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| Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Post |
Anthony S. Fauci has agreed to testify in front of the House panel investigating the nation’s coronavirus response, the first time the prominent infectious-disease expert will publicly face Congress since leaving government nearly 1½ years ago.
Fauci, who helped steer the Trump and Biden administrations’ efforts to fight the virus, is scheduled to testify June 3 in front of the House Oversight select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, with lawmakers expected to press him on the still-unknown origins of the pandemic, the government’s vaccine mandates and other issues that remain politically divisive, more than four years after the outbreak began.
The GOP-led panel includes some of Fauci’s most persistent critics in Congress, such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-La.) and Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), who have repeatedly alleged that the pandemic began with an accident at a lab in China funded by Fauci’s agency and covered up by U.S. officials.
“Retirement from public service does not excuse Dr. Fauci from accountability to the American people,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who chairs the panel, said in a statement. “On June 3, Americans will have an opportunity to hear directly from Dr. Fauci about his role in overseeing our nation’s pandemic response, shaping pandemic-era policies, and promoting singular questionable narratives about the origins of COVID-19.”
Fauci has denied wrongdoing, and public health leaders have praised his work and said Republicans have unfairly targeted him.
Debate about the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus remains, with evolutionary biologists and virologists saying the outbreak probably began because of a “spillover” from infected animals, but some scientists suggesting a leak from a lab was the likely source. A declassified government intelligence report released last year said U.S. intelligence officials were unaware of a lab leak that could have caused the pandemic, adding that officials had no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese laboratory where researchers were studying coronaviruses, had SARS-CoV-2 or a “close progenitor” in its possession before the outbreak. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images |
Anthony Fauci, former chief medical advisor to President Biden, will testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on June 3, making it the first time he will appear before a congressional panel since leaving government work at the end of 2022.
Subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) announced the hearing on Wednesday. Fauci had committed to testify late last year along with agreeing to two days of interviews which took place in January.
The closed-door interviews focused on gain-of-function research, alleged federal records violations, conflicts of interest and confusions around pandemic guidance. Fauci was joined by two attorneys during the entire course of the interviews.
“During Dr. Fauci’s closed-door interview in January, he testified to serious systemic failures in our public health system that deserve further investigation, including his testimony that the ‘6 feet apart’ social distancing guidance — which was used to shut down small businesses and schools across America — ‘sort of just appeared,'” Wenstrup said in a statement. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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