The Trump administration's National Institutes of Health is still funding some medical researchers who suppressed debate about the possibility of a lab leak as the origin of COVID-19.

Following the outbreak, then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins strongly condemned allegations that the virus was the result of a lab leak, primarily citing a March 2020 peer-reviewed article from National Medicine titled "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2."

'How do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature — accidental release or natural event?'

However, released emails revealed that the scientists involved in drafting the Proximal Origin initially had concerns that the virus had leaked from a lab.

Kristian G. Andersen, who would go on to be listed as the primary author of the article, wrote in an email to Fauci on January 31, "The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered."

Andersen further noted that he, Edward Holmes, Robert Garry, and Michael Farzan "all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory."

"But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change," he added.

Holmes and Garry also helped draft the Proximal Origin.

Photo by Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images

In an email to Fauci and Collins on February 2, 2020, Farzan was quoted as saying, "Nothing seems to specifically suggest whether this virus was most likely to be 'adapted,' 'evolved,' or maybe even 'engineered.' So I think it becomes a question of how do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature — accidental release or natural event?"

"I am 70:30 or 60:40," he concluded. Farzan later backtracked, claiming those numbers were "inverted."

A House subcommittee found that the report was created after Fauci and Collins held a conference call in February with roughly a dozen scientists, four of whom drafted the paper days later. That draft was reportedly sent to Fauci and Collins "for editing and approval" before it was published.

During a 2023 congressional hearing, Andersen denied allegations that Fauci prompted researchers to write the Proximal Origin report and rejected claims that grants were used to persuade scientists to dismiss the lab-leak theory.

Despite early suspicions about the virus' origins, the final published version of the paper stated that the scientists' "analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."

The report sparked allegations that the once-skeptical authors were now complicit in the cover-up of the virus' origins.

Yet grant records show that Andersen, Garry, and Ian Lipkin are still receiving taxpayer-funded grants, several of which are being used to conduct COVID-related research.

Andersen is receiving a few grants from the NIAID: one worth over $2.5 million, another for $319,000, and a third for $602,000.

The first grant provides funding to the Center for Viral Systems Biology. Andersen is the director and principal investigator of CViSB, while Garry is the co-director.

The project's summary states, "The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the threat posed by infectious diseases, but other priority pathogens, such as Lassa and Ebola viruses, continue to pose signiﬁcant challenges in endemic areas."

"Our central hypothesis remains that complex networks of viral and human factors, including distinct clinical, immunological, genetic, virological, and physiological attributes play key roles in determining the outcome and spread of Lassa, Ebola, and COVID-19," it continues. "Our overall goal is to identify these molecular networks and provide a deep system-level understanding of the virus, host, and environmental drivers of disease severity and spread to discover predictive markers of human disease."

Anthony Fauci. Photo by J. Scott Applewhite-Pool/Getty Images

The second grant provides funding for the CViSB's Administrative Core, led by Andersen, which includes support for all of the center's research projects to ensure its goals are successfully met.

The third grant funds "Project 2," which aims to "investigate the complex interplay of virus genetics and host immunity in determining epidemiology and outcome of infection with Lassa virus, Ebola virus, and SARS-CoV-2."

Garry was listed as the project leader on a separate grant for "Project 1," totaling nearly $515,000. The project's goal is "to generate an integrated, systems-level dataset that will enable development of models that predict disease severity or long-term sequelae in individuals infected with Lassa virus, Ebola virus or SARS-CoV-2, and protective responses to vaccines."

Another separate grant, totaling over $1.9 million, went to Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity for a project to study "gene-environment interactions between the immune system and infectious agents." The project lead and investigator was listed as Ian W. Lipkin, another co-author of the Proximal Origin.

Lipkin informed Blaze News that he is not pursuing SARS-CoV-2 research.

"Unless new data are uncovered that unequivocally demonstrate a point source, I don’t see how there will be resolution of this contentious and destructive debate," Lipkin said. "What is unequivocal is that wild animal markets and unregulated research with known or potential pandemic pathogens pose unacceptable risks to public health."

According to the NIH RePORTER, Holmes and Andrew Rambaut, also a Proximal Origin co-author, do not appear to have any active projects that are receiving grants at this time.

Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University told Blaze News that there is "compelling evidence" that the authors of the Proximal Origin knew the paper's conclusions were "invalid at the time it was submitted for publication, at the time it was accepted for publication, and at the time it was published."

He accused the authors of committing "science fraud by publishing conclusions they knew to be invalid" and then "compound[ing] that science fraud by publishing patently unsound follow-up papers purporting to support the invalid conclusions."

Ebright called for the NIH Office of Research Integrity and the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate and "pursue retraction of their fraudulent paper and unsound follow-up papers, termination and clawback of their federal funding, and debarment from eligibility for future federal funding."

An NIH spokesperson told Blaze News, "NIH does not discuss grants compliance reviews on specific funded awards, recipient institutions, or supported investigators, whether or not such reviews occurred or are under way."

Andersen and Garry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

COVID lab leak denial lingers on NIH’s website: 'Misleading and false'

Allegations that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak were strongly and swiftly denied by the former Biden administration and some prominent health officials, despite dissenting opinions within the medical field, including from Jay Bhattacharya, who now serves as President Donald Trump's National Institutes of Health director.

'I'm convinced that research agenda led to this pandemic through a lab leak in China, in Wuhan.'

A page on the NIH's website, last reviewed by the agency on March 16, 2022, has not yet been updated by the new administration, still claiming that the leak theory is "misleading and false."

The NIH webpage reads:

Unfortunately, because the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 have not yet been identified, misleading and false allegations have been made about NIAID-supported research on naturally occurring bat coronaviruses. Specifically, these allegations have targeted research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, funded through a subaward from NIAID grantee EcoHealth Alliance. The naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied through this subaward were significantly, genetically different from SARS-CoV-2 and, therefore, could not have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bhattacharya was one of the voices amid the COVID-era insisting that there was a cover-up of the virus' origins.

In a May interview with Politico, Bhattacharya stated that he believes the U.S. should do more to reveal the origins of the virus, but noted that China has not been cooperating with those investigations.

"There's enough evidence that I've seen from the outside that suggests that there was at the very least a cover-up of dangerous experiments that were done in China with — by the way — the help of the U.S. and also Germany and the U.K.," Bhattacharya told the news outlet.

Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

He referred to the experiments as "a very, very dangerous kind of utopian research agenda."

"I'm convinced that research agenda led to this pandemic through a lab leak in China, in Wuhan," Bhattacharya continued. "But that was a global effort."

Photo by ALLISON BAILEY/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

He called it "absolutely striking" that then-Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci and other leaders would invest so much effort into suppressing the theory and "denigrating scientists who very legitimately raised this possibility."

Blaze News contacted the NIH to determine whether it is aware of the webpage dismissing lab leak claims and if it plans to update its website. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Russia hoax and COVID lies share the same deep-state fingerprints

“Conspiracy theory” is the go-to smear against those of us who questioned any aspect of the government’s authoritarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the great Austrian economist Murray Rothbard once observed, the smear serves one purpose: to divert the public’s attention away from the truth.

“An attack on ‘conspiracy theories,’” Rothbard writes in “The Anatomy of the State,” means that the subjects of a regime “will become more gullible in believing the ‘general welfare’ reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions.”

The democratization of information means that censorship just doesn’t work as well as it used to.

“A ‘conspiracy theory,’” he continues, “can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the state’s ideological propaganda.”

The more I dig into the origins of the COVID pandemic, the more “despotic” our state seems to become — and the more “conspiratorial” I get.

Unsettling the system

I am trying to put together the final pieces of the puzzle of what I consider among the greatest public policy scandals of my lifetime — not only who did it, but more importantly, why would they do it?

A few months ago, I spent a day with Matt Taibbi, the iconoclastic muckraker and “Twitter Files” reporter, for the latest episode of my BlazeTV investigative series, “The Coverup.”

As he dug through the trove of emails and texts, Taibbi discovered the conspiracy to blacklist and silence Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the subject of the first episode of “The Coverup” and now the head of the National Institutes of Health. Taibbi soon learned that the same tactics and tools — and even many of the very same deep-state actors — have their fingerprints all over both the Russia collusion hoax and the COVID cover-up.

