Anthony Fauci has claimed he has always been ‘honest’ throughout his career as evidence mounts against him for engaging in a “cover-up” in the origins of COVID-19.
Fauci, who became the face of the government’s response to the coronavirus, has been accused of attempting to obscure the United States funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
However, the former chief medical advisor previously testified that America had never financed research to enhance viruses.
Fauci’s remarks come weeks after reports of two U.S. intelligence agencies admitting the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from a Chinese lab leak rather than from a bat.
It previously emerged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which Fauci was a key member of since 1984, gave the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance a $3.7 million grant in 2014, sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study bat coronaviruses.
Fauci repeatedly denied to Congress that the funding was used for “gain-of-function” research, despite mounting evidence showing otherwise.
Earlier this week, Republicans on the coronavirus pandemic subcommittee accused Fauci of orchestrating a scientific paper that suggested against the lab leak theory.
GOP senator Rand Paul accused Fauci of engaging in “an elaborate cover-up.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Fauci whether he felt Congress was interested in the truth.
“The most important thing we’ve got to do is stick with data, stick with science, be transparent, and be honest—which I have been very much so literally for the entire 50 years that I’ve been at the NIH and the 38 years that I directed the [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases],” Fauci said.
But a growing number of intelligence agencies now believe the virus came into contact with humans after it leaked from a lab in China.
However, the Chinese government has repeatedly refuted this claim, even going as far as to warn Twitter CEO Elon Musk not to address the lab leak theory.
Musk responded to a Twitter post referencing the nonprofit group to which Fauci’s institute gave $8 million in grants to study bat coronaviruses.
“He did it via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth),” Musk wrote.
China quickly responded to Musk’s comment, issuing a veiled warning not to bite the hand that feeds him, alluding to his Tesla factory campus in Shanghai, China.
When Fauci was asked about the leak theory, he said his appraisal of the data made him believe it was unlikely.
READ MORE: CNN Insider Says Zucker Ordered Staffers to Ignore Lab Leak Theory as ‘Trump Talking Point’
