ABC’s Stephanopoulos Presses Fauci Over Rand Paul Calling for His Firing: Was US-Funded Wuhan Lab Research ‘Riskier Than We Know?’
ABC News George Stephanopoulos confronted Dr. Anthony Fauci with Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) accusations about the National Institutes of Health’s admission to accidentally funding gain-of-function research in China.
For months, Paul and Fauci have gone after each other — with the senator accusing Fauci of presiding over the NIH as it funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that led to the creation of the coronavirus. Paul is currently claiming vindication because of a newly-released NIH letter where the agency demanded an explanation from EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization, over an “unexpected result” of their research that seemed to broach gain-of-function.
“I told you so” doesn’t even begin to cover it here: https://t.co/9JFn85I24i
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 21, 2021
Stephanopoulos spoke to Fauci on Sunday as he brought up the letter’s details about EcoHealth’s non-disclosures about its research. He pressed Fauci to explain what the U.S. was funding with EcoHealth’s research grant, and he also asked for Fauci’s reaction to Paul saying he should be “fired.”
“I want to give you the opportunity to respond to Senator Paul,” Stephanopoulos said, “but also explain, what was the United States funding? What wasn’t it funding? And why that’s important?”
“I obviously totally disagree with Senator Paul,” Fauci responded. “He’s absolutely incorrect. Neither I nor Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, lied or misled about what we’ve done.”
Fauci continued:
The framework under which we have guidance about the conduct of research that we fund, the funding at the Wuhan Institute, was to be about bat viruses in China, and the research was very strictly under what we call a framework of oversight of the type of research. Under those conditions, which we have explained very, very clearly, does not constitute research of gain of function of concern. There are people who interpret it that way, but when you look at the framework under which the guidance is, that is not the case. So I have to respectfully disagree with Senator Paul. He is not correct that we lied or misled the Congress. It’s just not correct.
Stephanopoulos acknowledged that the letter said “the viruses being studied under this grant were genetically very distant from SARS-CoV-2.” He noted though that “it did show that the subcontractor did not release some results in a timely manner. What did learn from the letter? Does it show that some of the research we were funding was riskier than we know?”
“No, it isn’t,” Fauci said. He warned that “there will be administrative consequences” for the late filing of progress reports, but he argued it was “molecularly impossible” for the viruses being studied by EcoHealth Alliance to have mutated into the Covid virus.
Watch above, via ABC.
