, I know that a couple members joined immediately 14
after introductions. Now is a good point of -- 15
Ms. Castor. Congresswoman Kathy Castor. 16
Ms. Malliotakis. Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis. 17
Great. I think that's everybody. 18
BY 19
Q Good morning, Dr. Fauci. 20
A Good morning. 21
Q I recall at the end of yesterday's long 7 hours of questions there was an 22
exchange that my colleague was just going through some of the clarification on 23
testimony, and something that you said I wanted to revisit. 24
You know, you mentioned that you've endured roughly 3 years now of people 25
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taking things that you had said, taking them out of context, mischaracterizing them, using 1
them in ways that are political, nefarious, disingenuous, et cetera. 2
So, candidly, I actually thought that many of yesterday's questions from both sides 3
were helpful and I thought illuminated a lot of what your role was at NIAID, the crucial 4
lifesaving work you and your colleagues did in the middle of the pandemic, and a lot of 5
what the lessons were that we learned and should apply going forward to prevent illness, 6
save lives, prevent or address the inevitable next emerging threat. 7
So that's why -- last night, the select subcommittee on their Twitter account -- this 8
is the Republicans, they're in the majority, so they control the committee Twitter 9
account -- they sent out their version of how they saw the day's testimony. 10
Let me first ask, I know you're not a social media guy. I think everybody who's 11
read a lot of stuff here knows that you're not on social media platforms. 12
A Right. 13
Q You didn't see the tweets -- 14
A I didn't. 15
Q -- last night? Okay. 16
A I didn't see the tweets, no. 17
Q Okay. So I thought -- and you didn't tweet out your own recap of 18
yesterday's -- 19
A I don't know how to tweet. 20
Q Okay. Great. I didn't think so. 21
Ms. Malliotakis. I wish I didn't either. 22
Okay. 23
Mrs. Dingell. My staff won't let me. 24
So I just thought you should see them as we enter a second day 25
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of questioning, in case you wanted to react to them or clarify anything for any confusion. 1
So there is a thread of tweets, a series of tweets, and we'll just take them one at a 2
time. 3
So I'm introducing first as exhibit J. This is the first tweet in the -- K? Oh, we're 4
on K. I'm sorry. We ended on J. We are on K. 5
So this is exhibit K. 6
[Fauci Minority Exhibit K 7
was marked for identification.] 8
BY : 9
Q And this is the first tweet in the series from the Select Subcommittee on the 10
Coronavirus Pandemic Twitter account @COVIDSelect. I know it's X now, but I just can't 11
stop calling it Twitter, so I'll just keep calling it Twitter. 12
So this tweet reads -- and I'll just read it for the record. It's short. There's some 13
red sirens around the first part. 14
"DR. FAUCI DAY 1 TAKEAWAYS: Today, @COVIDSelect questioned Dr. Anthony 15
Fauci for seven hours about his role during the COVID -19 pandemic. Dr. Fauci's 16
testimony uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America's public health systems." 17
And then, "Key highlights below." 18
So I wanted to, you know, ask your impression of this statement that your 19
testimony, quote, "uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America's public health 20
systems." 21
Now, I know that, you know, we talked about lessons learned, we talked about 22
things we can improve. I think there was some great exchanges particularly on public 23
health data, you know -- 24
A Right. 25
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Q -- therapeutics -- 1
A Right. 2
Q -- countermeasures, all of that. 3
But do you think it's a fair characterization of your testimony yesterday that we 4
uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America's public health systems? 5
A No. I mean, it was discussed under lessons learned. And one of the 6
things that I said yesterday is that the CDC, for example, and the public -- local public 7
health infrastructure, we don't have that kind of realtime communication that goes back 8
and forth, and that needs to be corrected so that we can get realtime data in our decision 9
making . But I wouldn't characterize it as a drastic and systemic failure. 10
Q Okay. Thank you. 11
So I'll introduce now the next tweet in that thread, exhibit L. I'll read it for you as 12
well. 13
[Fauci Minority Exhibit L 14
was marked for identification.] 15
BY 16
Q So the next tweet in the thread read, "Dr. Fauci claimed that he 'did not 17
recall' pertinent COVID -19 information or conversations more than 100 times." 18
So as anybody who was sitting here yesterday, particularly during the first hour, I 19
think this is a pretty distorted characterization of what actually happened. So I want to 20
unpack this a little bit with you and see if your recollection squares with mine. 21
So do you recall in the first hour of your testimony yesterday being asked whether 22
you had conversations with a long list of individuals about three particular topics? I 23
think it was COVID origins, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or EcoHealth Alliance. Is 24
that your recollection as well? 25
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A Correct. 1
Q Okay. And there was a long list, I think, you know, off the top of my head 2
maybe 50, 60 different individuals, at least. Is that about right? 3
A It was a large number. I don't remember. 4
Q Okay. A large number. 5
So you were asked essentially if over a 3 -year period during which you were 6
playing a key role in our country's response to a novel coronavirus pandemic whether you 7
recalled specific conversations with specific individuals on three specific topics, right? 8
A Correct. 9
Q Okay. And I imagine that during that period you likely had thousands of 10
conversations easily with different individuals around the world, scientists, public 11
officials, about the coronavirus in some fashion. Is that fair? 12
A Correct. 13
Q Okay. So when you were answering in those instances that you did not 14
recall whether you had conversations with specific individuals, that may well be because 15
you either didn't have a conversation with them about something or you may have, but 16
the conversation about a specific grant, for example, among the thousands and 17
thousands of conversations you were having about COVID generally wasn't memorable in 18
the context of a pandemic that at its peak was killing thousands of Americans every day. 19
Is that fair? 20
A That is correct. 21
Q Okay. So in a few instances, if I recall correctly, you even volunteered that 22
someone may have been part of a conference call or a broader group, and that even if 23
that didn't fit in the literal definition of having a specific conversation with them, that you 24
wanted to be clear and transparent, they may have been part of a conversation, they may 25
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have been included in a conversation even if you didn't speak with them directly about a 1
topic. 2
Is that right? 3
A That's correct. 4
Q Okay. And I'm assuming that the reason you did that is because you take 5
this seriously, you want to be as transparent as possible, and you don't want to be 6
accused improperly of hiding anything or not being forthcoming. Is that right? 7
A That's correct. 8
Q Okay. Thank you. And we appreciate that. 9
Let's move to the next tweet in the thread. This will be exhibit M. 10
[Fauci Minority Exhibit M 11
was marked for identification.] 12
BY 13
Q Okay. I'll read this into the record as well. These are all short. 14
"Dr. Fauci profusely defended his previous testimony where he stated NIH does 15
not fund gain -of-function research in Wuhan. Today, he repeatedly played semantics 16
with the definition of gain -of-function in an attempt to avoid conceding that NIH funded 17
this dangerous research." 18
So, now, I think the first part of this tweet we probably generally agree on. You 19
did defend your prior testimony because, as my colleague just walked you through again, 20
for the sake of being clear for the record, your previous testimony was accurate. 21
Is that right? 22
A It was accurate, correct. 23
Q So, now, the second part says that you, quote, "played semantics with the 24
definition of gain -of-function," end quote. 25
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Do you think that's a fair characterization of your testimony yesterday? 1
A No, that was unfair -- 2
Q Okay. 3
A -- because that's not what I was doing. 4
Q And if I remember correctly, you were being precise about using a term with 5
a specific regulatory meaning. 6
Is that right? 7
A Correct. 8
Q Okay. And so as we've discussed, and I imagine it will come up again today, 9
if I had to guess, that the use of gain -of-function broadly is meaningless in one sense, and 10
then for you, in the context in which you were evaluating whether something was 11
gain -of-function and in congressional testimony when you were being asked if something 12
was gain -of-function, that hit a specific meaning due to a regulatory framework that 13
determined if something was gain -of-function. 14
Is that right? 15
A Correct. 16
Q Okay. Do you consider that to be semantic or precise? 17
A Precise. 18
Q Okay. I do, too. 19
So, in fact, not only did you state that the research funded through a subaward at 20
the Wuhan Institute did not meet the gain -of-function -- the definition of gain -of-function 21
under the P3CO framework, but I actually recall majority staff agreeing with you several 22
times toward the end that research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through 23
the subaward was not subject to the P3CO framework and its definition of 24
gain -of-function. 25
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So I think people seem to understand in the room, despite the tweet suggesting 1
otherwise. 2
So we can move on to the next one in the thread, which we'll mark as exhibit N. 3
[Fauci Minority Exhibit N 4
was marked for identification.] 5
BY 6
Q Okay. And I'll read this one as well. 7
"Dr. Fauci testified that he signed off on every foreign and domestic NIAID grant 8
without reviewing the proposals." 9
Now, we talked about this just a second ago, but I think, again, just to clear up any 10
confusion, do you think that's a fair and accurate characterization of your testimony? 11
A That is quite unfair. 12
Q Okay. In fact, you testified yesterday and then just before, you know, I 13
started questions that there are multiple layers of review by numerous experts before 14
grant approvals came to your desk for your signature. 15
Is that right? 16
A That is correct. 17
Q Okay. And do you think that's important context that should have been 18
included here? 19
A I do think that this is very misleading. 20
Q Okay. And you testified yesterday and then this morning as well that, you 21
know, in any given year there could be a thousand, thousands, I'm sure it fluctuates, 22
of -- or so grants each year, just under NIAID, right? 23
A Correct. 24
Q Okay. And do you think it would have made sense -- you already touched 25
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on this, so you know where I'm going -- do you think it would have made sense for you to 1
personally review the entire proposal of each submitted grant proposal that had already 2
been scrutinized and reviewed and approved by numerous subject matter experts within 3
and outside NIAID? 4
A It would not have been appropriate and necessary and would've been 5
physically impossible, literally. I mean, to do my job and review every grant, it would 6
have been essentially temporally physical ly impossible to do that. 7
Q And that's why you and many in government and elsewhere, many people in 8
this room, rely on the expertise and the hard work of other people to make sound 9
recommendations, right? 10
A Correct. 11
Q Okay. I'll move on to the next one. We're marking this as exhibit O. 12
[Fauci Minority Exhibit O 13
was marked for identification.] 14
BY : 15
Q So I'll read this aloud while it's going around the room. 16
"A 2020 email, previously released by the Select Subcommittee, proved Dr. Fauci 17
was aware of dangerous gain -of-function research occurring in Wuhan, China. Today, 18
he backtracked by arguing he should not have stated that as 'fact.'" 19
Okay. Do you think that's a fair and accurate characterization of your testimony 20
yesterday? 21
A Definitely not. 22
Q Okay. And, in fact, if I recall correctly, you provided context yesterday that 23
explained why you thought that the single word picked out of one email was imprecise. 24
Is that right? 25
21
A Correct. 1
Q Okay. And could you just, to the extent that you recall what that email 2
was -- 3
A Yeah. 4
Q -- and what they're discussing here, provide that again? 5
A It was an email in which I gave the summary of the February 1st conference 6
call among the evolutionary virologists in which I attended on a listen mode. And I was 7
reporting to my superiors at HHS what the content of that discussion by others were. 8
And the phrase of talking about gain -of-function research in Wuhan was said at 9
the conference by one of the people who were on the call, not me. I was reporting what 10
other people were saying. 11
Q Okay. So this was -- again, just to reiterate, because there seems to be 12
some confusion -- this was not about something you had personal knowledge of. This 13
was you relaying something that you had heard but not yet personally pressure tested or 14
substantiated. 15
A Yeah. Everything that was in that email, it was sort of, you know, like an 16
after -activity report. This was an after -telephone -call report to my superiors. 17
Q So, again, just to sort of put in context, you know, here we are, we 18
have -- we're in our second day of talking about this. You've been subjected to 19
numerous congressional hearings, some productive, some not as productive perhaps, and 20
you've spoken about this a lot. 21
You were working pretty hard during the pandemic, to be -- is that fair? 22
A Yeah, like about 16 to 18 hours a day, yes. 23
Q Okay. That's what I figured. 24
A Right. 25
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Q So you were on a lot of phone calls, read a lot of emails, wrote a lot of 1
emails, had lots of meetings, basically all day. That was probably your day most days, 2
right? 3
A Correct. 4
Q Okay. So do you think it's -- do you think it's accurate to say that your 5
choice of a single word in a single email in which you are describing what you heard on a 6
call, absent any other evidence, proves that you were aware of certain research as this 7
tweet indicates? 8
A Absolutely not. 9
Q Okay. And do you think it is fair for somebody to look at a single email 10
among hundreds, thousands, and many of the other things that you have repeatedly said 11
in public forums, including congressional hearings and to the press, and use that to 12
somehow suggest that you had knowledge that you never talked about anywhere else? 13
Do you think that that's fair? 14
A No, it's not fair. 15
Q Okay. We'll move on to the next exhibit, marking this as exhibit P. 16
[Fauci Minority Exhibit P 17
was marked for identification.] 18
BY 19
Q This is the next tweet in the thread. It was a long thread, but we're almost 20
there. 21
So exhibit P. "Dr. Fauci was unable to confirm if NIAID has ANY mechanisms to 22
conduct oversight of the foreign laboratories they fund." 23
Okay. Do you think this is a fair and accurate characterization of your testimony 24
yesterday? 25
23
A No. 1
Q Okay. In fact, what's missing in part from this tweet is you explained that 2
the State Department has an important role in which it conducts some sort of review. 3
You don't work for the State Department so you don't know the mechanics of it, but you 4
know that either making them aware or getting some sort of signoff from the State 5
Department is integral to approval of international research. 6
Is that right? 7
A Correct. 8
Q Okay. Any -- anything else that -- any other context you think with you was 9
missed from this that you would want to add? 10
A Well, I think, it was that "any mechanisms to conduct oversight" I think was 11
an exaggeration. I was saying that when you talk about the oversight, one, you 12
mentioned the State Department thing, but also the determination of what oversight 13
goes down at what you called compliance and other elements of the grant, which is the 14
people that I spoke about at various levels in my own staff. 15
And I could not pinpoint precisely what they did in oversight, but there was 16
foreign oversight, and one of them was the State Department. 17
But to say that I couldn't confirm any mechanisms because I wanted to be precise 18
and careful, because I didn't know exactly what that individual mechanism was, but to 19
say -- to assume that there's no mechanism of oversight I think was a bit unfair. 20
Q Well, it also seems a little strange, because I feel like we spent a lot of time 21
yesterday going through exhibits that actually demonstrated -- 22
A Right. 23
Q -- oversight -- 24
A Right. 25
24
Q -- over research. 1
A Right. 2
Q We talked about a suspension -- 3
A Right. 4
Q -- of a subaward. We talked about cancellation of a grant. We talked 5
about all the terms and conditions that were put in place upon the resumption of that. 6
A Right. 7
Q So it strikes me as a little odd -- 8
A Sure. Yeah. 9
Q -- that that was the takeaway. Is that fair? 10
A I mean, the practicality of what happened was proof that this is unfair. 11
Q Okay. Thank you. 12
And we're now at the end of the thread. This is exhibit Q. 13
[Fauci Minority Exhibit Q 14
was marked for identification.] 15
BY : 16
Q This tweet reads, "Clearly, the American people and the United States 17
Government are operating with completely different expectations about the 18
responsibilities of our public health leaders and the accountability of our public health 19
agencies. More accountability coming soon!" 20
So, again, I thought this characterization was a little interesting. I actually recall 21
you having what at least appeared to me at the end of the table to be a very productive 22
exchange with one of the members about ways to possibly increase or at least evaluate 23
the adequacy of current oversight measures over potentially risky research, including 24
over international research, research that's not funded through Federal grants, and other 25
25
domestic, non -federally funded research. 1
Do you recall that exchange? 2
A I do. 3
Q Okay. Did you think that was productive to talk through at the time? 4
A I thought it was a good conversation. 5
Q Okay. I did, too. 6
So do you think that -- you know, I wanted to give you the opportunity here again 7
to just provide any context and clarity to your testimony. 8
Do you think that the government and the American people are totally different 9
about expectations for public health agencies? 10
A What I gathered from this, from reading this for the first time here, showing 11
it to me, is that it's implying seemingly strongly that the American people really care 12
about responsibilities and the United States Government doesn't. And that's not so, 13
because we do care very much about our responsibilities. 14
Q Did you take your role seriously during the pandemic when you held it? 15
A I took my role very seriously. 16
Q Okay. And is that why you worked 16 -, 18-hour days? 17
A Yes. 18
Q Okay. Thank you. That's the end of my questions. I just wanted to 19
make sure that you understood how your testimony was being interpreted, give you the 20
opportunity to provide any context and clarity to those that we all have the same 21
understanding going forward into our second day. So thank you. 22
A Thank you. 23
BY : 24
Q Good morning, Dr. Fauci. 25
26
A Good morning. 1
Q I want to apologize from the start, because my question line here is probably 2
not going to be the most pleasant for you, but I do think it is important for the record. 3
During the course of the COVID -19 pandemic, did you receive threats to your life 4
and safety in your role as a leading voice on the pandemic response? 5
A Yes. 6
Q When did those threats begin to occur? 7
A You know, I don't recall exactly when they began to occur, but they certainly 8
reached a point when I began pushing back a bit on some of the statements that were 9
coming out from the Trump White House, for example, about hydroxychloroquine and 10
the virus is going to disappear and go away. And I was saying, no, that's not the case. 11