A precedent for censorship

Recently released documents from Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard reveal that the so-called Russia collusion hoax wasn’t just wrong — it was deliberate. The Obama administration orchestrated the fabrication, pushing U.S. intelligence agencies to leak a report suggesting Vladimir Putin had helped Donald Trump steal the 2016 election.

That leak, repeated endlessly by the press, fueled a national narrative branding Trump’s presidency as illegitimate — despite those same agencies having already dismissed the claim.

This kind of manipulation would be outrageous if it weren’t so familiar.

Five years after the COVID lockdowns stripped millions of Americans of basic liberties, we’re still uncovering how the deep state used propaganda to silence dissent. Throughout the pandemic, scientists and doctors raised alarms about the damage lockdowns would cause — and did cause. Some of the world’s most respected experts signed the Great Barrington Declaration to oppose the government’s heavy-handed response.

But the public never heard from them. Bureaucrats and media allies moved swiftly to smear, suppress, and sideline these voices using one of the oldest authoritarian tactics: control of information.

In fairness, public health agencies didn’t have to twist many arms. The legacy media followed their lead willingly — even when the guidance contradicted itself or defied basic logic.

But unlike the days of Project Mockingbird, when the CIA could shape coverage by nudging the New York Times or CBS, controlling the old guard wasn’t enough. The rise of social media — decentralized, fast-moving, and open to anyone with a computer or phone — posed a new challenge. The administration needed a more aggressive strategy to dominate the narrative.

Strong-arming social media

In episode 5 of “The Coverup,” I ask Taibbi how they pulled it off. As one of the first journalists to dig into the Twitter Files, Taibbi exposed the machinery behind the censorship regime. Americans suspected that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were suppressing dissent during COVID. But the Twitter Files confirmed what many feared: They weren’t acting alone. They took orders from the FBI directly.

And these weren’t polite requests, either. When the government “suggested” something, tech companies treated it as a command.

It all traces back to — surprise, surprise — the Russia hoax.

In 2017, Congress hauled tech executives into hearings and accused them of letting Russian disinformation run wild. Essentially, they were given an offer they couldn’t refuse: Allow the government to play a role in content moderation or prepare to be regulated into submission.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Their surrender gave U.S. intelligence agencies de facto control over what Americans could say online. The feds told platforms which posts to delete, which users to silence, and how to suppress the rest. You could post your opinion — as long as no one could see it. “Shadow bans” became the preferred method of censorship: clean, quiet, and deniable.

The silver lining

Thanks to Taibbi — and a handful of journalists who still value truth over access — we now see how the government sold Americans on fiction. Russia hacked the election. COVID came from a bowl of bat soup. Question either and you’d vanish from the digital public square.

Millions believed these lies. And under their influence, they did real damage — locking down schools, closing businesses, and sowing doubt about fair elections.

But truth has a way of leaking out.

It’s taken time, but the lies are unraveling. And that’s the silver lining. In a world where information moves faster than censors can keep up, suppression doesn’t work like it used to. So long as we have truth-tellers willing to dig and defy — like Taibbi — the regime won’t have the last word.

We won’t get fooled again.

Episode 5 of “The Coverup” premieres Thursday, July 31.

Rand Paul to refile criminal referral of Fauci to DOJ after Biden autopen revelations

Anthony Fauci was among the individuals with questionable track records who received controversial pardons just prior to former President Joe Biden leaving office.

Fauci, the fifth director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, specifically received a "full and unconditional" pass for possible federal crimes going back to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for dangerous gain-of-function research.

'Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress.'

Molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University, a leading critic of Fauci's flirtations with gain-of-function research, previously provided Blaze News with insights into why Fauci might require an accountability shield, noting that he "violated federal policies on gain-of-function and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research, committed conspiracy to defraud and perjury, used federal funds to commit crimes, and caused and covered up the cause of a pandemic that killed 20 million and cost $25 trillion."

The Oversight Project revealed earlier this year that like the other pardons hastily dispensed before Biden left office, Fauci's was signed with an automatic signature device. Unfortunately for Fauci, there is presently a great deal of uncertainty over the former president's involvement with the autopen pardons and their legitimacy.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) announced on Monday that he was refiling his criminal referral of Fauci to the Department of Justice. Paul's announcement follows the New York Times' publication of Biden's weak defense of his handlers' use of the autopen along with insights into who was actually behind Fauci's last-minute pardon.

