Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has officially sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for Dr. Anthony Fauci after announcing his intention to do so on Fox News last week.
“You kicked off your questioning of Dr. Fauci emphasizing federal law makes lying to Congress a felony punishable by up to five years in prison,” Fox News’ Sean Hannity said to Sen. Paul last Tuesday. “Is it your belief based on the evidence, senator, that he lied before Congress and broke the law?”
“Yes, and I will be sending a letter to the Department of Justice asking for a criminal referral because he has lied to Congress,” Paul answered.
Rand Paul says he will be sending a criminal referral letter to the DOJ about Fauci pic.twitter.com/B17FZCAVoW
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 21, 2021
Paul then sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, alleging that Fauci had violated 18 U.S. Code § 1001.
“I write to urge the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into testimony made to the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), on May 11, 2021,” the letter states. “As one of the institutes that compose the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIAID funds many scientific projects both in the U.S. and elsewhere. In response to questioning by me, Dr. Fauci testified that ‘the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’”
“In May 2016, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity released a report entitled Recommendations for the Evaluation and Oversight of Proposed Gain-of-Function Research, which stated, ‘[t]he term ‘gain-of-function’ is generally used to refer to changes resulting in the acquisition of new, or an enhancement of existing, biological phenotypes, ’” the letter continues.
“In a paper entitled ‘Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origins of SARS coronaviruses,’ Dr. Zheng-Li Shi describes research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and funded under NIAID Award R01AI110964 in which the spike genes from two uncharacterized bat SARS-related coronavirus strain, Rs4231 and Rs7327, were combined with the genomic backbone of another SARS-related coronavirus to create novel chimeric SARS-related viruses that showed cytopathic effects in in primate epithelial cells and replication in human epithelial cells,” the letter continues. “These experiments combined genetic information from different SARS-related coronaviruses and combined them to create novel, artificial viruses able to infect human cells. This research, conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and funded under NIAID Award R01AI110964, fits the definition of gain-of-function research.”
The letter concludes, “Under 18 U.S. Code § 1001, whoever ‘makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation’ as part of ‘any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate’ is subject to criminal fines and imprisonment of up to five years. I ask that you investigate whether Dr. Fauci’s statements to Congress on May 11, 2021 violated that statute or any other.”
NEW: Here’s the criminal referral @RandPaul sent to Merrick Garland asking the Biden DOJ to open an investigation into whether Dr. Fauci lied during Senate testimony when he said NIH had never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. @DCExaminerhttps://t.co/vB5eub6ufX pic.twitter.com/q1IuVNm9AR
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) July 24, 2021
