Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, initially resisted a White House directive to cancel the NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance — a nonprofit conducting research on coronaviruses that had worked with the Wuhan lab some experts fingered as the origin of COVID-19 . He later "reluctantly agreed" after learning then-President Trump was directly behind the order, as revealed in an upcoming book by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta.
In the book titled, "Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History," Abutaleb and Paletta provide a behind-the-scenes account of how Fauci and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health responded to the White House’s directive.
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In June of 2020, however, Fauci claimed the grant, worth a remaining $370,000, was "canceled because the NIH was told to cancel it," and he didn't "know the reason" behind the White House's order during a House Energy and Commerce hearing after Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, asked why the Trump administration cut off NIH funding for EcoHealth.
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Lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are reacting to the book excerpt in comparison to Fauci's June 2020 comments before Congress and are calling for an investigation into the virus's origins and Fauci's firing.
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"Dr. Fauci is so obsessed with maintaining his own relevance and downplaying President Trump’s role in combating this crisis that he’s once again been caught lying," Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., told Fox News. "We need someone leading the pandemic response and our investigation into its origins who is more concerned with the truth than their own PR campaign. It’s time for Dr. Fauci to go."
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House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said "there are many unanswered questions that can only be answered with a full investigation by Congress."
"It is perplexing that [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow any formal investigation into the origins of COVID," he said, adding that "without a real complete and transparent investigation…we have not been able to get the answers the American people deserve," but Congress "will not stop working to get the facts."
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Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., called the discrepancies between Fauci's hearing comments and the book excerpt "very concerning," saying it "goes to show just how important it is to have full investigation into the origins of COVID-19."
"We owe it to the American people to find answers about how the pandemic happened and what Dr. Fauci knew and when he knew it," he said.
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Scalise and more than 200 House Republicans have called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to direct committee chairs to investigate the origins of the virus and devote congressional investigatory resources to examining claims that the novel coronavirus pandemic stemmed from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which the Chinese Communist Party "covered" up.
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