Ohio U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-04) said Sunday he is determined to obtain transparency on the origins of the COVID-19 virus, specifically why Dr. Anthony Fauci insisted on a dismissal of the narrative that the virus originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
Jordan joined Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures to discuss why the former White House chief medical advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases strove to suppress the idea the virus leaked from a lab.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) March 5, 2023
“So, the fundamental question is, why was Dr. Fauci so consumed with making sure the narrative wasn’t about the lab?” Jordan said to Bartiromo. “I think it’s because they were doing gain-of-function research there. He didn’t want that out, and that was the narrative that everyone to the left bought into – even though the facts and common sense, maybe most importantly, pointed to the lab leak theory.”
Jordan’s comments come as the first hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on the issue of the origins of COVID-19 is scheduled for Wednesday.
🚨NEW🚨
On March 8, we’ll hold the our first hearing on COVID origins.
At the hearing, we will gather facts about the origination of the virus that has claimed nearly seven million lives globally.https://t.co/pyBNupj0pH
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) March 1, 2023
The New York Post reported Sunday new emails exposed by House Republicans showed Fauci “’prompted’ or commissioned – and had final approval on – a scientific paper written specifically in February 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.”
Yet, as the Post observed, on April 17 of that same year, during a White House press conference, when Fauci was asked by reporters if the virus could have originated in a Chinese lab, he cited that paper as evidence, that the lab leak theory was implausible, and pushed, instead, the narrative that the virus evolved in bats at a wet market.
Fauci responded, the Post reported, “pretending it [the paper] had nothing to do with him and he did not know the authors.”
“So, the paper will be available,” Fauci said. “I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you.”
Both the FBI and the U.S. Department of Energy have recently confirmed the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from a lab incident in Wuhan, China.
Additionally, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) announced last week he is reintroducing a bill to require the Biden administration to declassify intelligence related to ties between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Despite the conclusions reached by both the Energy Department and the FBI, Dr. Fauci still insists COVID-19 did not originate from a lab, telling the Boston Globe, ‘I don’t see any data for a lab leak,’ this after the NIH funded EcoHealth Alliance, which sent that money, the funding, to the Wuhan lab for gain-of-function research,” Bartiromo said in opening the segment with Jordan.
Jordan explained the sequence of events leading up to the narrative by Fauci and the leftist media that the virus originated naturally in a wet market rather than in a lab. He identified U.S. virus researchers Dr. Kristian Andersen and Dr. Robert Garry, who, emails showed, changed their stories about the origin of the virus, and former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, in his review of the events:
Well, first on the, on the COVID issue, understand that on January 31 10:32 p.m. 2020, so right at the get go, Dr. Fauci gets an email from Dr. Kristian Anderson, which says virus looks engineered, virus not consistent with evolutionary theory. The next day, he gets another email from Dr. Garry – these are doctors he’s handed out our tax dollars to over the years. Dr. Garry’s email says, I don’t know how this happens in nature, it would be easy to do in a lab. That same day, February 1, 2020, so, again, right at the start, that same day, Dr. Fauci organizes a conference call – him and Dr. Collins get on there with Dr. Garry, Dr. Andersen, and all these other virologists. They get on there, and three days later, everybody changes their story. The same guy who said this would be easy to do in the lab says, oh, now you’re crazy if you think it came from a lab. The same guy that says, I don’t know how this … looks engineered, he changes his story. And then the kicker is, three months later, those same two doctors, Dr. Andersen and Dr. Garry, get a … several million dollar grant from Dr. Fauci to continue their research. So, the fundamental question is, why was Dr. Fauci so consumed with making sure the narrative wasn’t about the lab? I think it’s because they were doing gain-of-function research there. He didn’t want that out. And that was the narrative that everyone on the left bought into, even though the facts and common sense – maybe most importantly – pointed to the lab leak theory.
It looks like Fauci allowed:
Gain-of-function research, in a lab in China, that wasn’t up to code, with our tax dollars.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) March 6, 2023
Jordan added that, regarding the COVID virus, “they have told us all kinds of things that turned out to be false: they told us it didn’t come from a lab, now, again, it looks like it sure did, because the Department of Energy, FBI, everyone says it came from a lab.”
“Now they said it wasn’t gain-of-function research, sure looks like it was; they said it wasn’t our tax dollars used at that Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he continued. “Yes, they were, through EcoHealth. They went there.”
Jordan then turned to the health misinformation Americans have been told as well:
And then, of course, they told us that the vaccinated couldn’t get it. The vaccinated couldn’t transmit it. They told us that there was no such thing as natural immunity. This would be the first virus in history where there’s no such thing as natural immunity – so time and time again, they told us things that were not accurate.
“Again, the fundamental question is why? Was it politics motivating it or what?” Jordan asked. “But I always tell people, I always say, ‘We’re Americans. We’re big boys and girls. We can handle it.’ It’s supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people. So, tell we, the people, the truth. Quit trying to – quit lying to us.”
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Dr. Anthony Fauci” by NIAID CC2.0 and “Rep Jim Jordan” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0.