Then I started getting threats and they accelerated and accelerated. 12
Q And what was the nature of those threats, if you recall? 13
A Well, some of them were outright death threats. Some were documented. 14
And a couple of individuals were arrested, one who had an AR -15 in their car with 15
multiple magazines of ammunition and a bulletproof vest with a GPS going to 16
Washington. And he was stopped in a traffic stop and asked where he was going, and 17
he was going to go to kill me and a couple of other people. 18
Others were harassing phone calls. They made it very clear, whoever they were, 19
that they knew -- 20
Q I -- this is -- it's hard. 21
A Time out for a second. 22
Q Yeah, take your time. 23
Mr. Schertler. Yeah. Take a break. 24
If you need a moment to leave the room -- 25
27
Mr. Schertler. Yeah. Would it be all right if we go off the record? 1
. Yes. We can go off the record. 2
[Discussion off the record.] 3
BY 4
Q Back on the record. 5
A Yeah, I'm sorry about that, but it just -- 6
Q No. 7
A I don't want to talk too much about it because I don't want to get it. 8
But it was constant threats to me, my wife, and my children, calling up -- I have 9
three daughters, and they're, you know, at the time 28, 31, and 33, calling them up and 10
saying -- I don't know how they got their phone number -- but calling them up and telling 11
them, "We know where you live, we know where you work," and very, very aggressive, 12
violent, sexually explicit threats against them and against my wife, so -- not to mention 13
the threats against me, which, you know, I get used to, which triggered the need for 14
security, which I still have to this day. 15
And every time somebody gets up, and every time Senator Rand Paul gets up and 16
says I'm responsible for the death of 4 million people, the death threats go up off the 17
wall, the threats against me and my wife and my children go off of the wall. 18
Q Thank you for sharing. I can personally not even imagine what you and 19
your family went through. And it sounds like, just to reiterate, that it started because 20
you used your scientific data and knowledge to disagree with misinformation from 21
President Trump. 22
Is that correct? 23
A That's correct. 24
Q And you mentioned your security detail. Public reporting states that that 25
28
began in early April -- 1
Mr. Barstow. I'm going to stop you here. I don't think we should. I think he 2
acknowledges that he's being provided security. I don't think we should have further 3
conversation about that detail or why those decisions were made. 4
. All right. I was just going to ask and confirm when it started, if that's 5
okay? If not, we can move on. 6
Mr. Barstow. I think we have established that he was provided a security detail. 7
It started in 2020, and it continues . 8
BY 9
Q We can move on. 10
Did any threats that you received impact the staff at NIAID who worked closely 11
with you? 12
A I'm not sure what they -- but they were very, very shook up that their leader 13
was being threatened and his family was being threatened. 14
So I don't know what kind of threats they got, but they certainly were shaken up 15
by the fact that it was clear that I was -- I was being threatened. I guess they were 16
worried about me but also worried about themselves being associated with me. 17
Q And I want to get into a little bit about threats to other scientists, because 18
you were not the only one who experienced threats during the pandemic. 19
Is that correct? 20
A That is correct. 21
Q And, in general, does this treatment of scientists discourage them from 22
speaking publicly about their work? 23
A Yes, very profoundly. In fact, when scientists would sometimes want to 24
push back at the misinformation and disinformation that's out there, as soon as they do, 25
29
almost immediately they wind up getting threats. I don't know how that happens, but it 1
happens quickly. Like, it's clear that when somebody gets up and defends Tony Fauci on 2
social media or what have you, within an hour they get threats themselves. 3
So that's the reason why many of the scientists who want to come out and say, 4
"Hey, what are you doing, this is not what happened," et cetera, et cetera, they're afraid 5
to come out and publicly defend. And they've told me so, that they're afraid. "I'm 6
sorry I'm not defending you, but if I do, I'm going to start getting threatened." 7
Q And there's the concerns obviously for those scientists in the moment; but in 8
a future -looking way, are there concerns about how this might impact bright young 9
scholars going into science and public service and sharing that information with the 10
world? 11
A It is in my opinion, but it's well documented by people who have done 12
surveys that people are very reluctant now to get into public health. People have left 13
public health and people don't want to get into it because of what's going on, of the 14
threats on individuals in public health. 15
Q You're right, there have been studies that have actually proven this. In 16
particular, a GAO report titled, "Pandemic Origins: Technologies and Challenges for 17
Biological Investigations," which was issued in January of 2023, said, "Researchers may 18
experience unwanted attention or pressure because of their involvement in pandemic 19
origin investigations and leave the field or refuse to participate." 20
What kind of impact on science might that have if people are refusing to take part 21
in investigations or leaving the field because of fear? 22
A That's going to have an obvious negative impact, because if the best and the 23
brightest don't want to go into a field that right now is really very, very important, maybe 24
even more important than it has been, given the history over the last couple of -- few 25
30
decades of emerging infectious diseases, you know, that we spoke about yesterday, from 1
HIV to Ebola to Zika to pandemic flu to COVID, et cetera, we need good people in public 2
health, and if they're intimidated about going into public health then we have a problem 3
in this country. 4
Q Similarly, Nature published an article in October 2021 titled, "I Hope You Die: 5
How the COVID Pandemic Unleashed Attacks on Scientists." This article included dozens 6
of researchers who shared their stories about death threats or threats of physical or 7
sexual violence. 8
There was an associated editorial, also in Nature, that said, "Institutions at all 9
levels must do more to protect and defend scientists and to condemn intimidation." 10
They further said, "Taking steps to support scientists who face harassment does 11
not mean silencing robust open criticism and discussion. The coronavirus pandemic has 12
seen plenty of disagreement and changing views as new data has come in, as well as 13
differing stances on which policies to adopt. Scientists and health officials should expect 14
their research to be questioned and challenged and should welcome critical feedback that 15
is given in good faith. But threats of violence and extreme online abuse do nothing to 16
encourage debate and risk undermining science communication at a time when it has 17
never mattered more." 18
Do you agree with those statements? 19
A Absolutely. 20
Q And is that in line with your experience? 21
A Very much in line with my experience. 22
Q And what can the United States do to ensure we have a properly staffed and 23
qualified workforce for scientific research and, specifically, pandemic preparedness? 24
A Well, I think there are a lot of things. One of the things is to show obvious 25
31
support for public health officials. 1
You had mentioned, there certainly are disagreements that are valid 2
disagreements for discussion. But when public health officials and individuals are 3
demonized, I think there needs to be a lot of support for those people publicly by 4
everyone, including at all branches of government. 5
Q I agree with that. 6
I'm going to go back to the threats specifically to you. I'm not going to go into a 7
lot of detail, but I do want to get this on the record. So I am going to introduce this as 8
minority exhibit R. 9
[Fauci Minority Exhibit R 10
was marked for identification.] 11
BY : 12
Q This exhibit is an affidavit filed in Federal Court in Maryland on July 26th, 13
2021, by Brett Rowland. It was filed in support of criminal charges against someone 14
named Thomas Patrick Connally for threatening to kill you and members of your family. 15
Are you generally familiar with this case? 16
A Yes, I am. 17
Q This affidavit is full of tremendously violent and awful language, and we do 18
not need to get into that. Obviously, it's very emotional for everybody. 19
So on page 3 of the affidavit -- and you don't need to look at it if you don't want to 20
because I'm going to read some of this -- there's an email that was sent to you with the 21
subject, "Hope you get a bullet in your compromised satanic elf skull today." 22
The email goes through various other threats to you that are horrific. It has been 23
passed around. It is now in the record. So I will allow others to read those for 24
themselves. 25
32
But do you recall these threats being made to you? 1
A Yes. 2
Q And, clearly, they had a profound impact on you? 3
A [Nonverbal response.] 4
Q The reference to you -- or some of these references to you clearly came from 5
media coverage of public officials who were making similar statements, maybe not as 6
extreme. But the language of calling you an elf seems to clearly have come from Florida 7
Governor Ron DeSantis. 8
Do you recall him using that language? 9
A Yes. I believe he said he wants to throw that elf over the Potomac River. 10
Q And so it's clear that statements from public officials, you mentioned 11
President Trump, now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, their statements had an effect on 12
the threats that were made towards you? 13
A I believe they had a strong effect. 14
Q And I think with that, we can end the questions on this tough subject and 15
move onto something a little more palatable. 16
BY 17
Q Yeah, I actually did have just one discrete follow -up on that. 18
You know, I think it's very clear from what we just heard how much you and public 19
health officials and scientists did take on during the pandemic, how much of this vitriol 20
was present. 21
I think there are thousands of young people at this point in time who are 22
contemplating careers in science, careers in public health, careers in medicine, and 23
probably feel apprehensive based on how people in these professions have been treated 24
in the past 3 or 4 years. 25
33
I'd be curious, as a leading public health official, what you would tell people who 1
are considering those careers but feeling fearful as a result. 2
A You know, I would encourage them to get into public health because the 3
positive impact you can have on your country, the citizens of your country, is worth it. I 4
wish there were not these kind of threats, but I would encourage them to not be put 5
aback, and hopefully something will be done to diminish that. 6
And by diminishing it, I mean what you were referring to, stop having the -- well, 7
you can't stop people from doing things because they can say whatever they want to say. 8
But when public officials and media demonize health officials that is a real strong 9
disincentive. 10
And I would encourage them to try to look past that at the rewards of what public 11
health does, is namely taking care of people, which is what I and many of my colleagues 12
have done for a very long period of time. 13
Again, it's a tough situation because you can't, because of freedom of speech, you 14
can't prevent someone from saying what it is that they want to say. 15
One of the things that we could do is to encourage public officials, who 16
supposedly have the good of the country involved, not to be part of the problem of 17
demonizing. And I have been demonized by a lot of public officials. I mean, I have 18
become a campaign slogan throughout some of the election cycles, which is very, very 19
clear. 20
And that's no secret. I can say that definitively as opposed to "I can't recall." I 21
do recall definitively what that is. I have been completely demonized in various 22
elections, you know. "Fire Fauci. Throw him in jail. Vote for me." 23
Q Thank you. 24
I'd like to move again back to this idea we were discussing yesterday, the 25
34
importance of looking at the hours we have with you today and learning from you and 1
your perspective on how we can approach our perspective on the COVID -19 pandemic, 2
apply lessons learned for future pandemic preparedness and response. 3
I'd actually like to look at the discrete issue of long COVID for a few minutes. 4
During the course of the pandemic, I think it became clear rather quickly that the 5
process of recovering from COVID -19 was not the same for everyone. 6
In particular, it appeared that some patients were carrying forward residual 7
symptoms for months, potentially years following their infection in a phenomenon that 8
eventually became known as long COVID. 9
So, Dr. Fauci, could you explain for us in just a bit more detail what we know about 10
long COVID so far? 11
A Yeah. We know it's real. Long COVID is a syndrome, and it varies in what 12
the percentage is, in some studies as little as 5 percent, some as high as 20. The real 13
number may be probably somewhere around 7 percent. 14
But we're still trying to figure out because of the, I would say, the looseness first 15
early on of the definition of it. But it really is the persistence of symptomatology long 16
after the acute phase of COVID infections subsides and by normal testing the person is no 17
longer infected. 18
And yet, anywhere from weeks to months and in some cases to years, they have a 19
constellation of signs and symptoms that are very puzzling, because there is, at this point, 20
with some recent data showing some hints as to what the potential underlying 21
mechanism might be. But they have everything from sleep disturbances to very severe 22
post -exercise fatigue, particularly seen in young people, athletes, who were very well 23
trained, who get tired walking up a flight of stairs. 24
They have what's called unexplained tachycardia, autonomic disturbances, 25
35
temperature dysregulation , sweating, hair loss, a whole variety, which is really very 1
confusing. 2
Some of the -- in fact, there was an article that came out yesterday or the day 3
before, while we were here, that there were even a considerable number of deaths 4
associated with long COVID, people who had cardiovascular and neurovascular and 5
neurological symptomatology that ultimately led to their death. 6
Usually it is not a lethal syndrome, but it has disrupted the lives. And if the 7
percentage of people who actually have long COVID is even as low as a very, very small 8
percent on the spectrum of the different reports, then we have a significant problem 9
because of the fact that so many millions and hundreds of millions of people throughout 10
the world have gotten infected. 11
So we really need to know a precise handle on what the actual occurrence of it is, 12
because it's a heterogeneous syndrome. It isn't -- if it's a one, unidimensional 13
syndrome, it's easy to follow and easy to do studies. But because it's so heterogeneous, 14
we really need to get a better feel on the epidemiology of it and then look at what the 15
pathogenic mechanisms are to be able to intervene. 16
A recent study showed that even in people who, long after you think the acute 17
phase is over, they still have recognizable, subtle immune abnormalities and some subtle 18
persistence of nucleotides of the virus that you can identify. So maybe there's not 19
active infection but residual of infection. 20
That's a little bit of a long -winded answer to your question, but that's, you know, 21
that usually happens when you don't know a lot about something. The more concise 22
the answer, the more precisely you know about things. 23
Q And so just for the record and for sort of lay folks, when you are saying that 24
long COVID is heterogeneous in nature, what you're saying is that long COVID is not 25
36
necessarily manifesting the same way in every patient. 1
A Oh, absolutely. Wide variety of manifestations, wide variety. 2
I mean, some people, for example, have just chronic fatigue, and other people 3
might have dysesthesias, which are neurological tingling in their feet or in their hands. 4
In fact, that's what Senator Tom (sic) Kaine has. 5
Q And then just taking a step backwards, looking at the larger picture of 6
communicable diseases, I'm curious, are there other communicable diseases that similarly 7
result in these longer -term residual symptoms for patients, or is this a phenomenon that 8
is pretty unique to COVID -19? 9
A Well, it in some respects is unique, but it's not unprecedented to get 10
post -viral syndromes. 11
For example, the classic one that probably all of us recognize was mononucleosis. 12
I mean, when you know the stories of kids who are in school, they get mononucleosis, 13
they seem to recover, and they're out of school for weeks and weeks and weeks. That is 14
a post -viral asthenia or a post -viral washout or weakness. 15
Influenza occasionally does that in some people. They get influenza and they 16
don't bounce back for a considerable period of time. And there have been some studies 17
showing that post -influenza there are an increased incidence of heart attack 6 months 18
after a bad influenza season. 19
So there are situations of post -viral persistent symptomatology, but nothing as 20
obvious and as high percentage as this. 21
This is unique in that respect, but the concept of a post -viral syndrome is not 22
unique. And there's the whole issue of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue 23
syndrome, which very likely is related to a prior unrecognized infection. 24
Q And so you obviously mentioned earlier in this discussion that there is a 25
37
great deal that remains unknown about long COVID. 1
Are you able to offer perspective on the current steps our scientific community, 2
our medical community is taking to better understand long COVID? Are we doing 3
enough there? Should we be doing more? 4
A Yeah. 5
Q What more could we be doing? 6
A Yeah. We should be doing more, no doubt, because we don't have the 7
answers. 8
Initially, the President's budget and the Congress agreed to give to the NIH 9
$1.15 billion to do a very large cohort study to try and determine. 10
We need more studies. A study came out in, I believe, Cell, the journal Cell, 11
yesterday from a large group of people who did a systems biology approach and broke it 12
down into four types of what they call phenotypes of COVID. One is minimal, one is 13
physical, one is mental and cognitive, and one is mixed. 14
And they showed that there were various immunological abnormalities associated 15
with each, like activated B cells or various cytokine expressions, et cetera. 16
That's a big -- that's a good start, but it's only the tip of the iceberg of what we 17
need to learn. So the answer to your question is, we absolutely need to do more. 18
Q Before we conclude on long COVID, is there anything more you'd like to offer 19
perspective -wise on the topic? 20
A Yeah. There are a lot of things that we need to learn. I mean, there are 21
many, many lessons that we can learn from this. 22
One of them is that we never realized -- and you brought it up -- long COVID. I 23
mean, there's a lot that these viruses have effect on us, and we really need to learn a lot 24
more about it. 25
38
Before we conclude the round, I just want to make sure, 1
Congresswoman Castor, Congresswoman Dingell, anything you'd like to add on any of the 2
topics we covered in this hour? 3
Ms. Castor. I think I'll wait till the next hour. 4
Okay. In which case, I think we can go off the record. 5
[Recess.] 6
39
[11:14 a.m.] 1
Mr. Benzine. We can go on the record. 2
Dr. Fauci, last hour, there was a significant amount of time devoted to threats and 3
what public health officials and you in particular have experienced. 4
I want to reiterate what the chairman said at the beginning of this interview, that 5
we, of course, unequivocally denounce all threats against you, anybody, for doing 6
anything, and say for the record I've received death threats. I've received emails awfully 7
similar to "I want to put a bullet in your head and see blood spill down the steps in 8
Washington." Some of them parrot talking points from my minority colleagues. 9
So we're all kind of in the same boat here. This morning, the chairman got a call 10