"Perjury is a crime," Paul said on X. "And Fauci must be held accountable."

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

During a Senate hearing in July 2021, Paul pressed Fauci about the National Institutes of Health funding research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the coronavirus.

"Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress," Paul said.

"On your last trip to our committee on May 11 [2021], you stated that the NIH 'has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.' And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute by Dr. Shi and was funded by the NIH," he continued.

'Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly.'

Paul's smoking gun was a 2017 WIV paper on SARS-related coronaviruses that discussed gain-of-function work on coronaviruses and acknowledged funding from NIAID as well as from the United States Agency for International Development's Predict program.

"Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans," said Paul. "This research fits the definition of the research that the NIH said was subject to the pause in 2014 to 2017 — a pause in funding on gain-of-function."

When afforded an opportunity to retract his previous statement, Fauci instead dug in his heels, stating, "Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement," adding that the study referenced in the 2017 paper was not gain-of-function.

"Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly," added Fauci. "And I want to say that officially."

Paul subsequently referred Fauci to the DOJ, asking then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into the former NIAID director over his testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

The senator noted that contrary to Fauci's suggestion, research conducted "at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and funded under NIAID Award R01AI110964 fits the definition of gain-of-function research."

The recipient of this particular award was Peter Daszak's scandal-plagued organization EcoHealth Alliance, which congressional investigators indicated facilitated gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and was formally debarred along with Daszak in January by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Paul asked the Biden DOJ again in 2023 to probe Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released an email apparently showing the former NIAID director acknowledge that gain-of-function was indeed taking place at a Chinese institution which the U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed had received NIH funding along with the WIV.

— (@)

Blaze News has reached out to Paul's office and the DOJ for comment.

Paul's referral comes on the heels of autopen bombshells printed in the New York Times.

Biden told the Times in a phone interview on Thursday that he orally communicated his clemency directions to aides, that the autopen was used liberally because they were dealing with "a whole lot of people" — a record number, actually — and that he did not personally approve every individual categorical clemency.

The White House emails turned over to investigators by the National Archives and reviewed by the Times also cast doubt on the provenance of Fauci's pardon and others like it issued in Biden's final hours in office.

The emails reportedly indicated that the former president's clemency instructions were written up on the basis of hearsay by aides to Biden advisers, then executed by the master of the autopen, Biden White House staff secretary Stefanie Feldman. When it came to the high-profile autopen pardons issued on Biden's final day, the final approval reportedly came not from Biden but from his chief of staff, Jeffrey Zients.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

What happened to RFK Jr.’s red line on risky vaccines?

For nearly half a century after the catastrophic 1967 trial, the U.S. government failed to approve a safe and effective RSV vaccine. Then came the COVID-19 debacle — and suddenly, we’re supposed to believe the science caught up. As if by magic, after the mRNA disaster and its lingering questions, federal agencies now bless an endless stream of RSV shots for children and adults alike.

Never mind that just two years ago, Anthony Fauci co-authored a paper admitting that safe RSV vaccine development faced “many and complex” challenges. He cited risks like antigenic drift and called for “outside-the-box” thinking to make next-generation vaccines possible.

If Kennedy truly doubts the safety of older vaccines, why would his handpicked advisers endorse new injections for a virus that rarely warrants immunization?

Apparently, that box got checked quickly — at least according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted last month to approve Merck’s new RSV monoclonal antibody shot, Enflonsia, for prophylactic use in infants. The treatment mimics a vaccine in function and application.

The approval came despite glaring trial results.

Yes, the Phase 2b/3 CLEVER trial included a legitimate placebo group — finally. But the vaccinated group suffered more deaths and injuries than the placebo group. All-cause mortality ran slightly higher among those who received Enflonsia.

How can any vaccine win approval without reducing the risk of death?

Trial data showed three deaths linked to the vaccinated group, compared to just one among the placebo group. Statistically underpowered or not, that outcome suggests a 50% higher risk of death. That alone should have triggered demands for further study.

Instead, the CDC approved it.

