Rand Paul

“The COVID pandemic caused tremendous hardship and pain for millions of our fellow Americans and countless people around the world,” said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. “Now, after years of lies and censorship and cover-ups, the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability.”

Gabbard’s findings came after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a 520-page report in December 2024, concluding that COVID-19 was likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, where U.S. researchers were working on bat coronavirus research that was funded by government grants. The committee accused the lab of leaking the virus after using controversial gain-of-function research funded in part by the NIAID, which was led at the time by Fauci.

“The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature,” the report read. “Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.”

Fauci has pushed back, telling Paul during a Senate hearing in 2021 that the experiments did not meet the definition of gain-of-function research. He denied claims that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory and that NIAID funding could have engineered a disease that doesn’t exist in nature by combining viruses in a lab.

“It makes me very uncomfortable to have to say something, but he is egregiously incorrect in what he says,” Fauci said of Paul.

Biden’s move to preemptively pardon Fauci for “any offense he may have committed” on his last day in office in January 2025 has further stoked concerns from Paul. The pardon cleared Fauci of possible criminal activity he may have committed dating back to January 2014. That is the same year the research firm EcoHealth Alliance received five years of funding from NIAID to conduct bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 2014 is also the same year that then-President Barack Obama placed a moratorium on gain-of-function research out of concern about viruses with pandemic potential.

Biden said the pardon should not “be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.” However, Paul pushed back and has since questioned whether the pardon is valid, due to concerns that it was executed using an autopen operated by White House staff.

“If there was ever any doubt as to who bears responsibility for the COVID pandemic, Biden’s pardon of Fauci forever seals the deal,” Paul said. “Fauci’s pardon will only serve as an accelerant to pierce the veil of deception.”

FIVE YEARS AGO: FAUCI DISMISSED LAB LEAK THEORY EVEN AS ADVISERS PRIVATELY DOUBTED

Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told Semafor this week that in his latest subpoena request for Fauci, he wants to discuss his presidential pardon, gain-of-function research being funded when he said it wasn’t, and the destruction of records.

“He’s been slow-walking information to us for six months or more,” the senator said. “We’ve been negotiating over the date for several months. He agreed, then he said he wouldn’t. So, I think it’s time that we bring him in.”