saying that it would be better if he was just dead. 11
Like, I think we spent an awful lot of time on it, and it is terrible, and I wanted to 12
say that we unequivocally condemn anything against you. 13
Moving on, you went through a lot of ours, the committee's social media in the 14
last hour as well. I want to introduce majority exhibit 19. 15
[Fauci Exhibit No. 19 16
was marked for identification.] 17
BY MR. BENZINE: 18
Q This is the press release issued by the minority of the committee last night. 19
I don't want to talk about the content of the release, but, just for the record, the ranking 20
member of the committee is Raul Ruiz. Do you remember seeing Dr. Ruiz in this room 21
yesterday? 22
A No, I didn't see him in the room. 23
Q All right. Thank you. 24
All right. Shifting gears to talk about the conference call, the February 1, 2020, 25
40
conference call. 1
A Yes. 2
Q I'm sure there are 10,000 conference calls that you've been a part of, but 3
when I say "conference call" in the spirit of this interview, this is the one I mean. 4
And I want to introduce majority exhibit 20. 5
[Fauci Exhibit No. 20 6
was marked for identification.] 7
BY MR. BENZINE: 8
Q So this is an email chain that you were also presented with yesterday. As I 9
just said, it's from a different custodian, though, and Bates numbered REV 750 through 10
753. 11
And since you had time to review it yesterday, I just want to go ahead and flip to 12
the last page, so the first email in the chain. And it's a January 31st email from 13
Dr. Farrar to you, saying, "Really would like to speak with you this evening. ... 10pm 14
now UK. Can you phone me on" -- whichever phone number that is. 15
Prior to this call -- at least, we haven't seen it; maybe it's outside of, kind of, the 16
origin space -- had you had communications with Dr. Farrar about the pandemic? 17
A Not to my recollection, no, I don't think so. No. 18
Q In this -- 19
A You know, I don't think so. I'm trying to remem - -- no, I really can't recall if 20
I had anything prior to this about the pandemic. 21
Q No, that's -- thank you. I appreciate it. 22
Before I mis -title her, is Patricia Conrad a doctor? 23
A No. 24
Q Okay. Ms. Conrad then -- 25
41
A Yes. 1
Q -- responds on your behalf and says, "Will call shortly." 2
And then the next email up from Dr. Farrar -- I'm assuming you spoke to Dr. Farrar 3
that morning -- 4
A Yes. 5
Q -- on January 31st? 6
A I did. 7
Q Do you remember any of the content of that conversation? 8
A He said that he and Kristian Andersen and -- I believe it was also Eddie 9
Holmes -- but he and maybe one or two other people, one of which certainly was Kristian 10
and very likely Eddie Holmes, but I'm not 100 percent sure about Eddie; maybe Bob 11
Garry -- 12
Q Uh-huh. 13
A -- I'm not sure -- have looked at the virus and they had some concerns 14
regarding the molecular configuration of it, that it could possibly be something that was 15
manufactured. He said, why don't you call Kristian and get more information from 16
him -- 17
Q All right. 18
A -- which I did. 19
Q I don't know how Dr. Farrar relayed it. Obviously, in this email, he 20
mentions the people involved are Dr. Andersen, Dr. Garry, and Dr. Holmes. 21
A Uh-huh. 22
Q Prior to this point in time, to the best of your recollection, had you had any 23
interactions with Dr. Andersen, Dr. Garry, or Dr. Holmes just in, kind of, your normal role 24
as Director of NIAID? 25
42
Mr. Schertler. You just mean in the past? 1
Mr. Benzine. In the past, yeah. 2
BY MR. BENZINE: 3
Q I'm just trying to figure out if this is the first time that those names hit your 4
radar screen or -- 5
A I mean, I obviously know who Kristian Andersen is. He's a very 6
well-respected molecular virologist. 7
Bob Garry is somebody that I may have had communication with years and years 8
ago, back in the influenza day s. So I can't say that I've never had any interaction with 9
Bob. It's possible that I did. 10
Q Uh-huh. 11
A Eddie Holmes, I doubt. I mean, Eddie's Australian, and it would -- not that 12
that means I wouldn't have contact with him. But I would say that this was the first time 13
that I had any meaningful contact with these people. 14
Q All right. 15
Mr. Strom. Dr. Fauci, is Dr. Andersen a coronavirus virologist, I guess, prior to 16
COVID -19? 17
Dr. Fauci. I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to guess. I'm not sure if he 18
was a corona - -- but he is clearly a well -recognized evolutionary virologist. 19
Mr. Strom. Thank you. 20
BY MR. BENZINE: 21
Q And then the next -to-the bottom email on the first page, the first one from 22
you, that we went through briefly yesterday, you relay to Dr. Farrar, "I just got off the 23
phone with Kristian Andersen and he related to me his concern about the furin site 24
mutation in the spike protein of the currently circulating 2019 novel coronavirus. I told 25
43
him that as soon as possible he and Eddie Holmes should get a group of evolutionary 1
biologists together to examine carefully the data to determine if his concerns are valid." 2
And then you say, "He should do this very quickly and if everyone agrees with this 3
concern, they should report it to the appropriate authorities. ... in the USA this would 4
be the FBI and in the UK it would be MI5." 5
And then, "In the meantime, I will alert my US Government colleagues of my 6
conversation with you and Kristian and determine what further investigation they 7
recommend." 8
I'm going to kind of parse this out a little bit and start with the FBI and MI5 9
reference. Prior to this, had you worked with the FBI before? 10
A Worked with them, no -- 11
Q No. 12
A -- but, you know, given them -- years ago, they wanted me to give a lecture 13
to their people about -- I don't even remember what it was. But I haven't interacted 14
with them in a -- what's the right word? -- in a criminal justice way. 15
Q Okay. So, when you wrote "I would imagine," you literally meant "I would 16
imagine." There wasn't a, kind of, experience saying the FBI are the people to call? 17
A I don't have experience about who to call, but they were the first ones that 18
came to my mind. 19
Q No, that's totally fair. 20
And, then, moving down in the email, you wrote, "In the meantime, I will alert my 21
US Government official colleagues of my conversation...." 22
And we discussed it a little bit yesterday, the, kind of, email after the February 1st 23
conference call. You said that that satisfied this sentence, that that was you alerting -- 24
A Yes. 25
44
Q -- Mr. Harrison and Dr. Kadlec -- 1
A Yeah. And I believe -- I believe -- then I gave a quick call to Alex Azar and 2
the Department, saying, "I'm going to be getting on a call with the group of these people. 3
I'll get back to you after." And the getting back was the email we discussed yesterday. 4
Q All right. 5
So that was the nature of my next question. Because the way you wrote 6
this -- and, again, excuse me if I'm, like, taking it out of context -- "I will alert my US 7
Government colleagues of my conversation with you and Kristian," that sounds like 8
alerting of the January 31st phone call, not the February 1st phone call. So -- 9
A Yeah. In other words, what I believe I did -- and I think there are emails 10
that would verify that -- I believe I got on the phone with Alex Azar and probably Garrett 11
Grigsby, but certainly Alex, and said, "I'm going to have a phone call tomorrow with a 12
group of evolutionary virologists. I'll give you a followup about that call." And that 13
followup was my email to -- to -- I forgot who it was. 14
Q Brian Harrison and Dr. Kadlec. 15
A Brian Harrison and -- yeah, yeah. 16
Q We'll talk about that in a minute too. 17
A Yeah. Right. 18
Mr. Strom. Can I ask one quick question? 19
When you mentioned the FBI, did you have in mind because they were sort of the 20
lead agency for past -- I'm thinking, like, the anthrax mailings and stuff like that? 21
Dr. Fauci. Yep. Yep. 22
Mr. Strom. Was that the basis for thinking -- 23
Dr. Fauci. Exactly. 24
Mr. Strom. -- of them instead of DHS -- 25
45
Dr. Fauci. Exactly. 1
Mr. Strom. -- or somebody? 2
Dr. Fauci. Exactly. You know, I had a lot of experience with the anthrax from a 3
medical standpoint -- 4
Mr. Strom. Sure. 5
Dr. Fauci. -- so I kind of knew what they were doing. 6
Mr. Strom. Okay. 7
BY MR. BENZINE: 8
Q And, then, at this point, I guess, to the best of your recollection -- we'll get to 9
an email, but -- do you recall if the February 1st call had been set at this point, or was it 10
still in motion? 11
Mr. Schertler. And this is, like, that Friday evening -- 12
Mr. Benzine. The Friday -- 13
Mr. Schertler. -- the Friday of this email. Is that correct? 14
Mr. Benzine. Yes. Yes, sir. 15
Mr. Schertler. Thanks. 16
Dr. Fauci. I recall that there were -- in fact, you may have shown -- I may have 17
been shown it yesterday. I believe that there were a bunch of emails back and forth 18
about logistics. Here's a number; you know, these are the -- 19
Mr. Benzine. Uh-huh. 20
Dr. Fauci. -- kind of people on the call, et cetera, et cetera. That was 21
essentially orchestrated by Jeremy. 22
Q Okay. Let me -- okay, I'll keep going on this one. 23
"Orchestrated by Jeremy," so meaning setting up the logistics, maybe who was on 24
the call, was Jeremy? 25
46
A Yes. 1
Q You wrote in here, "I told him," meaning Dr. Andersen, "that as soon as 2
possible he and Eddie Holmes should get a group of evolutionary biologists together to 3
examine carefully the data to determine if his concerns are validated." 4
Do you think it was that push from you that got the call going, or do you think the 5
call was already going? 6
A I think it was a combination. I think Kristian already in his mind felt that he 7
wanted to make sure that he had other input from other people. And somehow that 8
merged into my saying, you know, we really should do that. 9
Q Uh-huh. 10
A Yeah, it was a combination. I don't think it was Kristian alone or me alone. 11
I just felt that it was important to be as transparent as possible. It was all part of 12
the theme of the email. You know, get virologists together, get the FBI, get MI5, get the 13
Department, just -- let's open this up. 14
Q Uh-huh. 15
A There's no -- you know, there's no -- we really need to make this, you know, 16
transparent. 17
Q I appreciate that and agree. I'm trying to kind of, I guess, bifurcate the 18
setting -up-the-logistics version verse, like, setting up the call itself. 19
A Right. 20
Q And I think the minority has introduced exhibits of Dr. Farrar sending around 21
call-in numbers, sending around -- 22
A Right. 23
Q -- you know, all those kinds of things. So I think it's pretty well -established 24
that Dr. Farrar set up the logistics of the call. 25
47
A Right. 1
Q But trying to get a better understanding if the decision to actually need to 2
have a call -- 3
A Yeah. 4
Q -- was originated with you or a combination. 5
A No, I think it was a combination. I have to say -- I mean, it was years ago, 6
so I don't remember exactly what it was -- 7
Q Uh-huh. 8
A -- but I think it was very likely it was a combination of Kristian saying, "We 9
really need to discuss this with other people," with my saying, "Yeah, why don't we get 10
together a call and do it," you know? 11
Q So you would say -- and this will be my last question on it -- that the logistics 12
side, clearly Dr. Farrar. The phone number we've -- 13
A Right. 14
Q -- seen, who's on it. 15
A Right. 16
Q But the idea to discuss the topic would've been you, Dr. Farrar, and 17
Dr. Andersen -- 18
A Yes. 19
Q -- kind of coalesced together? 20
A Right. I think so. 21
Q Thank you. 22
I want to introduce majority exhibit 21. 23
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 21 24
was marked for identification.] 25
48
BY MR. BENZINE: 1
Q This is an email we haven't seen yet, but the vast majority of the email is an 2
article by Jon Cohen that came out on January 31st regarding "Mining Coronavirus 3
Genomes for Clues to the Outbreak's Origins." 4
I don't necessarily have any questions about that article, more about the email, 5
so -- 6
A Yeah. Sure. 7
Q -- I won't go through it. But, for the record, it's an email -- emails between 8
Mr. Folkers, yourself, Dr. Andersen, Dr. Farrar, and is from a FOIA production but Bates 9
marked NIH 2396 through 2402. 10
And you forward that Science article, which I think everyone will stipulate is about 11
the origins of COVID and what we need to find in order to determine it, to Dr. Farrar and 12
Dr. Andersen and say, "You may have seen it. If not, it is of interest to the current 13
discussion." 14
And this is when -- and I'm sure you've seen -- if you don't recall this email from 15
sending it, you certainly recall it from the news reports since -- 16
A Yes. 17
Q -- Dr. Andersen's email back, where he said, "The" -- he said a number of 18
things, but -- "The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome 19
so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features 20
(potentially) look engineered." 21
I'll get to, kind of, the next line, but do you recall, was the feature he was 22
discussing there the furin cleavage site? 23
A I'm not sure. 24
Q Okay. 25
49
A Yeah. 1
Q He then -- 2
A Yeah, I'm not sure, because I -- I'm not sure if the idea of the furin cleavage 3
site was specifically brought up in my telephone call with Kristian prior to set up the email 4
or whether it was after. 5
Q If you want to just briefly look back at 20. 6
Mr. Schertler. Give us a second. 7
Mr. Benzine. Yeah. 8
Mr. Schertler. Any particular place? 9
Mr. Benzine. Just the top line of Dr. Fauci's email to Dr. Farrar: "I just got the 10
phone with Dr. Andersen and he related to me his concern about the furin site mutation 11
in the spike protein." 12
Dr. Fauci. Right. Okay. Sure. Refreshed my memory, yeah. 13
BY MR. BENZINE: 14
Q So, fair enough to say the unusual feature that he was worried about is the 15
furin site? 16
A Right. 17
Q Dr. Andersen continues in the second paragraph, "I should mention that 18
after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome 19
inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this 20
much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could 21
still change." 22
Is your -- again, we've asked Dr. Andersen, but just your understanding when you 23
got this email, that "Eddie" was Dr. Holmes, "Bob" was Bob Garry, and "Mike" was Dr. 24
Farzan? 25
50
A Certain that "Bob" was Garry. "Mike" probably was Farzan. 1
Q Okay. 2
Again -- I've said it probably 15 times at this point over day one and will say it 15 3
times today -- not a scientist, and understand that there are some terms of art that 4
maybe look one way on paper but not -- not what they meant. 5
What does "inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory" mean? 6
A I believe what he was referring to -- again, I can't say what's in somebody's 7
mind, but I would believe what he's saying is: inconsistent with the natural evolution of 8
a virus. 9
Q So, at this point -- and, granted, Andersen hedged a little bit -- 10
A But his next sentence -- 11
Q Yes. 12
A -- is very critical. 13
Q That more work needs -- 14
A He says, "We have to look at this much more closely and there are still 15
further analyses needed to be done, so these opinions could still change." 16
Q And I was going to ask about that, too. Dr. Andersen's at least first blush 17
was that it looks -- 18
A His first blush was that it was inconsistent with natural evolution. 19
Q But hedged and said, we need to do a little bit -- 20
A And said, this could change when you do further analysis. 21
Q I want to introduce majority exhibit 22. 22
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 22 23
was marked for identification.] 24
Mr. Benzine. And it's just one email. And, for my own clarity, the sent time is 25
51
Saturday, February 1, 2020. It says 12:29, but the 0000 after that is Greenwich Mean 1
Time? 2
Mr. Schertler. I think that's right. 3
Dr. Fauci. Right. 4
Mr. Benzine. So -- 5
Dr. Fauci. Just add -- just go back 5 hours. This was -- 6
Mr. Benzine. Like, 7:30 in the morning? 7
Dr. Fauci. 7:30, yeah. 8
Mr. Benzine. Is that consistent across your emails, that they're in -- did you set it 9
that way, I guess? 10
Dr. Fauci. I didn't. 11
Mr. Schertler. I think it's the way -- 12
Dr. Fauci. I don't know where they got this from. 13
Mr. Schertler. We've had this happen before. 14
Dr. Fauci. I think you got this from the Brits. 15
Mr. Benzine. Maybe. I don't know. 16
Mr. Schertler. I think sometimes it's just the way it's printed out when it's 17
produced. 18
Mr. Benzine. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure that we're talking 7:30 19
in the morning. 20
Dr. Fauci. We're talking 7:30 in the morning. 21
BY MR. BENZINE: 22
Q All right. Perfect. 23
And, again, I'm sure you're familiar with this email by this point -- 24
A Yes. 25
52
Q -- but you write to Dr. Auchincloss, "It is essential that we speak this AM. 1
Keep your cell phone on. I have a conference call at 7:45 AM with Azar," so 15 minutes 2
later. "It will likely be over at 8:45 AM. Read this paper as well as the e -mail that I will 3
forward to you now. You will have tasks today that must be done." 4
So, in conjunction with this one, I want to introduce majority exhibit 23. 5
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 23 6
was marked for identification.] 7
BY MR. BENZINE: 8
Q And, in this one, you're forwarding to Dr. Auchincloss and Dr. Lane, now, the 9
same Science article that you had forwarded to Dr. Andersen and Dr. Farrar. 10
And I just want to ask, is this the email that "I will forward to you now" that is 11
being referenced in exhibit 22? 12
A I'm sorry. Now I'm confused about exhibits. 13
Q So, in 22, you say, "Read this paper" -- there's a paper attached; I'm 14
assuming that's what you're referencing -- "as well as the email that I will forward to you 15
now." And then 9 seconds later you're forwarding an email to Dr. Auchincloss with an 16
article. 17
Is it safe to assume that 22 is referencing 23? 18
A Yeah. Again, I don't recall that, but the circumstances -- 19
Q Yes. 20
A -- of the emails strongly suggest that. 21
Q All right. I want to talk briefly about exhibit 22. 22
So you'd kind of just had your first call with Dr. Andersen and Dr. Farrar the day 23
before, had been told about potential irregularities, at least unexpected irregularities, 24
particularly with the furin site, and the next morning emailed your deputy, 25
53
Dr. Auchincloss. 1
And, taking the first line, "It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell 2
phone on." 3
Why? I guess, why? Why was it essential? What information did you need to 4
relay to Dr. Auchincloss? 5
A I wanted him to "keep your cell phone on" because I wanted to find out a 6
little bit more about what was going on. Because we went from -- there's information 7
that I was getting, emails way back from Greg Folkers about "these are the kinds of things 8
that are going on, these are the experts" that was, sort of, information gathering. 9
Q Uh-huh. 10
A Then I'm told by someone that he has concern about a possibility of an 11
engineered virus. 12
So then I said to myself -- I put two and two together. It was natural for me to 13
say, okay, now I really need to know some details about what we are doing in our grants 14
so that I will know what we're doing. And I need to know. 15
So it says, "Keep your cell phone on. I may need to get back to you. I have a 16
conference call. Read this paper as well as the email that I will forward to you. You 17
have tasks." And the task was: find out and get back to me about what we're doing. 18
Q So you were -- and correct me if this is a mischaracterization, but -- you had 19
been told that there was NIAID work in Wuhan January 27th -- 20
A The original -- yeah. I didn't get any information about what it was and 21
what they were doing. 22
Q Yeah. 23
A But I knew that we were doing -- well, you saw the email. It was, you 24
know, Baric's doing this, and these are the experts, and the other person's doing that, and 25
54
we're doing this, et cetera, et cetera. 1
So that was fine. That's information preparing me for the press conference. 2
Q Uh-huh. 3
A Like, what are we doing, as well as who are the experts that we can tap to 4
learn a little bit more about coronaviruses and what might potentially be going on, just as 5
information. 6
Then, when I had the telephone call with Kristian and with Jeremy that there is 7
now suspicion that there may have been an engineered virus, then it turned from not 8
only information but, really, what, specifically, are we doing. 9