The vaccinated group also faced a 350% higher incidence of upper respiratory tract infections, a 63% higher rate of lower respiratory infections, and a 41% higher risk of febrile seizures. The sample size wasn’t large enough to detect rarer events — yet regulators waved it through anyway. And all this for a virus that most infants overcome with basic care and a nebulizer.

ACIP passed the recommendation 5-2 on June 26. Dissenters Retsef Levi and Vicky Pebsworth cited the higher death rate and adverse reactions. Levi raised additional concerns about immune enhancement — where vaccination worsens the disease in later exposure — and called for longer trials focused on high-risk groups.

History supports his skepticism. In the 1960s, trial participants who received the RSV vaccine developed worse outcomes in subsequent years. We’ve seen similar patterns with some newer RSV formulations. None of today’s trials followed participants long enough to rule out antibody-dependent enhancement.

Even Moderna’s RSV/hMPV combo trial in infants aged 5 to 8 months had to be halted last year due to signs of enhanced respiratory disease. Yet, in May 2024, the Food and Drug Administration approved a similar mRNA shot for adults 60 and older. On June 12, Trump's Health and Human Services expanded that approval to adults over 18 deemed “at risk” — despite all we’ve learned about the dangers of mRNA and respiratory virus vaccines.

Hailshadow via iStock/Getty Images

The FDA under Joe Biden approved Abrysvo, Pfizer’s RSV vaccine for seniors and pregnant women, despite serious warning signs. Post-licensure data linked the shot to elevated risks of Guillain-Barré syndrome within 42 days of injection. And in trials involving pregnant women, 5.7% of infants were born prematurely in the vaccinated group — compared to 4.7% in the placebo group.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. deserves credit for demanding more rigorous placebo-controlled trials. But what’s the point if agencies approve vaccines even when trials raise red flags?

RFK Jr. has publicly questioned links between childhood vaccines and autism — especially the hepatitis B shot. If he truly doubts the safety of older vaccines, why would his handpicked advisers endorse new injections for a virus that rarely warrants immunization?

Merck’s Enflonsia includes genomic material derived from an ovarian cancer cell line. Why on earth would we inject even a minimal amount of tumorigenic cells for a bad cold that we’ve been treating successfully with a nebulizer for years?

No one expects RFK Jr. to overhaul the CDC overnight, especially given internal resistance and pro-mRNA holdouts within the White House. But at the very least, many hoped the reckless approval of unnecessary vaccines would stop under his watch.

Instead, the CDC pressed forward with the same reckless momentum.

What happened to “first, do no harm”?

Patel's 'breakthrough' in COVID origins probe spells trouble for Fauci — especially if his pardon is voided

FBI Director Kash Patel revealed to the eponymous host of "The Joe Rogan Experience" in the episode published Friday that the bureau "just had a great breakthrough" regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a matter into which the FBI apparently has multiple ongoing investigations.

The FBI director noted that this "breakthrough" specifically has to do with Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whom the White House has accused of helping cover up the likely lab origins of COVID-19 and whose name Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and congressional investigators recently batted around when discussing lies about gain-of-function research.

Patel noted that the FBI long sought the phones and devices Fauci used while he was serving in the first Trump administration during the pandemic, "and nobody had found it — till two days ago."

While the director cautioned Rogan and his audience from jumping "to the conclusion [that] everything's in there," he said the bureau will "look at it, we'll pull it — we'll rip it, as we say."

Patel intimated that where potentially incriminating material is concerned, "maybe it's deleted, maybe it's not, but at least we found it."

When asked about the potential significance of the discovery of such devices and what investigators should look for, molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University, a leading critic of Fauci's flirtations with gain-of-function research, told Blaze News, "Fauci violated federal policies on gain-of-function and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research, committed conspiracy to defraud and perjury, used federal funds to commit crimes, and caused and covered up the cause of a pandemic that killed 20 million and cost $25 trillion."

The World Health Organization claims that there have been cumulatively over 7 million reported COVID-19 deaths. However, the Economist's machine-learning model estimated that the total number of excess deaths globally is two to four times higher than the reported number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths, which could the put deaths far in excess of 20 million souls.

