WaPo Columnist Tweets Sen. Rand Paul was Right and Dr. Fauci Was Wrong In Tuesday’s Senate Hearing Over Gain of Function Research Funding

On Tuesday, a Washington Post columnist actually admitted on social media publicly where people could read it that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was correct and Dr. Fauci was wrong during a contentious back and forth with Dr. Anthony Fauci over the National Institutes of Health (NIH) director’s repeated denials that he funded gain of function research being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, the lab that it is believed is where the COVID-19 virus that killed millions of people around the world originated.

“Hey guys,@RandPaul was right and Fauci was wrong. The NIH was funding gain of function research in Wuhan but NIH pretended it didn’t meet their ‘gain of function’ definition to avoid their own oversight mechanism,” Josh Rogin, a columnist for the Washington Post, said Tuesday.

“SorryNotSorry if that doesn’t fit your favorite narrative,” he added:

Hey guys, @RandPaul was right and Fauci was wrong. The NIH was funding gain of function research in Wuhan but NIH pretended it didn't meet their "gain of function" definition to avoid their own oversight mechanism. SorryNotSorry if that doesn't fit your favorite narrative.

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) July 20, 2021

Rogin sent out his tweet after the exchange between Paul and Fauci where the senator from Kentucky where Paul was grilling Fauci for constantly denying that NIH funded fain of function research at Wuhan.

“And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute, and was funded by the NIH,” Paul said, reading from a Wuhan Virology paper titled, “Discovery of a Rich Gene Pool of Bat SARS-Related Coronaviruses”

Paul then went on and detailed the claims made in the paper:

“In this paper … she credits the NIH and lists the actual number of the grant that she was given by the NIH. In this paper, she took two bat coronavirus genes, spiked genes, and combined them with a SARS-related backbone to create new viruses that are not found in nature.”

We reported on a video that surfaced of Wuhan lab technicians playing with bats inside the Wuhan lab despite the fact that EchoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak allegedly lied in a piece published in the scientific journal The Lancet saying that there were no bats at the Wuhan lab dead or alive. EchoHealth was the third party that Fauci’s NIH granted money that went to the Wuhan lab.

Paul continued, “These lab-created viruses within to shown to replicate in humans. These experiments combine genetic information from different coronaviruses that infect animals but not humans to create novel artificial viruses able to infect human cells. Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain-the-function of infecting humans. This research fits the definition of the research that the NIH said was subject to the pause in 2014 to 2017 — a pause in funding on gain-of-function. But the NIH failed to recognize this, defines in a way, and it never came under any scrutiny.”

He’s got Fauci nailed dead to rights.

“Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11 where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?” Paul asked.

Fauci, always fast on his feet, gave an angry response showing that the Republican Senator touched a nerve.

“Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you were referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-0f-function — let me finish!” he said as Paul interrupted him.

“You take an animal virus and you increase this transmissibility to humans, you’re saying that’s not gain-of-function?” the senator asked, angering Fauci even more as he denied his agency’s own definition of gain-of-function research!

“Yeah that is correct, and Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about,” Fauci said.

Paul then replied, “This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among animals is gain-of-function. They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increase their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain-of-function?”

“It is not,” Fauci retorted, knowing he just got harpooned.

“It’s a dance, and you’re dancing around this because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic,” Paul said.

Back in May, Fauci admitted that his agency funded the Wuhan lab and at that time he denied the money went toward gain of function research, but there’s really no way he could prove that, and he even said so. The thing is, Paul cited the definition of gain of function research when he read “taking a virus that could infect humans and making it either more transmissible and/or pathogenic for humans.”

Sorry, but that’s gain of function research. Fauci lied and people died.