Q So -- and apologies if this is, like, way dumbing it down -- but, at this point, it 10
was an attempt to determine if your broad understanding of NIAID work in Wuhan could 11
have facilitated what Dr. Andersen -- 12
A Right. 13
Q -- just warned you of. 14
A Yes. Yes. 15
Q Okay. 16
A It was a natural -- I believe I would've been irresponsible not to do that. 17
Q Yes. I just wanted to -- there's a lot of email traffic -- 18
A Yes. 19
Q -- and I'm trying to figure it out. 20
In this email in exhibit 22, you forward a paper called "Baric, Shi," "SARS Gain of 21
function." 22
Do you recall who -- 23
Mr. Schertler. I think you said -- is that in -- 24
Mr. Benzine. Twenty -two. 25
55
Mr. Schertler. Okay. I'm sorry. I see. 1
Mr. Benzine. It's under the "Attachments." 2
Mr. Schertler. Yep. Got it. 3
BY MR. BENZINE: 4
Q I have it if you need it, but I'm just going to ask if you recall, why -- why that 5
paper? 6
A What we were trying to do is -- I believe that was sent to me by Greg Folkers 7
as -- you know, he's an information fount, in fact, in a very good way. He just keeps 8
sending things. Like, you know, "Give us all the information we have." He's the person 9
that briefs me for the -- any variety of things I might do. 10
So I just -- I believe -- I don't recall why I did this, to be quite honest. I don't 11
know why I sent this. But it is entirely compatible with, "Greg sent me this. Here, take 12
a look at this. This is another paper of the things we're funding." But this is the North 13
Carolina -- 14
Q Uh-huh. 15
A -- work. This isn't Wuhan work. 16
Q No. And we don't need to get into the whole paper, but the paper 17
describes an experiment that resulted in an underlying virus gaining pathogenicity. And 18
Baric actually warns that these kinds of experiments could be dangerous. 19
So I was just wondering, why -- like, why that paper? Was it specific to that, or 20
just in general that it was Wuhan -affiliated? 21
A Well, it wasn't Wuhan -affiliated. It was -- 22
Q No, the work was done in UNC -- 23
A Yeah. 24
Q -- but had Wuhan as a collaborator. 25
56
A We had, I think -- at least, what I found out subsequent to this, way 1
subsequent, is that a collaboration gave Shi the sequence of a virus. That's the extent of 2
the collaboration. There were no experiments done in Wuhan. They gave him a 3
sequence. So that was the collaboration. 4
I'm not sure why I sent it to him, but I think it was just the flow of things that Greg 5
was sending me that I was sending to our people, "Hey, heads -up, take a look at this." 6
Q Yeah. 7
A It was the same thing, I think -- well, I don't know. I may have sent 8
something to -- in fact, you just showed it to me. I sent something to Kristian, then said, 9
"Take a look." He said, "I know. I'm actually" -- 10
Q Quoted in it, yeah. 11
A Yeah. 12
Q Do you recall if you ended up speaking with Dr. Auchincloss after your 13
conference call with the Secretary? 14
A I know there was an email. Yeah, I believe I did, but I don't know exactly 15
when. 16
I recall an email where he said, yeah, the work that Baric -- yeah, show it to me -- 17
Q Yeah. 18
A -- and we'll go over -- 19
Q We'll introduce that as majority exhibit 24. 20
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 24 21
was marked for identification.] 22
BY MR. BENZINE: 23
Q Is this the email that you were just thinking about? 24
A "The paper you sent says the experiments were performed before the gain 25
57
of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH." 1
So that's good. Thank you. 2
"Not sure what that means since Emily is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone 3
through the P3 framework. She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to 4
this...." 5
And -- 6
Mr. Schertler. "... to this work abroad." 7
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. And "work abroad," I believe he was referring to China. 8
Mr. Benzine. Uh-huh. 9
Dr. Fauci. I cannot imagine -- I'm not sure what else we were doing. 10
Yeah, I recall this email. 11
Mr. Benzine. So Dr. Auchincloss would be referencing the Baric -Shi paper, not 12
necessarily the -- we've talked to him, and he was referencing the Baric -Shi paper, not 13
necessarily the article that you had also forwarded. 14
Mr. Schertler. And the article is just a -- 15
Mr. Benzine. It's just an article. 16
Mr. Schertler. That's an article from Cohen -- 17
Dr. Fauci. Right, right. 18
Mr. Schertler. -- on January 30th or 31st -- 19
Mr. Benzine. Correct. 20
Mr. Schertler. -- which was also forwarded to Dr. Auchincloss. 21
Mr. Benzine. Yes. 22
Dr. Fauci. So there were two that were forwarded to him. 23
BY MR. BENZINE: 24
Q And, in this email, he's referencing the paper, the Baric -Shi paper. 25
58
A Right. 1
Q "... experiments were performed before the gain of function pause" -- so 2
that would've been pre -2014 -ish? 3
A Right. Right. 4
Q "... but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH." 5
What is that process? 6
A Again -- we went over it yesterday -- it depends on the years. If the years 7
were '14 to '17, it would have been the pause. If it's '17 on, it would've been the P3CO. 8
Q I guess what is confusing is they were conducted before the pause; 9
therefore, like, they were all good. They didn't violate anything that was in place. 10
Why would they be reviewed afterwards if the experiment was already concluded? 11
A I'm not sure what he meant by that. 12
Q Okay. 13
A I'd have to ask him. You could ask Hugh, or you might've already asked 14
him. 15
Q He didn't really know either, so -- 16
A So, if he didn't know, for sure I don't know. 17
Q Yeah. 18
And, as you read, Dr. Auchincloss continues, "Not sure what that means since 19
Emily is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone through the P3 framework." 20
I guess this is what we're trying to understand, is, in kind of, like, the process 21
within NIAID of reviewing these things, the research was done before there was any 22
programmatic pause -- 23
A Right. 24
Q -- or definition. The pause went into effect. It looks like, from how they 25
59
treated the EcoHealth grant -- 1
Mr. Schertler. And, Mitch, if I could just -- I'm not sure it's clear that, you know, 2
whether experiments were done before the pause and then after the pause and then 3
after the pause may be reviewed. I know the article -- 4
Mr. Benzine. Yeah, I don't know. 5
Mr. Schertler. -- is a 2015 article, I believe, so -- 6
Dr. Fauci. I'm not sure what he's referring to. But what is in this email is that 7
Emily is sure that no coronavirus work, in general -- I don't think she was referring -- has 8
gone through the P3C framework. 9
Mr. Benzine. Uh-huh. 10
Dr. Fauci. Which means that no coronavirus work that we are funding has been 11
of the kind that would go through the definition we went over multiple times yesterday. 12
Which means that we're good with regard to coronavirus work. It's all gone through the 13
appropriate -- 14
Mr. Benzine. Okay. 15
Dr. Fauci. -- evaluation, and it was determined that it did not need to go up to a 16
higher level. 17
So it's pretty clear. I mean, it says it very explicitly: is sure that no coronavirus 18
work has gone through the P3CO. 19
BY MR. BENZINE: 20
Q And then you respond, "OK. Stay tuned." 21
Do you recall if you talked to Dr. Auchincloss after this email? 22
A I don't recall, but I might have. I mean, likely that I did. And he confirmed 23
that, in fact, nothing went through. But I don't recall if I specifically spoke to him. I 24
likely did. 25
60
Q Moving on further through the February 1st chronology and introducing 1
majority exhibit 25. 2
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 25 3
was marked for identification.] 4
BY MR. BENZINE: 5
Q This is an email chain. At the very bottom is the logistics email from Dr. 6
Farrar to you from 6:00 in the morning someone's time; I'm not sure whose. And this 7
email is Bates marked SSCP_NIH 1902 to 1903 and has the call -in details for the February 8
1st conference call that we've talked about. 9
You then forwarded the information to Dr. Collins. Dr. Collins says he'd join. 10
At some point, Dr. Tabak gets included, says, "Would you like me to join?" 11
Collins says, "Fine with me, but I note Jeremy says he wants to keep this a 'really tight 12
group.' Tony, what do you think?" 13
And then Dr. Tabak, after the call, introduces a publication. 14
I think it's pretty clear for the record, but just one more time: You were on the 15
February 1st call? 16
A I was on the February 1st call. 17
Q Okay. And Dr. Collins was also on? 18
A Dr. Collins was on the February 1st call. 19
Q And was Dr. Tabak also on the call? 20
A Well, Tabak was not officially on the call. You know, I don't know who was 21
on a speakerphone, but he was not on the call. 22
Mr. Schertler. So, if you could just give us your recollection of -- 23
Dr. Fauci. My recollection is that Dr. Tabak was not on the call. 24
BY MR. BENZINE: 25
61
Q Not? 1
A Yeah. I don't recall him being on the call. 2
Q Were there any other -- do you recall any other government employees 3
being on the call? 4
A To my knowledge, it was just Francis and I. I don't recall Larry being on the 5
call. 6
Q We -- 7
A He could have been, but I don't recall him being on the call. 8
Q Okay. That's fair. We talked to Dr. Tabak. He was on the call, and he 9
talked about O -linked glycans on the call. But -- 10
A Well, he was silent, at least. 11
Q So I want to talk about the first forward of yours to Dr. Collins. Did 12
Dr. Collins request to be on the call? Like, how did the process -- you obviously 13
forwarded the call -in details to Dr. Collins. How did that process play out? 14
A Well, Dr. Collins is my boss. So this seemed like a pretty important call for 15
NIH, so I thought it would be a good idea to let my boss know. 16
Q So you got invited -- or you had the January 31st call, got invited to the 17
conference call after Farrar set it all up, and then went and was like, "Dr. Collins, there's 18
this call happening. Would you like to take part?" Is that fair? 19
A I believe that's the way it went, because -- yeah, I believe that's the way it 20
went. 21
Q Okay. 22
It's been in the news for a while and Dr. Redfield has talked about this a lot and 23
testified in front of us in March that he was not included in the call. He was very clear to 24
say he was not -- he's not testifying that he was intentionally excluded, just that he was 25
62
not included. 1
At any point, did -- 2
A Actually, he said that I kept him out of the call because he had a different 3
viewpoint. 4
Q He did say that -- 5
A He said that clearly. 6
Q Do you recall having any conversations with -- 7
A Sorry. 8
Q No. No problem. Do you recall having any conversations with 9
Dr. Redfield about the call? 10
A No. No. 11
Q Why not? 12
A Because why would I do that? This was a call that was organized by Jeremy 13
Farrar, who was the organizer of the call, and it wasn't my call who was in and on. But it 14
was perfectly appropriate for me to notify my boss. 15
Q This is the beginning of a pandemic, discussing how to respond to the 16
pandemic. 17
A Yeah. Yeah. 18
Q Dr. Redfield is the head of the CDC -- 19
A No, I'm sorry, I disagree with you. 20
Q Okay. 21
A I disagree with you completely. It is my responsibility to notify my boss. 22
The next morning, I notified the chief of staff of the Department of Health and Human 23
Services, who is the chief of staff to the Secretary, who is Bob Redfield's boss. 24
Q Did you have any conversations with Dr. Redfield after the fact regarding the 25
63
call? 1
A I don't recall. 2
BY MR. STROM: 3
Q And just for completeness, would the same chain -of-command concern also 4
apply to Dr. Kadlec? So you said -- 5
Mr. Schertler. I'm sorry. Could you just clarify that, Jon? 6
BY MR. STROM: 7
Q You said that it was appropriate for you to go to Dr. Collins and then email 8
Harrison a summary of the chat, of the call, but that reaching out directly to Bob Redfield, 9
because he's the head of the CDC, would've been -- and I'm not trying to put words in 10
your mouth; I'm just trying to understand -- would've been inappropriate. 11
Does that same concern apply to Dr. Kadlec, as the Assistant Secretary? 12
A Does what same concern? I'm sorry. I'm a little confused. 13
Q I'm trying to understand why, without the distorting light of hindsight, why 14
Dr. Redfield wouldn't be invited just as, like, a courtesy or as, like, you know, someone 15
who's also working the response issue. 16
A You'd have to ask Dr. Farrar. He was the one -- 17
Q Okay. 18
A -- that organized the call. He invited me on the call -- 19
Q Uh-huh. 20
A -- and I felt it was my responsibility to let my boss know that I was going to 21
be on that call. 22
Q Okay. Thank you. 23
A Yeah. 24
Q I'm just trying to understand. 25
64
A Yeah. 1
BY MR. BENZINE: 2
Q Prior to notifying Dr. Collins, did you ask Dr. Farrar if you could invite 3
Dr. Collins? 4
A Dr. Collins and Dr. Farrar are pretty good friends. So I didn't think that that 5
was going to be an issue. 6
Q Okay. 7
This was introduced yesterday, but I'm going to introduce it again, but you've 8
already looked at this email, majority exhibit 26. 9
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 26 10
was marked for identification.] 11
BY MR. BENZINE: 12
Q And as we went through yesterday, we're going to -- this is Bates marked 13
SSCP_NIH 1796 through 1798. 14
And the email on 1797, like we talked about yesterday, is, kind of, your summary 15
of the conference call and, as you said earlier this hour, your, I guess, notification that the 16
call happened -- 17
A Right. 18
Q -- to the chief of staff and a few others, Dr. Kadlec being one of them. 19
And we talked about this email quite a bit yesterday, so I'm not going to harp too 20
much on it. We focused a lot on the line about "the fact that scientists in Wuhan 21
University are known to have been working on gain -of-function experiments to determine 22
the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and 23
the outbreak originated in Wuhan." 24
And the, kind of, context of that statement is that, now that we've walked through 25
65
all this, from Dr. -- I believe it was Dr. Andersen that told you that particular line. 1
Mr. Schertler. So I'm not sure that that -- I'm not sure that Dr. Fauci had a clear 2
recollection of who told him that. 3
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. I said I wasn't sure who said that. 4
Mr. Benzine. Okay. 5
Dr. Fauci. That was my statement. 6
BY MR. BENZINE: 7
Q No, no, I'm saying I believe from our investigation it was Dr. Andersen. 8
A You believe from your investigation -- 9
Q Yes. 10
A -- it was Dr. Andersen? 11
Q Not your recollection. 12
A Okay. 13
Q So I'm walking back through the timeline a little bit. 14
January 31st, Farrar asked you to call Dr. Andersen. On the call with 15
Dr. Andersen, he expresses some concern about this being inconsistent with evolutionary 16
theory and the furin cleavage site looking possibly like an intentional mutation. 17
And then it's that concern coupled with the outbreak originating in Wuhan that 18
kind of pieces together what is happening -- what research is happening in Wuhan, that 19
now we're concerned about the research happening in Wuhan. 20
And you said yesterday that -- and apologies again if I mischaracterize it, 21
but -- that you maybe shouldn't have said "by the fact" that scientists in Wuhan 22
University have been known to do gain -of-function research, that it was something that 23
was relayed to you, not -- 24
A Right. 25
66
Q -- something that you knew as fact. 1
A I didn't know, myself, as a fact. 2
This entire email is a report of the phone call, of which I was in listening mode. 3
And I was reporting, as you say, all of the scientists on the call felt that this was 4
not -- blah, blah, blah. They were concerned about the fact that, upon reviewing the 5
sequences -- yada ya. 6
"The suspicion was heightened" -- their suspicion was heightened by their 7
statement -- 8
Q Uh-huh. 9
A -- that they had heard that there was gain -of-function or whatever it is that 10
was going on at Wuhan. 11
Q And just if you do recall, you wrote "Wuhan University." Did you mean 12
Wuhan Institute of Virology, or do you not -- 13
A I can tell you that my knowledge of Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, 14
Wuhan University, was so vague that I don't believe at the time that -- even though there 15
was an email from Greg that said these are the things we're doing, I didn't make that 16
connection. So I didn't even know there was a Wuhan Institute of Virology, and I called 17
it Wuhan University. 18
He may have said "Wuhan Institute of Virology" during that call, but I believe that 19
just goes to show you how little I knew about what was going on in Wuhan. 20
Q So it'd be more fair -- obviously, you're relaying what someone told you on a 21
conference call, but it would be more fair to read this sentence as: "... the fact 22
that" -- well -- "scientists in Wuhan," maybe cutting out the "University" -- that you didn't 23
know -- that you knew the suspicion was in Wuhan, but not necessarily which institution 24
in Wuhan. 25
67
A I said "Wuhan University" -- I didn't say it. I thought that that's -- 1
Q Okay. 2
A -- what he said. Therefore, I misinterpreted what he said. 3
Q Outside of this email, do you recall anything else that was discussed on the 4
conference call? 5
A Well, I believe we said it yesterday, but I'll re -say it again if you'd like. 6
There was different discussions -- it was different opinions of different people. Some 7
people said that they didn't think that this was an issue at all. Other people said, you 8
know, I think that this is something that we really need to look at carefully. And then a 9
few people said, yeah, I'm not sure either, let's look at it. 10
The final takeaway was, I believe, articulated by me in the last paragraph: "They 11
pass no judgment at all at this point," and they feel we need to look at it a little more 12
carefully. "No assumption." "Scientific look" at the evolutionary virology. What that 13
leads to "remains to be seen." 14
So the tenor of the conversation, which I summarized in this email, was that we 15
need to find out more. 16
Q A few lines down from the Wuhan line, there's a sentence that starts with 17
"Bottom line." Let me know when you find it. 18
A "Bottom line." 19
Q Yeah. "Bottom line is that they all agreed with my strong suggestion to 20
gather an even larger group under the auspices of an internationally credible 21
organization." 22
On the call, did you make that suggestion? 23
A I must have. I wrote it down, so -- 24
Q And the next sentence: "After some discussion they all felt that the WHO 25
68
would be the most appropriate convener of such a group." 1
I guess I'm just trying to understand the flow. WHO didn't investigate the origins 2
for, like, another year after this. 3
A Right. 4
Q And trying to understand what the, kind of, direction after the call was 5
supposed to be. 6
A Yeah. 7
Q So there are some communications with you, Dr. Collins, and Dr. Farrar after 8
this about this convening a WHO group. 9
A Right. 10
Q Is that what you meant? 11
A Yeah. The responsibility to nudge the WHO to put a group together was 12
Jeremy's, predominantly, perhaps a bit of Francis. You can ask Francis. 13
Q Uh-huh. 14
A Or you maybe already asked Francis; I don't know. But it was 15
predominantly Jeremy. But Jeremy and Francis, I believe, went back and forth about the 16
WHO. 17
My responsibility, which is what I did, was to let the people on the Department 18
know, particularly Garrett Grigsby, who's the international affairs guy, as well as Bob 19
Kadlec, as well as Brian Harrison, to let the Secretary know. 20
And I believe that the Department -- it was a multifaceted approach. I believe 21
that the Department was going to take the lead in getting the National Academy of 22
Sciences to take a look at it. 23
Q I want to introduce majority exhibit 27. 24
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 27 25
69
was marked for identification.] 1
Mr. Benzine. And it's very tiny font, and I apologize for that, but that's how it 2
was printed. 3
Mr. Schertler. Get your glasses out. 4
Mr. Benzine. Yeah, get the glasses out. 5
Dr. Fauci. Even with glasses, it's -- 6
Mr. Benzine. It's small. Hopefully Dave can read it and can assure him that 7
what I'm reading is -- 8
Mr. Schertler. So, listen, I've got an app -- 9
Mr. Benzine. Oh, we don't need to do all that. I'll just read it. 10
BY MR. BENZINE: 11
Q So this is a Slack conversation that is Bates marked REV 2902 that was 12
provided to us by Dr. Andersen. In the conversation is Dr. Andersen, Dr. Holmes, 13
Dr. Rambaut, and eventually Dr. Garry. 14
The very top message -- these messages are from February 1, 2020 -- Andersen 15
says, "Yes, call. Cheers." 16
Andrew Rambaut says, "Stay on here in case we need to message." 17
Andersen agrees. 18
It goes down a little bit further. The first message from Eddie Holmes, who's the 19
square avatar, says, "Big ask!" 20
Do you think he's referring to your ask of a WHO -convened group? 21
A You know, I can't speculate what he meant by -- I can't even see it, but I can't 22
speculate what Eddie meant by "Big ask!" 23
But let me ask you, it says here -- 24
Mr. Schertler. The time sequence would be top to bottom? 25
70
Mr. Benzine. Top to bottom, yes, sir. 1
Mr. Schertler. Okay. 2
Dr. Fauci. -- "Yes, call. Cheers." 3
"Stay on here in case we need to message." 4
"Yup." 5
"Just FYI - o-linked glycan also present in bat." 6
"Crap, don't know the context around 5 that make them glycan sites. I might be 7
wrong. The series are there in the bat." 8
I don't know what "Big ask!" means. I don't -- I'm not sure what he means. 9
BY MR. BENZINE: 10
Q The next message, which is the last one that I want to ask about, Andersen 11
says, "Destroy the world based on sequence data. Yay or nay?" 12
Any recollection of something like that happening on the conference call? 13
A No. 14
Q No? Okay. 15
After the conference call broke, besides the, kind of, summary email that you sent 16
up your chain, did you have any other conversations with anyone in the government 17
regarding the call? 18
A You know, I don't recall that I did. I just don't. I've been thinking about it 19
and thinking about it. I don't recall anything after that, except that I -- you know, I felt I 20
fulfilled my responsibility. 21
Q Yeah. 22
A You know, I told my boss, I told this, I told this, I told that, I told the chief of 23
staff to the Secretary. I kind of covered the bases. 24
BY MR. STROM: 25
71
Q There's a letter from OSTP to the National Academies. 1
A Yeah. 2
Q Do you recall talking to OSTP about this? Or was that -- 3
Mr. Schertler. I'm sorry. Could you -- 4
Mr. Strom. There's a letter from OSTP to the National Academies asking them to 5
convene. 6
Mr. Schertler. When would that -- could you give us a little date? 7
Mr. Strom. It would be after February 4th, so after this initial call. 8
BY MR. STROM: 9
Q Do you recall having any discussions with OSTP about the issue? 10
A You know, I don't. I don't. 11
Q Okay. 12
And then you mentioned thinking about the FBI being the appropriate agency. 13
You don't recall talking to them about it? 14
A No, I don't. 15
Q Okay. Thanks. 16
BY MR. BENZINE: 17
Q At any point on either of the calls, January 31st or February 1st, do you recall 18
suggesting drafting a paper or a manuscript or any kind of publication about what they 19
were doing? 20
A You know, there was some back -and-forth about a report or what have you, 21
vaguely, back and forth. Yeah. 22
Q Do you recall whose suggestion it was to draft -- 23
A No, I don't know what it was, but I remember when the report -- when the 24
discussion came up about what to do with it, I said, if you do anything with it, you've got 25
72
to do it in a peer -reviewed way so that it can get evaluated outside of this group. 1
I think if you can look at the emails that I have been shown since, which I 2
forgot -- and I don't have access to them, because I don't have access to the NIH 3
anymore -- 4
Q Yeah. 5
A -- is that my whole tenor throughout the entire thing was transparency, not 6
only transparency in letting everybody know but also, if you're going to do it, make sure 7
you do it in a way that gets peer -reviewed, not just coming out with your opinion. Get 8
your opinion peer -reviewed. 9
Q Eventually -- and we talked about it yesterday a little bit, but I want to ask a 10
few final, kind of, clarifying questions on the "Proximal Origin" paper that came out first 11
as a blog post on Virological in the middle of February and then in Nature, Nature 12
Medicine, in March. 13
Did you ever edit or suggest any edits to that paper? 14
A No. 15
Q To your knowledge, did Dr. Collins ever edit or suggest any edits to that 16
paper? 17
A To my knowledge, he did not, but you'll have to ask him. 18
Q And, to your knowledge, did Dr. Farrar ever edit or suggest any edits to that 19
paper? 20
A I cannot speak for Dr. Farrar. I don't know. 21
Q As the minority said, we've talked to all the U.S. -based authors or those who 22
are acknowledged on that paper, so I won't go through all of the science in it, except for I 23
want -- you were sent drafts periodically? 24
A Right. 25
73
Q A couple. I think it was less than 10, more than 5, drafts -- 1
A Right. 2
Q -- periodically. Do you recall ever reviewing the drafts as they were coming 3
in? 4
A It depends on what you mean by "review." I took a look at them. I didn't 5
make any editing or modification of it. 6
As they came in, I remember once saying -- after maybe the final one came in, and 7
said, you know, "Well done, nice job," sort of a courtesy response. 8
But, again, not being an evolutionary virologist, I didn't quite understand the 9
sequences. 10
Q Yeah, yeah. No, I understand. They're difficult to follow, that's for sure. 11
A Yes. 12
Q It's kind of drinking from a fire hose. 13
So I want to understand that correctly. The drafts would come in. You maybe, 14
maybe not, would open them, read them -- 15
A Yes. 16
Q -- and then say, "Thanks," something like that, in response? 17
A Yeah. It was mostly "Thanks," you know, "Appreciate it." 18
Q The paper made two primary conclusions by the March publication. It 19
changed a little bit between February and March in the peer -review process. 20
The first one was, "Our analyses clearly show that COVID -19 is not a laboratory 21
construct or a purposefully manipulated virus." 22
Do you agree with that statement? 23
A I'm not sure what you mean, do I "agree." I didn't examine the molecular 24
biology, so I would only say that I have faith in people that I know are very, very 25
74
accomplished evolutionary virologists. So, when you say "agree with it," I mean, I 1
haven't examined it myself and said, "Ah, this is my conclusion." There are certain 2
things that, when you're out of your lane of expertise, you have to rely on the consensus 3
of people who make a statement. So, in that respect, I would agree. But it's not my 4
evaluation of it. 5
Q The second major conclusion was, "However, since we observed all notable 6
COVID -19 features, including the optimized receptor -binding domain and polybasic 7
cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of 8
laboratory -based scenario is plausible." 9
You've said that you have an open mind about the outcome of the virus, but -- 10
A Right. 11
Q -- that's a definitive statement: No laboratory -based scenario is plausible. 12
I'm going to ask you the same question. Do you agree with their outcome in that 13
nature? 14
A Again, I would have to agree -- let me go step by step so we don't get any 15
misinterpretation. 16
When I say I have an open mind, I have an open mind of a lab leak or I have an 17
open mind that it is a natural occurrence of a spillover. 18
I believe specifically what he's saying is something that's manufactured. And as I 19
mentioned to the chairman yesterday, you know, a lab leak could be somebody, you 20
know, gets a virus in the environment, comes to the lab, and then it leaks out of the lab. 21
So that's what I meant by that. 22
I can't say I agree or disagree, except that I trust the evolutionary virologist who 23
examined it. And I believe when he went over it, over it, and over it again, he looked at 24
what it would require for this to have been manufactured, and he didn't think that that 25
75
was a plausible explanation. And several very good evolutionary virologists agree with 1
him. 2
So when you say do I agree, I agree that, usually, almost always, I take the 3
recommendation of a group of highly respected people. And, in that respect, I would 4
have to say I don't necessarily agree because of me but I take their word. 5
Q I guess what -- we talked a little bit about yesterday that, like, words on 6
paper matter as, kind of, people are reading this. 7
A Right. 8
Q And we talked about this, so this isn't necessarily a question to you. But 9
the intent versus what was written down appears to be different, of -- they wrote down, 10
"We do not believe any type of laboratory -based scenario is plausible." That would 11
eliminate, in my mind, any type of laboratory -based scenario, not just purposeful genetic 12
manipulation. 13
So I don't have a question for you, because I think you'll just say, we'll go with 14
what they said or -- 15
A Right. 16
Q -- you're not in Dr. Andersen's head. 17
A Yeah. 18
Dr. Wenstrup. Mitch, can I -- 19
Mr. Benzine. Yes. 20
Dr. Wenstrup. First of all, I appreciate talking about some of the scientific 21
findings. You know, we were talking about long COVID before and medical challenges. 22
And when COVID started and we're in lockdown, I'm on the phone with another doctor in 23
Ohio; we're trying to research anything we can. Our first thought is, how the heck do 24
we treat this thing, you know? But, also, you know, where did this come from? 25
76
And so, you know, in that vein, I guess, I'm looking at the Slack message from 1
Dr. Andersen, April 17, 2020. And he says, "We also can't fully rule out engineering. 2
That furin site could have been inserted via Gibson assembly. And, clearly, creating the 3
reverse genetic system isn't hard -- the Germans managed to do exactly that for 4
SARS -CoV-2 in less than a month." 5
Well, this is the same day, the very same day, that you talked about "Proximal 6
Origins" paper on the White House lawn, and there was no discussion. It was just -- you 7
know, I'm just telling you what people perceive at home, right? 8
Dr. Fauci. Uh-huh. 9
Dr. Wenstrup. There was no discussion about what Dr. Andersen said the very 10
same day, and he's the one who was one of the authors of "Proximal Origins." 11
Other concerns that he had -- you know, we started hearing about lab leaks -- 12
Mr. Schertler. Chairman, I don't mean to interrupt. Is this a document that Dr. 13
Fauci was on? Or is this -- 14
Dr. Wenstrup. I'm just framing my experience here, okay? So nothing -- just 15
for the record, this is what I saw and what I heard. 16
Mr. Schertler. No, I just wondered if he should've been familiar with this or if he 17
had seen it before. 18
Dr. Wenstrup. Well, he introduced "Proximal Origins" on the White House -- 19
Mr. Schertler. No, I -- 20
Dr. Wenstrup. -- lawn that same day. 21
Mr. Schertler. But you're talking about a Slack message. I wasn't sure what 22
that was. 23
Dr. Wenstrup. Well, they've been public. We've already produced them. 24
But, anyway, I'm just telling you, this is my experience, okay? Can you accept 25
77
that? 1
Mr. Schertler. Yes, of course. 2
Dr. Wenstrup. Okay. Okay. 3
And so, also, Ian Lipkin. "The Wuhan Institute of Virology" -- this is October 30th 4
of '22. "The Wuhan Institute of Virology has worked with bat samples and cultured bat 5
viruses at BSL -2. This is a matter of published record -- materials and methods in two 6
papers. This is unacceptable." 7
That seemed to be the feeling of most of the authors on "Proximal Origins," from 8
some of the things that have been revealed in their comments. 9
So this is, like, February of '20 that I start looking for stuff with another friend of 10
mine at home. And I see, in 2012, you wrote a paper asking for Dr. Fouchier -- I might 11
be saying it incorrectly. 12
Dr. Fauci. Fouchier. 13
Dr. Wenstrup. Fouchier -- for his research to be banned because it revealed the 14
four mutations needed for H5N1 to go human to human. That sounds pretty dangerous. 15
I think I agree with you on seeking a ban for that. 16
Then I also found an article with you and Dr. Collins from 2011 where you were 17
talking about potential benefits of gain -of-function research -- I'm not sure which 18
definition, but that doesn't matter -- gain -of-function research and that there are some 19
risks involved. That's in the article. 20
And then you had an interview in 2012 that I found with Weekend Australias. 21
And one of the questions they posed to you was, are you concerned about the potential 22
of a lab leak and creating a pandemic with this type of research? You responded by 23
saying that you thought that the benefits outweighed the risk. 24
And so, you know, that gives me a lot of concern, and I do want to note what's 25
78
going on. And so, you know, you talk about it coming from nature. That's fine. But, 1
also, we're talking about certain capabilities within a lab. 2
And, you know, in medicine and a lot of times when people come to me and want 3
to pass a bill, I have kind of a golden rule: Well, okay, but who disagrees with you and 4
why? And I think that's important to hold onto. 5
And so you're referencing the environmental virologist, which I am not, but, you 6
know, I've read their writings. But I've also read some other writings. 7
So are you familiar with the published works of Rossana Segreto and Yuri Deigin, 8
D-e-i-g-i-n, regarding their analysis of the SARS -CoV-2 genome? 9
Dr. Fauci. Not to my recollection, no. 10
Dr. Wenstrup. Well, their works were published in 2020 and 2021, ultimately 11
from scientists from six different countries not aligned with China or the CCP -- from 12
Austria, Canada, Japan, Spain, the U.S., and Australia. 13
Just, it might be good to review their work. I think it's very interesting and might 14
calibrate your overall thoughts on the origins of COVID, and, as you said, you're open to 15
other suggestions. 16
One of the things they wrote in there is, "Considering the devastating impacts of 17
SARS -CoV-2 and the importance of preventing future pandemics, researchers have a 18
responsibility to carry out a thorough analysis of all possible SARS -CoV-2 origins." 19
Do you agree with that? 20
Dr. Fauci. The responsibility to look at all -- yeah. That's why I say I have an 21
open mind. 22
Dr. Wenstrup. They also said, "Both the cleavage site and the specific 23
receptor -binding domain could result from site -directed mutagenesis, a procedure that 24
does not leave a trace." 25
79
Are you familiar with the published research on site -directed mutagenesis? 1
Dr. Fauci. No. No, I'm not. 2
Dr. Wenstrup. Okay. 3
Well, this is where I think we need to go, is the point I'm trying to make. We 4
haven't had enough conversation. And you can say "I'm open to everything," but if we 5
don't open a book or open our ears or listen to others, we're never going to get there. 6
And so, as we're talking about this, lessons learned, things we can do better or 7
things we can do now, we need to do this. And would you agree? 8
Dr. Fauci. I did. And I've actually publicly said that we need to continue to 9
look -- 10
Dr. Wenstrup. Who is "we"? 11
Dr. Fauci. Excuse me? 12
Dr. Wenstrup. Who's "we"? 13
Dr. Fauci. Me. I said "we," being the scientific community. 14
Dr. Wenstrup. That's fine. 15
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. 16
Dr. Wenstrup. That answers it. 17
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. 18
Dr. Wenstrup. Have you ever -- well, obviously never spoke to these two, 19
Segreto and Deigin . Have you ever spoken to or read any of the works of Dr. Steven 20
Quay? 21
Dr. Fauci. The name is -- I recognize the name, but I don't believe I've -- yeah. 22
Dr. Wenstrup. Dr. William Muller? 23
Dr. Fauci. No. 24
Dr. Wenstrup. Dr. Richard Ebright? 25
80
Dr. Fauci. Are they -- is Quay a virologist? What is his area of expertise? 1
Dr. Wenstrup. I don't know his exact -- 2
Dr. Fauci. Yeah, I think he's -- 3
Dr. Wenstrup. -- expertise. 4
Dr. Fauci. Yeah, I don't -- 5
Dr. Wenstrup. He might be a physicist with NIH. 6
Dr. Fauci. Yeah, that -- 7
Dr. Wenstrup. NIH has written about how physicists should be involved with 8
this. That's something else I found, because I thought that was kind of odd, when I saw 9
that. 10
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. I would -- 11
Dr. Wenstrup. I think Muller's a physicist, anyway. 12
Dr. Fauci. Yeah, but they're not virologists, so -- 13
Dr. Wenstrup. No, but I'm just wondering -- you know, let's talk to everybody, 14
right? NIH has said it's important that we talk to physicists. They wrote that. 15
Dr. Fauci. Well, I didn't write it. 16
Dr. Wenstrup. You can find it. 17
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. So I didn't write it. 18
Dr. Wenstrup. I'm just, again, giving you my view. 19
Dr. Fauci. I hear you, Mr. Chairman. I hear you. 20
Dr. Wenstrup. And how about Dr. Richard Ebright? 21
Dr. Fauci. I've heard of Dr. Ebright, yeah. 22
Dr. Wenstrup. All right. 23
With that, that's all I have. 24
Mr. Benzine. All right. 25
81
Dr. Fauci. Okay. Thank you. 1
Mr. Benzine. We can go off the record. 2
[Recess.] 3
82
[12:50 p.m.] 1
We can go back on the record. 2
First, just some housekeeping. In the previous hour, Congress Members Cloud 3
and Joyce joined, are not currently with us, and if other Members who have since joined 4
could identify themselves as well, please. 5
Dr. McCormick. Dr. Rich McCormick. 6
Mr. Griffith. And Morgan Griffith, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations 7
Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce. 8
Great. Thank you. 9
BY 10
Q So, Dr. Fauci, if I could ask a few questions about some of the emails and 11
documents that we walked through in the previous hour. And so you or your counsel 12
may need access to those, starting with what I have marked as majority exhibit No. 20, 13
and that's Bates number REV750. 14
You have seen this email more than once and more than twice, but you're 15
welcome to flip through it if you would like to. 16
A Just one second. 17
Q Sure, of course. 18
A Got it. 19
Q Great. So in your email to Jeremy at the bottom of the first page, I just 20
wanted to focus on a small excerpt, which is, you say, "He," being Dr. Andersen, "should 21
do this very quickly," meaning get a group of evolutionary biologists together to examine 22
the concerns. And you say that, "If everyone agrees with this concern, they should 23
report it to the appropriate authorities." You go on to talk about the FBI and MI5. 24
It's just a point of clarification, but I think one worth making, that your own memo 25
83
describing what you heard on the February 1st conference call -- which is a different 1
email, but we've looked at that several times. I won't make you look at it again. But it 2
is crystal clear, I think, that the participants on that call, the virologists -- evolutionary 3
virologists -- were disagreeing amongst themselves from the get -go. In other words, not 4
everyone did agree with this concern. 5
A Right. 6
Q Isn't that right? 7
A Yes. 8
Q Okay. Great. And when you talk in this email about, hey, Dr. Andersen, 9
as soon as possible, you and Dr. Holmes should get a group together to examine it -- I'm 10
repeating myself from yesterday, but I'll do it anyway. 11
The point of this at this point was, people were saying that they thought it may 12
have come from a lab. 13
A Right. 14
Q And your point is, if you think it came from a lab, you need to examine that 15
urgently. 16
A Yes. Correct. 17
Q In other words, that is sort of the opposite of what we would expect to see if 18
one were trying to suppress a lab leak theory. Is that right? 19
A That is correct. 20
Q All right. Great. 21
In exhibit -- majority exhibit 21 -- I'll give you a moment to glance at that. That 22
seems to have a Bates number at the bottom of NIH -2396. I'll give you a moment to 23
glance at it if you'd like. 24
A Yes. 25
84
Q So Dr. Andersen's email in the middle of the first page, he talks in his first 1
paragraph about unusual features of the virus are a really small part of the genome. 2
You have spoken with ourselves as well as the majority at length about how that is likely 3
referring to the furin cleavage site. 4
I just want to emphasize that we spoke to Dr. Andersen, who was very clear with 5
us that, at this point in the chronology, he was not yet aware of the extent to which furin 6
cleavage sites existed in beta coronaviruses, the genus above whatever subgenus we're 7
dealing with here. 8
A Right. 9
Q And so I don't know the extent to which you -- because you're one degree 10
removed from him -- would even have been aware of any of that, but I suspect if I ask 11
you, you would say you likely don't recall that type of detail. Is that right? 12
A That is correct. 13
Q All right. Well, then I'm simply letting you know that Dr. Andersen did not 14
know that at the time he wrote this, and that he learned it, and he learned all sorts of 15
other things, ultimately resulting in a shift in that paper from probably where they started 16
when you first talked to them. 17
A Yeah. 18
Q Great. 19
A Correct. 20
Q Okay. A minor point on majority exhibit 22. So that's a Bates number 21
NIH-2432. It's an email from yourself to Dr. Auchincloss. 22
So just a point on that particular paper, the Baric -Shi paper, which we do not have 23
in front of us. I'm not going to make us have it in front of us, but there was a mention 24
about certain chimeric viruses in that paper resulting in increased pathogenicity. I don't 25
85
expect that you would have memorized that paper sitting here, but -- 1
A No. 2
Q -- I think our understanding is that when we talk about the backbone of the 3
chimeric virus performing on its own at the full genome length -- 4
A Right. 5
Q -- that, as compared to the chimera, there was, in fact, a loss of function. 6
A Right. 7
Q So not a gain -of-function, a loss of function. 8
A Correct. 9
Q Decreased pathogenicity. 10
Where the complexity sometimes comes into play is Dr. Baric included sort of a 11
side discussion of the extent to which the chimera compared to wild -type -- 12
A Right. 13
Q -- SARS. The backbone is mouse -adapted. That's a loss of function. 14
A Right. 15
Q Wild -type, maybe a gain -of-function. I don't know if you recall that nuance, 16
but I did just want to note that. 17
A Right. I recall this being explained to me long after the fact in my 18
preparations for hearings. It's exactly like you said. When you're talking about any 19
gain -of-function at all, that you have to make sure you have the correct comparator. 20
And what you stated was correct. If you do the appropriate comparator, it was actually 21
loss of its function and not gain. 22
Q Great. That was the sole point I wanted to make there. 23
With respect to majority exhibit 24, if you could pull that up. That's got an 24
NIH-2415 number at the bottom. I'll give you just a moment to glance back over that 25
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one. 1
A Got it. 2
Q Just two discrete points from Dr. Auchincloss' email. He ends by saying 3
that, "Emily is going to try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad." 4
I think we've deduced from context that we are likely here still talking about that 5
Baric -Shi paper. 6
A Yes. 7
Q I just want to note that that work -- it was noted in a previous round, but I'm 8
going to note it again -- was not abroad, right? 9
A The Baric work was done in North Carolina. 10
Q That is my only question for you. 11
And then, in addition, I just wanted to ask, the way that Dr. Auchincloss sort of 12
thinks about this type of a question in this email, we can see that he immediately refers 13
to the gain -of-function pause -- 14
A Right. 15
Q -- to the P3 framework. 16
Would you say that that is consistent with what we talked about at length 17
yesterday? In other words, you and your folks think in terms of what are the regulations 18
that govern us and what are the right decisions inside of that box? 19
A Correct. What I believe that Dr. Auchincloss was referring to was exactly 20
what you said, that no work has gone through the P3 framework, which means none of 21
that work elevated to the need for further scrutiny according to the framework that we 22
discussed in detail yesterday about P3C0. 23
Q And Dr. Auchincloss' analysis does not include a reference to whatever that 24
other website -- layman's concept? 25
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A No. No. 1
Q Great. This is more a point about I think what you might not know, which is 2
this factual question of, Dr. Baric's experiments for this paper, were they before the 3
gain -of-function pause? Were they during? Were they after? How did that approval 4
work? 5
I just want to ask, consistent with the idea that you would not typically be 6
involved in the minutia e of particular grants, you would not have been involved with any 7
of those questions. Is that right? 8
A I was not involved in any of those questions. 9
Q And I'll just say that there are plenty of folks who probably were or at the 10
very least would know a little bit more about it that we have either spoken to or are going 11
to speak to, and so I think we should just ask them. 12
A I think that's a good idea. 13
Q Great. On majority exhibit 25, it has a Bates number NIH -1902. I'll give 14
you a moment to glance over that one. 15
A Got it. 16
Q All right. So towards the top of that first page, we have this exchange 17
where there's a question of whether Dr. Tabak is going to join the February 1st call or not 18
join that call, and Dr. Collins says it's fine with him, but he knows that Jeremy says that 19
he -- being Jeremy -- wants to keep this call a really tight group. 20
I think we're getting into almost, like, philosophical questions about who felt 21
connected to this call, but just from your point of view, it would seem that the very most 22
influence a person can have over a call is a decision about who's going to be on it and is it 23
going to be big or small. 24
Is your recollection essentially that Dr. Farrar was making the substantive 25
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decisions as it related to this February 1st phone call? 1
A That is correct. 2
Q Great. And I will not read it to you because I don't have it handy, but I will 3
note for you that we have sat and read in detail Dr. Farrar's book "Spike" in which he talks 4
at length about how he set up this call not as an administrator who had particularly 5
convenient dial -in lines, but because he was substantively concerned about the possibility 6
of genetic manipulation and the implications of that possibility. So I just wanted to note 7
that context for you as well. 8
I'm going to go, if I could, to majority exhibit 26, and this is your sort of lengthy 9
email summarizing what happened on the February 1st call. 10
A Yes. 11
Q I've got a very, very small point of detail, but there's some discussion about 12
the words "Wuhan University" here and whether that possibly could have been Wuhan 13
Institute of Virology that you heard. Who knows? 14
I just want to know, are we sure that it wasn't Wuhan University? Because 15
Wuhan University had a subaward under this EcoHealth Alliance grant, had some other 16
separate grant from NIH, and I think had a funding stream through USAID and the 17
PREDICT program. 18
So I just want to ask you whether we are sure whether or not what you heard 19
somebody else say was, in fact, Wuhan University or WIV or we don't know. 20
A We don't know. I'm not sure what that was. I put down "university," and 21
I'm not sure whether that is exactly what I heard or something else. 22
Q Great. And then some discussion about the aspect of this that talks about 23
convening a group under the auspices of an internationally credible organization like the 24
WHO. 25
89
It's sort of a comment followed by a question. We, again, spoke at length with 1
Dr. Andersen, Dr. Garry, and I as a reader read this and said, okay, this WHO idea is what 2
turned into "Proximal Origin." The two of them say to me, no, it's not. There were 3
two different conversations going on. There was a conversation about convening the 4
WHO to look at this question, and then we got into a separate conversation with Dr. 5
Farrar about the importance of looking at the same question but maybe a little bit faster 6
in a peer -reviewed context starting with a report, then a peer -reviewed article. 7
So I assume, is it right, that you personally don't remember anything about those 8
distinctions because, again, you're just repeating what other people have said? 9
A Correct. 10
Q Great. For your information, it sounds like the people who said it say that 11
this is a different conversation from what turned into "Proximal Origin." 12
A Right. 13
Q And my only last thing -- we don't have "Proximal Origin" in front of us, but 14
you were asked about some specific excerpts from the paper, some of the paper's 15
conclusions. 16
A Right. 17
Q I would just -- having, again, sat in excruciating detail with the folks who 18
wrote it -- urge caution when it comes to trying to interpret exactly what they meant 19
without the benefit of talking to them about it for 8 hours because they say that when 20
they use the phrase "laboratory construct" -- which, to me, as a total layperson, I read as 21
anything that was in a lab. They say, well, no, we meant that as a term of art. That 22
was referring more to the idea of deliberate -- 23
A Creating. 24
Q -- deliberately created, right? 25
90
And so that, in and of itself, to them, it sounds like, was not really commenting on 1
something lab -like, but not fitting that, such as serial passage. 2
A Right. 3
Q And I'll just read an excerpt elsewhere in that paper, which can be read to 4
conflict a little bit with some of their other conclusions. 5
They say elsewhere in the paper that, "Although the evidence shows that 6
SARS -CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or 7
disprove the other theories of its origin described here." 8
And one of those other theories was serial passage in a lab. So although that 9
does not fit neatly with “no lab -based scenario is plausible, ” I just -- is it right for you as a 10
reader that the paper did seem to leave itself some wiggle room with respect to lab 11
versus animal? 12
A Yes, it did. It explicitly said that. 13
Great. 14
That is all I had. And with that, I'm going to turn it over. 15
Great. 16
BY 17
Q Good afternoon, Dr. Fauci. 18
A Good afternoon. 19
Q Yesterday, throughout the various questions – at several points, 20
actually -- you spoke about how impressive the COVID -19 vaccine development process 21
was compared to the typical vaccine development process that you've been aware of. 22
So to help us fully understand that and how impressive the COVID -19 vaccine 23
development was, I think it would help to start with, what is the typical process for 24
vaccine development? 25
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A The typical process, if it's a brand -new pathogen, is to identify the pathogen 1
and then develop the appropriate platform and immunogen to become your ultimate 2
vaccine, to test it in an animal model to determine if there's anything grossly 3
adverse -event -associated, but more importantly, to determine if it has an effect in an 4
animal model. 5
Then you go into a phase 1 study, which is usually measured in tens to a hundred 6
individuals -- not very many more than that -- primarily to safety, but then to determine 7
the hint of any degree of efficacy. 8
But the numbers in a phase 1 trial, you're not going to get clinical efficacy. You'll 9
likely get to get a laboratory indication that might project that you might be efficacious. 10
Then when that's finished, you go into a phase 2 trial, which is measured in 11
several hundreds and sometimes up to a thousand or so to determine further information 12
about safety, but more information about the level of the immune response, and then is 13
there an even stronger hint of efficacy. 14
When that's finished, you then go into a phase 3 trial, which is generally measured 15
sometime depending upon the incidence of infection, that could be measured in several 16
years. For example, HIV trials have gone on for 8 or 9 years before it was shown they 17
didn't work. The Zika trial, even though we didn't need the Zika vaccine, took a few 18
years to do. 19
That whole process, from the time you know what the pathogen is to the time you 20
get a vaccine made, tested in the multiple phases, really is measured generally in 7 to 10 21
years, when you're successful. Sometimes it's 20 years, but 7 to 10 years is a reasonable 22
time for that. 23
And what was happened, as you know -- as I outlined yesterday -- the amount of 24
investment that was made in basic and clinical research and platform technology, 25
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together with immunogen design, allowed us to start a process of vaccine development 1
within about 5 days from the awareness of the genomic sequence. That is amazingly 2
beyond precedent. That usually takes years before you do that -- a few years. 3
And then we went into high -risk clinical trial. High risk means, instead of waiting 4
for the end of one phase, you start preparing and going into another phase. If you were 5
just a pharmaceutical company, you wouldn't take the risk of the investment in 6
developing a phase 2 until you knew the phase 1 was done, and you certainly would not 7
prepare for a 30,000 -person clinical trial in a phase 3 unless you knew what the phase 2 8
showed. 9
So there was a big risk that was taken, not to mention the purchase of vaccines, 10
even though we didn't know what the exact efficacy was. So a multi -, multiyear process 11
was truncated into 11 months. So that was, you know, by anybody's imagination, an 12
unbelievably unprecedented feat. 13
Q Absolutely. And when you mention the normal timeline being 7 to 10 14
years, is that just the development, or is that development and approval? 15
A The approval sometimes adds a couple of years to that, yes. 16
Q So when you think about that, you know, that 10 could become 12, 13? 17
A Right. Yeah. I mean, I have a slide that I show when I talk about vaccines, 18
that if you look at -- on the one scale is the time that the vaccine -- that the virus was 19
identified, and on the other scale, how long it took to get a vaccine. 20
And it's kind of, in many respects, almost a tongue -in-cheek. You know, typhoid, 21
it took 102 years. You know, the other ones, 50, 20, 30, 10. And then when you get 22
down to SARS, you saw it was 11 months -- SARS -CoV-2. 23
Q And that 11 months for SARS also includes sort of releasing it to the public. 24
It included the manufacture -- 25
93
A Right. 1
Q -- as well, which also can sometimes take time. 2
A Right. 3
Q With that sped -up timeline, how was safety still ensured with the vaccine? 4
A Well, it went through the classic safety hurdles, as it were, with the phase 1 5
and then the phase 2. They were following it very, very carefully. 6
To have a 30,000 -person phase 3 trial with no safety concerns of -- you know, I 7
mean, nothing is 100 percent safe. Like, sitting here, I could fall off the chair and break 8
my neck. But it's a very, very rare adverse event, if any. 9
But then after that 20,000, 30,000 phase trial, when the vaccine is finally approved 10
or at least given an emergency use authorization and administered to literally hundreds 11
of millions if not billions of people, that's an after -approval safety observation. And the 12
safety profile of the vaccine is now in billions of people, which is also unprecedented in 13
the number of people who've received it. It has a very, very strong safety profile. Of 14
course, there are rare adverse events associated with any intervention, but the adverse 15
events were extraordinarily rare. 16
Q And I assume, in order to ensure safety and ensure approval, NIH worked 17
with FDA and potentially other Federal agencies on this vaccine development process. 18
Is that correct? 19
A That's correct. 20
Q How did that interagency relationship work in relation to the vaccine? 21
A Well, we provide data from the clinical trials. So the NIH was in 22
collaboration with several of the pharmaceutical companies that utilized our clinical trial 23
infrastructure that we built up actually dating back to the AIDS years. That was built to 24
do testing of drugs, vaccines, prevention. We mobilized our team and collaborated with 25
94
the pharmaceutical companies, and that data we made available to the FDA to analyze it 1
both for its efficacy and its safety. 2
Q Generally, how does research on what makes a virus more or less 3
transmissible contribute to the development of vaccinations? 4
A How does a vaccine that determines more or less -- well, to understand if 5
you're dealing with a very transmissible virus -- and one of the parameters that you're 6
going to use is, does it protect against infection? If you do experiments understanding 7
the virus and all aspects of the virus, it will give you an idea of the level of immune 8
response that will be required to ultimately protect either against initial infection and/or 9
disease following initial infection. 10
Q And I just want to follow up with a point you made that there was already 11
research that had been done prior to the COVID -19 outbreak that really helped speed this 12
process along. 13
So there is a value in doing research without sort of the pressure of having a n 14
outbreak or the pressure of having a known infection? 15
A Yeah. Well, it's essential. It's not just okay. It's essential. I mean, the 16
paper that we funded together with a variety of other funders that led to the initial 17
observation that you can modify a molecule of RNA to make it appropriate for a vaccine 18
was in 2005. So, you know, we started on the vaccine in 2020. So you're talking 15 19
years of research. The work that led to the optimal immunogen design is work that goes 20
back at least two to three decades on structural biological development of confirmation 21
that's the proper design of an immunogen. 22
So all that work that had gone on for a few decades was just perched to then just 23
jump into when we had the outbreak. So the work before an outbreak is absolutely 24
essential. That's part of prepared. 25
95
And, by the way, as I think it was implied in your question, when Drew Weissman 1
and Katy Kariko were doing the RNA -- mRNA work, they didn't have any pathogen on 2
their mind, much less COVID. And when Barney Graham and Jason McLellan and Kizzy 3
Corbett were doing work on the immunogen design, they started that work way before 4
COVID. They were doing it with regard to respiratory syncytial virus. 5
Q And so these researchers did not have COVID in mind, but without the work 6
they had done, that 11 -month timeline would have been impossible? 7
A It would have been totally impossible. Right. 8
Q And I assume that that work that's been done, the work that's been done on 9
COVID -19, will also potentially give a benefit to future viruses that we don't yet know 10
about? 11
A Oh, absolutely. COVID -19, it turns out, as we've discussed before, to be a 12
very, very unusual virus in its ability to continue to have new variants. And even today, 13
you know, if you look at the statistics, we have now the variant that's a subvariant of XBB, 14
that's it's a JN.1 that is a subvariant of Omicron. So they keep having subvariants. 15
Q You mentioned the mRNA technology. I think we all heard a lot about that 16
when the vaccine was in development and how it was new but not really new because it 17
had been worked on for 15 years. 18
Is there anything else you want to tell us about that technology and that research 19
and what potential it holds for future vaccine development? 20
A Well, the proof of the pudding is what's going on. So, right now, the 21
extraordinary success of the mRNA vaccine with COVID has triggered a real wave of very 22
eloquent research that is being -- using the mRNA technology for any of a number of 23
pathogens, including for some cancers. Vaccines against cancer. So the mRNA 24
technology, because of its great success, has been adopted by the scientific community to 25
96
use broadly. 1
So I think as the years go by, you're going to see a lot of other successes. We're 2
doing it with HIV. We're doing it with malaria. We're doing it with some cancers. 3
There's an awful lot of work going on using the initial success with COVID for that. 4
Q Good. Something for us all to look forward to. 5
We talked about ensuring safety in a general way, but there are specific 6
populations that need to be examined for safety due to differing circumstances, 7
specifically children, pregnant people, and the elderly. 8
How specifically was the COVID vaccine ensured to be safe for those populations? 9
A Of course, trials were done specifically. And, I mean -- so that's what we 10
did. Whenever you do clinical trials, you always start with healthy adults, and then you 11
go and -- if it's okay in healthy adults, then children that are more vulnerable, pregnant 12
women who are more vulnerable -- then you do the study and then -- to try and make 13
sure that when you give the vaccine to those subgroups, that it is equally as safe and 14
equally as effective. 15
Q And I think that also played out in the rollout of the vaccine. I think we saw 16
adults were given access to the vaccine before children were recommended to take the 17
vaccine. 18
A Right. That's correct. 19
Q And speaking about the rollout of the vaccine, what role, if any, did you have 20
in the strategy of how to distribute the vaccine? 21
A Of how to distribute it? I really didn't have any major role in how to 22
distribute it. It was -- my role was major into development of the vaccine. 23
Q Do you have any thoughts on how effective the government's vaccination 24
campaign was when the vaccine was first released? 25
97
A Well, it was -- you know, it was released in the end of November, the 1
beginning of December, and then there was a month and a half to 2 months of one 2
administration, and then you had another administration. What administration are you 3
referring to? 4
Q The initial rollout, which I believe was -- it crossed over the lines. It was 5
December of 2020 going into January of 2021 when the vaccine was first released to the 6
public. 7
A In the beginning, the mechanism of the distribution -- though what was put 8
into place was a mechanism of doing that through General Perna and others -- it didn't 9
get off the ground quickly. And I wouldn't say quickly. It had some growing pains in 10
the beginning. 11
Q And I believe at the very beginning when the vaccine was first released, 12
there was quite a demand. I remember, you know, lines. You could look up online 13
who had a vaccine available. There were wait lists to get it, that sort of thing. So there 14
was clearly demand for the vaccine. 15
What was done to speed up production or help with production to meet the 16
demand? 17
A You know, I'm not really sure, because that was -- you know, that was in a 18
totally different lane than my lane. That had to do with FEMA and General Perna and 19
that whole group, which I didn't get deeply involved in that at all. So, I mean, I was 20
probably in on some discussions about that at the Coronavirus Task Force, but I don't 21
recall what specific mechanisms were used. 22
I understand. Thank you. 23
I'm going to turn things over to my colleague. 24
Great. 25
98
So picking up where left off, Dr. Fauci, I'd like to discuss with you the role 1
that COVID -19 vaccines played in turning the tide on the pandemic. And I'd like to focus 2
our initial phase of this discussion on a December 2022 Commonwealth Fund study that 3
I'd like to enter into the record. This will be exhibit S. 4
[Fauci Minority exhibit No. S 5
was marked for identification.] 6
BY 7
Q I'll give you a moment to take a look at that, Dr. Fauci. 8
A Okay. 9
Q So this Commonwealth Fund study has a number of different findings. I'd 10
like to walk through a few of them. 11
First, the study finds that the first 2 years of administering the COVID -19 vaccine 12
was responsible for or contributed to 3 million prevented deaths and the prevention of 18 13
million hospitalizations. 14
Does this finding surprise you? 15
A It didn't surprise me because we knew from the degree of efficacy from the 16
clinical trials and the large number of infections that were occurring at the time that a 17
vaccine with a good degree of efficacy to the tune, at least initially, of 93, 94, 95 percent, 18
would have a very, very profound effect on preventing hospitalizations and deaths and 19
saving, you know, $1.1 trillion in healthcare costs. 20
It wasn't surprising. I was very pleased to see it, but it didn't surprise me. It's 21
what the power of vaccines are when you're in the middle of a pandemic. 22
Q And in your conversation with a few minutes ago, you discussed 23
some details about the way that the vaccine works to protect people to build immunity 24
and save lives. 25
99
Is there anything you'd like to add detail wise about the sort of underlying science 1
or way in which the vaccine works to achieve the results found here with respect to lives 2
saved and hospitalizations prevented? 3
A Well, there's even a multiplier effect because, obviously, the vaccine turned 4
out, but in the beginning, it did prevent some infections, not as much as it prevented 5
hospitalizations. But a multiplier effect would be that, for those infections which you 6
prevented, you then would multiply another certain amount of people who would be 7
saved from getting to the hospital and dying because they never would have been 8
infected. 9
Later on, as we all know, as the virus evolved, the ability to prevent infection was 10
less, but the ability to prevent hospitalizations and deaths sustained itself, particularly 11
with boosters later on. 12
Q You bring up a very interesting point, which was, at the beginning of the 13
rollout of the vaccine, we observed, I think, greater strength or effectiveness with respect 14
to preventing infection. 15
A Right. 16
Q At the current state of the pandemic, we understand the vaccine remains 17
incredibly effective with respect to preventing severe symptoms and death. But some 18
have suggested that because the vaccine does not prevent every instance of infection, it 19
does not work. 20
Is there anything you would say to correct the record on that? 21
A Yeah. Well, that's just not the case. I mean, the primary goal is to 22
prevent people from getting sick. And in this case, since it's a virus with such a high 23
degree of pathogenic potential, a lot of people, particularly vulnerables, have gotten 24
seriously ill. So a vaccine that prevents hospitalizations and deaths is a very, very 25
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successful vaccine. 1
There are charts that I know -- because I've lectured on it and I have slides on 2
it -- where if you show the hospitalizations and deaths of unvaccinated individuals and 3
the hospitalizations and deaths of vaccinated individuals, the difference is profound. 4
There's a multifold advantage in the sense of death and hospitalization for the vaccinated 5
versus the unvaccinated. 6
Q So moving from deaths and hospitalizations, this report also found that, 7
during the first 2 years that the COVID -19 vaccine was available, it contributed to the 8
savior of more than $1 trillion in medical costs. 9
You touched on this a little bit in the previous questions, but just to put a finer 10
point on it, could you explain how COVID -19 vaccines serve a role in reducing medical 11
expenditures in the American healthcare system? 12
A Yeah, I will. It's pretty obvious. When you keep people out of the 13
hospital -- particularly when you look at the hospital costs of people with COVID, their 14
hospital cost is often prolonged. I mean, there are examples of people in the hospital 15
and in ICUs that's measured in weeks and weeks, and those who are more vulnerable 16
very often succumb, leading to the 1.16 million lives that have been lost thus far in this 17
country. 18
So the healthcare costs of not only hospitalizations but that hospitalizations that 19
often require intensive care, the healthcare cost of that is phenomenal, leading to the 20
estimate that $1.19 trillion was saved during that 2 -year period. We're now in year 5 as 21
of a few weeks ago -- about a week ago -- so that's probably a lot more than just that 3 22
million. 23
Q Right. And stemming from that, probably fair to say as well, not just lives 24
saved, but hospitalizations prevented, medical expenditures reduced, all of that likely 25
101
greater now 5 years in than this 2 -year period estimate? 1
A Yeah, obviously. And just another thing to mention that it doesn't relate 2
necessarily to the United States, but this is 3 million deaths and 18 million hospitalizations 3
in the United States. If you look at the fact that a few billion people have been 4
vaccinated worldwide, there are probably tens and tens and tens of millions of lives 5
saved. 6
Q Important. 7
Another point in this study. So the study also points to the role of the vaccine in, 8
I think, two very important things for American society coming out of the most acute 9
phase of the COVID -19 pandemic: the resumption of safe, in -person learning in schools, 10
and the reopening of businesses in our economy. 11
Can you provide your perspective or your assessment of the role of the COVID -19 12
vaccine in achieving those two aims? 13
A Oh, yes. I mean, obviously, if you prevent people -- to some extent, 14
again -- to get infected -- but now, as we know, that's not as effective as it was -- but the 15
degree to which you prevent infection, you're going to prevent children from getting 16
infected and workers from getting infected -- not only infected, from being in the 17
hospital -- that has an important impact on the economy, of keeping businesses open. 18
I mean, back in the height of the outbreak, we saw that there were many people 19
in different industries who were infected and couldn't go to work, and many died. 20
Q And so since the rollout of the initial COVID -19 vaccine -- and you mentioned 21
this at a few points in the past day and a half -- we have seen the deployment of boosters 22
and updated vaccines. 23
Could you explain the need for boosters and updated vaccines and the role that 24
these serve in continuing to control and have a handle on COVID -19? 25
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A Well, there are two aspects of a booster that I think are important: the 1
duration of the protection of a given vaccine against a given strain, and the fact that we're 2
living in a very unusual situation where we have the evolution of different strains 3
that -- when Alpha evolves to Beta, to Delta, to Omicron, to B45, to XBB.1, to all of the 4
others that we're dealing with -- that it escapes the protection not only from protection 5
to the extent that there is protection against infection, but to the protection against 6
severe disease. 7
And, again, the data validates that, because when you look at those same charts, 8
that if you have unvaccinated deaths here, vaccinated deaths here, vaccinated with 9
boosters deaths here, which means for -- I know you can't see that on the recording, but 10
it means that there are more deaths in the unvaccinated than there are in the vaccinated, 11
and there are more deaths in people who are vaccinated but not boosted than there are 12
in people who are vaccinated and boosted. 13
Q And so in the previous exchange you had with , she mentioned the 14
enthusiasm that existed for the primary series of the COVID -19 vaccine. Lines out the 15
door, very difficult to get appointments initially through online platforms and the like. 16
I think it's fair to say we haven't seen that same level of enthusiasm for boosters 17
or updated vaccines, and I'm curious why you think that might be. 18
A It's complicated. I think there are multiple conflating reasons. One of 19
them is that there is a disturbing anti -vax trend in this country where vaccines are, for 20
reasons that don't make any sense to me, essentially have a negative connotation to a 21
number of people. 22
And we know that. I mean, there are studies that you're all perfectly aware of, 23
that the vaccination rate in some States is significantly different than others, and in the 24
States in which the vaccination rate is low compared to a State in which it's high, there 25
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are more deaths in the State in which the vaccination rate is low than there are in that. 1
That's one thing that gets people. 2
Also, I believe that there's misinformation and disinformation out there about 3
vaccines, such as -- you know, whenever somebody dies who's a young person, they 4
always say, well, that person got vaccinated within the last few months. It must have 5
been the vaccination. We've seen that particularly with certain athletes. So that's 6
another reason why. 7
And I think a third reason of conflating is that people are tired of COVID. They 8
want to put COVID behind them. And they have the misperception that, you know, my 9
goodness, I've already been vaccinated, or I've gotten infected, so I just don't want to be 10
bothered with anything that has to do with COVID. And that's really unfortunate 11
because I believe less than 20 percent of the people who are eligible to get the latest 12
XBB.1 vaccine have gotten the vaccine, and yet we now have something like 1,400 deaths 13
last week with COVID, and the hospitalizations are going up again. 14
So, right now, to think that COVID is behind us and gone is a misperception. And 15
you add that misperception to the misinformation about vaccines, you know, to all of the 16
other things that are going on about people who are anti -vax, I just think that's an 17
unfortunate situation we have in this country. 18
I think that segues very well to a few questions Congresswoman 19
Castor has. 20
Ms. Castor. Yes. 21
Thank you, Dr. Fauci. 22
If we go back to the early days of vaccinations and the initial rollout at the end of 23
2020, but it really didn't take off until passage of the American Rescue Plan in March of 24
2021, where the Congress provided billions of dollars to get widespread vaccination plans 25
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underway. Do you agree with that? 1
Dr. Fauci. Well, certainly, I'm not sure of cause and effect, but I can say that 2
what you're saying is correct. That the vaccine took off pretty -- I would say the sharp 3
incline in vaccines took place according to the timeline you mentioned associated with 4
what you mentioned. 5
Ms. Castor. The American Rescue Plan was passed in March -- early March of 6
2021 and provided billions of dollars for COVID -19 vaccine distribution and 7
administration. It provided funds to our local communities, to our States, to bolster 8
their public health systems, to hire people. 9
I remember very well, in Tampa, with the help of FEMA and the National Guard, 10
we set up a mass vaccination site at an old dog track that had a huge parking lot and 11
people could just drive through. I remember very well setting up the same kind of 12
system at our big VA hospital. And people were so relieved at that time that a safe and 13
effective vaccine was available. 14
You know, Florida is an interesting case study, and one of the tragic consequences 15
of the pandemic across the board is that many people died who should not have died 16
because they were not vaccinated for whatever reason. In the early days, we didn't 17
have the vaccine. 18
And then just what you were talking about, this anti -vax thread that has kind of 19
taken hold. There was one study by Brown University Public Health, Brigham and 20
Women's Hospital, MicroAI, that said that death -- about 318,000 deaths could have been 21
prevented if they had gotten the vaccine. And that was a study that -- they just looked 22
at January 2021 through April 2022. 23
What I saw in Florida, early on, people were hungry for that vaccine. They 24
wanted to get back to normal. And early on, our State did pretty well. We have -- our 25
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population skews older, so it's very important to get our older neighbors and in nursing 1
homes and those over 65 to get vaccinated. 2
But something changed due to politics with our governor. At a September 2021 3
press conference, he was asked whether people should get vaccinated. He said, at the 4
end of the day, though, it's about your health and whether you want protection or not. 5
It really doesn't impact me or anyone else. 6
Was Governor DeSantis correct when he said that someone choosing not to get 7
vaccinated doesn't impact anyone else? 8
Dr. Fauci. I think that what he was referring to was the notion that -- I don't 9
know what he was actually referring to. But let me have you ask the question again, 10
because I don't want to be saying something that is not -- 11
Ms. Castor. Well, I'll ask a different question. 12
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. 13
Ms. Castor. How do vaccination rates impact the course of an infectious 14
disease? 15
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. Well, in two major ways. Number one, it protects people 16
from getting sick and overwhelming the hospital system. You might recall that during 17
the peak of -- and, in fact, we're even getting close to it now. When you overwhelm a 18
hospital system with a disease that's vaccine -preventable, that there are many people 19
who have other diseases who don't have access in the hospital. So it does impact 20
society. Things like elective operations, things like preventive medicine gets impacted. 21
The other is, to the extent that vaccines prevent infection, that you can interfere 22
to a certain extent with the spread of infection from one person to another. As the 23
vaccines -- as the virus evolved and became more and more variant -prone, the ability to 24
protect against infection actually went down. Not completely, but it went down. 25
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Ms. Castor. So the decision not to get vaccinated can have broad repercussions? 1
Dr. Fauci. Yeah. Broad repercussions on the hospital system, broad 2
repercussions on individuals, and broad repercussions about the spread to a certain 3
extent. 4
Ms. Castor. Had anything changed by summer of 2021 as we were going into the 5
Delta surge? Did anything change with the efficacy of the vaccine -- the COVID -19 6
vaccine? Were we learning that it was safe and effective, or were we learning that, boy, 7
there are some issues with it? 8
Dr. Fauci. No. What we learned was that the durability of protection -- more 9
so against infection but less so against severe disease -- diminished over time. It was 10
not a highly durable protection, which led to the need for booster shots. 11
I mean, if you compare a vaccine like measles or a polio vaccine, where the 12
durability of protection is measured minimally in decades and maximally for lifetime, that 13
was not the situation with COVID. The durability was limited to several months, and you 14
saw a diminution more so in protection against infection and less so against protection 15
against disease. 16
That was the reason why we were recommending appropriately that people who 17
are vaccinated over a period of time get boosted to bring back up. The safety issues 18
remained essentially the same. The more you learned about vaccines with the few rare 19
adverse events that were noticed, the more we realized that the vaccines were actually 20
quite safe. 21
Ms. Castor. Yeah. You know, as a policymaker -- I was on the Health 22
Subcommittee. I'm very attune to what was happening with the population across my 23
community and just was taken aback by some of the politicization of the vaccine. 24
Governor DeSantis hired someone to come in and replace our former surgeon 25
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general who was sidelined in October 2022. The new Florida surgeon general, Joseph 1
Ladapo, said that some COVID response mitigation measures were manipulative, 2
destructive, and divisive policy. He said -- he started talking about the -- how 3
vaccines -- you could not rely on the COVID vaccine. In fact, we have -- he wrote to the 4
Federal Government to say we disagree here in the State of Florida that vaccines are the 5
way to go. 6
Will, do you happen to have the early response from -- 7
This has been ongoing now for over -- well over a year. This is -- and I want to 8
check on time. We may need to -- 9
We have 5 minutes. 10
Ms. Castor. Five minutes. I think we can pass it around. 11
Okay. This is exhibit T. 12
Thank you. 13
[Fauci Minority exhibit No. T 14
was marked for identification.] 15
Ms. Castor. And do you also have The New York Times article? 16
Because I know we can talk a little bit more about the politicization of the vaccines 17
and public health and how that has cost lives, because what I witnessed in Florida, as the 18
politics changed, a new surgeon general who discounted public health protocols that 19
were widely accepted, as we were trying to communicate as policymakers to our 20
neighbors what they could do to save their lives and be healthy and then get back to 21
work, get back to school as soon as possible, we were running into this misinformation 22
campaign that really took a toll coming into the summer of 2021 with the Delta surge, 23
where studies subsequent looking at that says, in the State of Florida, more people died 24
after the COVID -19 vaccine became available than beforehand. 25
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This just seemed like a complete abdication of the governor's and the surgeon 1
general's role to protect the people of my State. And I think, as you said, there are 2
severe repercussions when you do not -- if you are not following public health protocols 3
and your advice to get the vaccine, to the point where Dr. Ladapo was -- has been taken 4
to task by the FDA and the CDC. Here, they write that -- let me pick a good part here. 5
"Focusing on adverse events in the absence of causal association and without the 6
perspective of countervailing benefits is a great disservice to both individuals and public 7
health. Like every other medical intervention, there are adverse effects from 8
vaccination. Serious adverse events from COVID -19 vaccines are rare and are far 9
outweighed by the benefits of these vaccines for every age group." 10
Just recently, Dr. Ladapo called into question -- again, wrote to the FDA and the 11
CDC alleging that DNA fragments from the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines could 12
integrate with the DNA of the person they're injected into, causing a host of harmful side 13
effects. And just weeks ago, he called for the halt for the use of the mRNA vaccines. 14
Do you have any idea what he is talking about when he says that mRNA vaccines 15
could integrate into a person's DNA that they're injected into? 16
Dr. Fauci. I have an idea of what he's talking about, but it doesn't make any 17
sense. 18
Ms. Castor. Have you heard of DNA fragments from the Pfizer and Moderna 19
mRNA vaccines integrating with a person's DNA that they're injected into? 20
Dr. Fauci. There's no evidence whatsoever that that happens, and the 21
mechanisms that would be required for an integration are not present in the cell. So 22
that is sort of physiologically very difficult to comport that with the statement that is 23
made by Dr. Ladapo. 24
Ms. Castor. So you previously reviewed for us the kinds of studies and controls 25
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that went into the research and approval of the mRNA COVID vaccine for it being safe and 1
effective. 2
What does this kind of anti -vax propaganda from a health official that leads the 3
State, what does that do, in your opinion? Does it risk lives? 4
Dr. Fauci. Well, it certainly confuses people and would lead to people not 5
getting vaccinated. And as we've said multiple times, vaccines save lives, and when you 6
compare the death and hospitalization of vaccinated versus unvaccinated people, you can 7
make a reasonable conclusion that if people don't get vaccinated, they have a greater risk 8
of being hospitalized or dying. I think that's a scientific medical public health fact that's 9
not disputed. 10
Ms. Castor. Well, just to close out, the FDA agreed with you and had to write 11
back to Dr. Ladapo that, "The challenge we continue to face is the ongoing proliferation of 12
misinformation and disinformation about these vaccines, which results in vaccine 13
hesitancy that lowers vaccine uptake. Given the dramatic reduction in the risk of death, 14
hospitalization, and serious illness afforded by the vaccines, lower vaccine uptake is 15
contributing to the continued death and serious illness toll of COVID -19." 16
I'll close there. 17
And we can go off the record. 18
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[2:06 p.m.] 1
Mr. Benzine. All right. We can go back on the record. 2
Mr. Strom. Dr. Fauci, I want to, I guess, circle back on a couple things that were 3
mentioned both earlier today and in our discussions yesterday. 4
You talked a lot about the scope of NIAID's research that was -- excuse me, 5
NIAID -funded research at the WIV versus the broader scope of general coronavirus 6
research at the WIV, and how delineating sort of that small portion of NIAID funding 7
versus the overall institute activities was -- I think you get lost in the discussion, for lack of 8
a better way to phrase it. 9
So just for the benefit of the record, even though the NIAID -funded work was 10
determined not to qualify under the P3CO framework for further review, that's a separate 11
question from whether or not Wuhan was doing gain -of-function research of concern on 12
coronaviruses. 13
Dr. Fauci. Right. 14
Mr. Strom. Is that -- were you able to get that? 15
The Reporter. Can you repeat that? 16
BY MR. STROM: 17
Q Just a little bit louder, sir, for the microphone. 18
A No, I'm sorry. 19
I don't have eyes onto or knowledge of the scope of what's going on in Wuhan, in 20
China, or in any other place. The only thing that I had eyes on through my staff was 21
what was done according to the subaward that was granted to the Wuhan. 22
So I have no way of knowing, nor does anyone, I think, what's going on in other 23
laboratories in China. 24
Q And then, the other issue I wanted to talk on and has come up more today is 25
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that you mentioned several times that when you're -- where you're trying to sort through, 1
I mean, the various iterations as to the origins of the virus, all the way from sort of the 2
HI -- the real out there stuff of the HIV insert to the more maybe rational discussion about 3
the two -- the two accepted hypotheses. 4
A Right. 5
Q That you had to defer to subject matter experts. 6
And so one of the things I think our committee is interested on trying to delineate 7
is how do you deal with a circumstance where a lot of the experts, coronavirus virologists, 8
the people that you would need to consult with, because it's a relatively small specialized 9
research field, have research ties or have interests that may not be immediately apparent 10
to the public with respect to the debate about origins. 11
And so to be just a little more specific, if we're talking about somebody like, I think 12
Peter Daszak is probably the most prominent example, he has what appears to me to sort 13
of meet the definition of a conflict of interest or a competing interest that should be 14
disclosed, particularly when you have sort of public -facing or widely disseminated articles 15
to the public, that he has collaborated extensively with the WIV, that he is reliant on the 16
WIV for viral samples and things like that. 17
And so I was wondering if -- and this isn't necessarily a financial conflict of 18
interest; it's a non -financial conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest. 19
And so I was wondering if you had thoughts on whether Dr. Daszak should have 20
filed competing interest statements when he was weighing in on these issues, whether 21
through the National Academies or other venues. 22
A You know, I hesitate to speculate about what someone else should do. The 23
only people that I am involved with is my own staff, who we've mentioned many times in 24
this discussion, who don't have a conflict of interest. 25
112
Q Sure. 1
A I mean, they are there working for the Federal Government, the NIH, HHS. 2
So, I mean, I would hesitate to comment on what he should and should not have 3
done. I guess, that's somebody's own individual decision. 4
Q If I can do one more potential example, and I'll read this to you. This is 5
from Taylor & Francis, which I believe is an academic publishing house. 6
So Dr. Holmes is another one that I've had -- I think a layman would consider 7
having potential conflicts of interest or competing interests. He does a lot of 8
collaborations with researchers in China. He's obviously, as with Dr. Daszak, you're 9
dependent on where the viruses are. I mean, if they're in southern China, you've got to 10
work with -- 11
A Right. 12
Q -- those individuals, including their government. 13
And so one of the non -financial conflict of interest examples that Taylor & Francis 14
mentions is access to data repositories, archival resources, museum collections by an 15
entity that might benefit or be at a disadvantage financially or reputationally from the 16
published findings. 17
And so, again, would we have been better served during the debate if these sort 18
of competing interests had been more forthrightly -- I can understand how a scientist 19
reading a Nature article would understand that by virtue of Dr. Holmes' specialty and 20
focus that he likely has a lot of ties to the Chinese researchers, because that's who he's 21
got to collaborate with. 22
But when you start talking about the general public being interested in a topic of 23
this magnitude, I mean, would a competing interest note -- should that have been filed in 24
some of these papers? 25
113
A You know, I don't think I could give an opinion on that, because if you look at 1
the larger scope of the discussions, I mean, in the discussions that I've been in with 2
scientists in which someone might have a conflict of interest that has not been publicly 3
disclosed, the culture of science is that you don't get away with that when you're dealing 4
with 12, 13, 14, 15 scientists. I mean, it's almost a self -corrective process as opposed to 5
an official filing of something when you're dealing with the scientific community. 6
Q And I guess, again, what I'm struck by, and I think this could apply to some of 7
the more direct and forceful proponents of a lab leak, is that these are very strongly held 8
views that these individuals have, that many of the people that are so adamant, I think 9
perhaps beyond what the evidence would suggest that it's a zoonotic origin, are also the 10
individuals that have professionally benefited and continue to perform gain -of-function 11
research of concern. 12
And so obviously you do have sort of a -- at least the appearance of competing 13
interests here, where if it is in some fashion conclusively established or determined that 14
it's a lab leak, these people would -- the work that they do would be directly impacted 15
from a regulatory standpoint, things like that. 16
A From my knowledge and decades of experience with scientists, I think -- I 17
mean, that is possible. But the culture of the scientists that I've been associated with, 18
that would be something that would be very unusual, that they would have that kind of a 19
conflict interfere with their honest appraisal of what was going on. 20
Q Would you be, just as a general matter, in favor of additional disclosures 21
when you have a potential high -impact, prominent paper that laymen are going to read? 22
A Well, my mantra has always been, and I've mentioned that multiple times in 23
this discussion, one of transparency. I've always been that way myself, and I would 24
hope that other people would be. 25
114
Q Great. Thank you. 1
A Yes. 2
Mr. Benzine. Thanks, John. 3
I want to close out the conversation on proximal origins and introduce majority 4
exhibit 28. 5
[Fauci Majority Exhibit No. 28 6
was marked for identification.] 7
Mr. Benzine. This is a letter from Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan to Secretary Becerra 8
from January 11th, 2022. It's like a 30 -page letter, so I'm just going to flip to the page 9
that I want you to look at. We don't need to look at the whole thing. There is no 10
context you are missing. It is a copy of an email. 11
Mr. Schertler. It could take up a good 30 minutes. 12
Mr. Benzine. I know it could. 13
BY MR. BENZINE: 14
Q So this is, you can see, the top portion is the email that has been redacted. 15
The bottom portion is a transcription from staff that we're allowed to view this email in 16
camera. 17
I want to state for the record that despite this email being responsive to select 18
subcommittee requests for now 11 months, it has not yet been produced to the select 19
subcommittee, so all we can go off of is this transcription. 20
A What do you mean by a transcription? In other words -- 21
Q I went to the HHS headquarters. They showed me the email. I wrote it all 22
down and then typed it out. 23
A And unredacted? 24
Q Correct. 25
115
A Oh, good. Good. Good for you. 1
[Laughter.] 2
Q And in the minority that's about the best you can get. In the majority, it's 3
supposed to -- 4
A Things work in the world, right. 5
Q Sometimes. 6
A Yes. 7
Q So the -- it doesn't match up precisely with what the gray boxes look like, but 8
the bottom is what Dr. Collins wrote in this email. And I want to read it out loud. 9
"Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very 10
destructive conspiracy with what seems to be growing momentum." It's then a link to a 11
Bret Baier article regarding the outbreak starting in a Wuhan lab. 12
"I hoped the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS -CoV-2 13
would settle this. But probably didn't get much visibility. Anything more we can do?" 14
Your response is on the next page. But it's, to your credit, it's pretty bland. 15
"I would not do anything about this right now. It's a shiny object that'll go away 16
in time." 17
A Right. 18
Q Do you recall having any conversations with Dr. Collins regarding this email? 19
A I don't think we had a conversation, but I think the conversation was an 20
email conversation as opposed to a verbal. We could've, but I don't recall it. But I 21
recall my saying, "Calm down, Francis." Yeah. 22
Q And we'll have an opportunity to ask Dr. Collins these questions. 23
A Yes. 24
Q But you're sitting in front of us. And if you would rather us ask Dr. Collins, 25
116
just let me know. 1
A Yeah. 2
Q He seems to -- well, he doesn't seem to. He writes down that, at least 3
based off the headline of this article, that the outbreak starting in a Wuhan lab is a very 4
destructive conspiracy. 5
I take it by your own public statements that you have an open mind, that you 6
disagree with that statement? 7
A Well, first of all, A, for the record, you have to ask Dr. Collins what he meant 8
by that. 9
I've not used that language. I still have an open mind. But I think it would be 10
important in the context of really wanting to get down to what's going on. 11
And I'm looking at the date, April 16th, which is sort of months into that. And 12
Francis will tell you, I think, that there was a lot of strange things going on in social media. 13
I think I alluded to that on our first marathon day, that there were really an 14
amazing number of things going on. And I think that probably was frustrating Francis 15
about the things that just didn't make much sense. But I believe Francis could clarify 16
that for you. 17
Q Just you sitting here today, do you think the possibility or the hypothesis that 18
the coronavirus emerged from a laboratory accident is a conspiracy theory? 19
A Well, it's a possibility. I think people have made conspiracy aspects from it. 20
And I think you have to separate the two when you keep an open mind, that it could be a 21
lab leak or it could be a natural occurrence. 22
I've mentioned in this committee that I believe the evidence that I've seen weighs 23
my opinion towards one, which is a natural occurrence, but I still leave an open mind. 24
So I think that in and of itself isn't inherently a conspiracy theory, but some people 25
117
spin off things from that that are kind of crazy. 1
Q No, that's fair. 2
A Okay. 3
Q Dr. Collins continues, "I hoped the Nature Medicine article --" I'm going to 4
presume you -- don't have to presume -- that he's referencing the proximal origin of 5
SARS -CoV-2. 6
A Yes, I would imagine that's the case. 7
Q "-- would settle this." And then he said, "Anything more we can do?" 8
And again, I'm nitpicking words here, and you said that, and I believe that you 9
were testifying truthfully, that no edits, no revisions, nothing to Proximal Origin. 10
"Anything more we can do?" "More" kind of signifies that you've already done 11
something. 12
A No. I think what he was -- my impression -- and, again, ask him, I'm pretty 13
sure he'll verify what I'm saying. 14
I believe -- I know Francis -- I believe what he was saying, is there anything more 15
we can do to make this particular paper and what's in the paper more widely known, 16
because his next sentence is, "Ask the National Academy to weigh in." 17
You should ask -- I know you're going to ask him that. But if you ask him that, he 18
may verify what my opinion is, is what he meant by doing anything more is let's get the 19
Academy involved in this. 20
Q The chairman alluded to this, but the next day, on April 17th, you were asked 21
a question at a White House briefing -- 22
A Right. 23
Q -- regarding the origins of the coronavirus. 24
A Right. 25
118
Q And you said at the time -- I don't -- I'm not going to quote it -- but that you 1
didn't remember the authors' names, but that they -- evolutionary biologists or virologists 2
just came out with a new paper. 3
A Right. 4
Q And then, after the fact, a reporter followed up and you sent him Proximal 5
Origin. 6
A Right. 7
Q Did -- first, did you know that that question was going to get posed at that 8
press conference? 9
A No. 10
Q No? 11
A No. 12
Q Had you told anyone at the White House about Proximal Origin by that 13
point? 14
A I don't recall that I did. 15
Q Did -- so you just kind of said, and I don't want to mischaracterize it, but was 16
that in response -- was citing Proximal Origin in response to this email? You just said 17
Dr. Collins seemed to want -- 18
A No. 19
Q -- more visibility. 20
A No. 21
Q No? 22
A No. I mean, I just -- I was asked a question, and I responded with that. 23
Q Okay. I'm going to shift gears a little bit and very, very briefly talk about 24
the WHO investigation into the origins. 25
119
The WHO, from January 14th, '21, to February 10th, 2021, sent a team to China to 1
investigate the origins of COVID -19. 2
What we've heard is that the United States submitted three names to be on that 3
trip. We have yet to hear who those three names were. 4
Do you have any knowledge as to who the United States submitted? 5
A This is the original WHO trip to China? 6
Q No, no, no. The origins investigation in 2021, not the Cliff Lane trip in 2020. 7
A No, I don't, I don't know about that one. 8
Q Did you have any conversations with Dr. Lipkin about that trip? 9
A You know, Mitch, I might have. I just don't recall. 10
I know there was a trip. I mean, I get called a fair amount, "Hey, you got any 11
names for us?" So it is quite conceivable that Ian might have called me and says, "Tony, 12
what do you think about this person?" 13
But I really, honestly, don't recall that. 14
Q Do -- the WHO produced a report from that trip. Do you recall reading it? 15
A No, I did not read it. 16
Q At the time it came out -- 17
A I mean, I skimmed through it, I believe -- 18
Q Yeah. 19
A But I -- I mean, the easiest way to get me not to read something is to make it 20
multiple, multiple, multiple pages. 21
Q And this was like 350, so it was -- 22
A Yeah, so forget it. I didn't read it. 23
Q It was quite the read. 24
A Okay. 25
120
Q Dr. Daszak , who we've talked about an awful lot over the last 10 hours, was 1
the only American on that trip. Before, by John, you were asked whether or not you 2
thought he should submit competing interests. 3
A Right. 4
Q I'm going to ask your opinion now. He has obviously been intertwined with 5
the Wuhan Institute for a long time, has made numerous public statements, has 6
now -- over the past 3 years, we've seen numerous compliance issues with his grants. 7
Do you think that he has a conflict of interest in investigating the origins question? 8
A I believe that he could've saved himself a lot of trouble if he did. 9
Q If he did disclose a conflict of interest? 10
A Yeah, yeah, because he's obviously received a lot of flak about that and had 11
doubts about his credibility on that. I think, retrospectively, thinking about it, he 12
probably would've said it would have been a better idea to do. 13
Q That's fair. 14
Do you recall, when Dr. Daszak returned from that trip, whether or not he briefed 15
you regarding it? 16
A I guess this is going to go into the thing of Fauci said so many times he can't 17
recall, but I can't recall. 18
Q I won't do it on this one. He did brief you after the trip. 19
A Okay. 20
Q He briefed you and Dr. Lane. 21
A Okay. 22
Q I won't ask you about the contents of the briefing because -- 23
A Mitch, do you have any clue about how many times I get briefed over -- I 24
mean, like hundreds of times. Okay. 25
121
Q I'm not going to say I get as many as you, but I -- 1
A Yeah. 2
Q There's an awful lot. Just trying to figure -- you know, understand 3
what -- what's stood out. 4
I'm going to stay on the same big topic but switch a little bit of topics. 5
Since early 2020, the intelligence community at large has been investigating the 6
origins of COVID -19. At any point during their review, were you contacted by anyone in 7
that community to assist in that investigation? 8
A It depends on what you mean by assisting in the investigation. I do -- again, 9
I brief a lot. 10
One briefing I do recall was the National Security Council people with Beth 11