Blaze Media

Ebright was among the prominent scientists who last year sought accountability over efforts to cure the origin narrative and demanded the retraction of "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," published by Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020 — a consequential paper that Fauci not only allegedly commissioned and approved but used on multiple occasions to push the zoonotic origin theory.

"If files relevant to Fauci's roles in causing COVID and covering up the cause of COVID are recoverable from Fauci's phones or devices, those files could be of value in documenting the cause and the cover-up and in prosecuting persons culpable for the cause and the cover-up," Ebright told Blaze News. "Examples of relevant files would include files documenting Fauci's correspondence with scientists whose research caused COVID, correspondence with scientists, science administrators, and other federal agency officials who helped Fauci cover up the cause of COVID, and correspondence documenting Fauci's use of non-government email accounts and phone lines for government business."

Blaze News reached out to the FBI for comment and clarification but did not receive a response before publication.

'Clearly he was being deceptive.'

Rogan asked Patel whether the pardons doled out in former President Joe Biden's name would spare Fauci from accountability over his misleading claim to Congress that "the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

There is, after all, a great deal of interest in Congress in holding Fauci accountable over his apparent lie to Congress in 2021 that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research.

For instance, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told Matt Kibbe, the host of BlazeTV's docuseries "The Coverup," that he had referred Fauci to the Department of Justice for prosecution three times over his statements.

"We've detailed his lies to Congress, which are a felony. I've sort of tragically and jokingly said, 'If he were a member of the Trump administration, he would have been arrested long ago.' Because I think we have two standards of justice," Paul told Kibbe. "He certainly seems to be protected."

"Clearly he was being deceptive," Rogan said to Patel. "Are they pardoned for that as well? 'Cause it was like this crazy blanket pardon from 2014 forward, which I didn't even know you could do."

On Jan. 20, Fauci received a "full and unconditional" pre-emptive pardon for possible federal crimes going back to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for dangerous gain-of-function research.

"So I'm the investigator. So that would be a decision for the Department of Justice," said Patel. "We'll work it up and we'll say, 'This is what we found,' and then legal minds will have to come in and chop on, 'Does this pardon apply or not?'"

While Fauci may presently enjoy an immunity shield from prosecution on account of his last-minute pardon, that pardon now faces a great deal of scrutiny.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

President Donald Trump declared in March that the pardons were "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT."

DOJ pardon attorney Ed Martin announced last month that he is reviewing the questionable "autopen" pardons issued in the final days of the Biden White House, noting that they "need some scrutiny." The House Oversight Committee is also investigating autopen use in the Biden White House.

Even if Fauci's pardon holds up, information gleaned by the FBI from the alleged devices could possibly be used in legal actions taken at the state level.

In February, over 16 state attorneys general launched an investigation into Fauci's role in the COVID-19 pandemic response, "demanding accountability for alleged mismanagement, misleading statements, and suppression of scientific debate."

The state AGs underscored in their letter to Congress that the "pardon by former President Biden does not extend to preclude state-level investigations or legal proceedings."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

'There will be hell to pay': Rand Paul tells Glenn Beck he's not done with Anthony Fauci over Wuhan funding

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said that the investigation into the coronavirus pandemic isn't done with Anthony Fauci, after new revelations about laboratory funding.

Paul made the comments in an interview with Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on his radio show Wednesday. The senator said that the change of guard at the Department of Health and Human Services meant new evidence was being produced from the pandemic era.

'It is our belief that Anthony Fauci had to sign the document. We haven't found the document yet because they've either been hidden or destroyed.'

"Is anyone going to pay for the COVID thing?" asked Beck.

“We’re not done, and I will bring Anthony Fauci back in. We’ve finally discovered the records as to who determined that the money went to Wuhan," Paul responded.

"They have resisted me for three years. Robert Kennedy has helped me get the records. So has Jay Bhattacharya. This week or next week I'm gonna begin interviewing the people that are on that committee. We're gonna find out what was the debate, what was the discussion, what were the arguments for sending it to Wuhan, what were the arguments against it," he added.

"Who made the arguments? And then who ultimately had to sign off on this? It is our belief that Anthony Fauci had to sign the document. We haven't found the document yet because they've either been hidden or destroyed," Paul said.

"There will be hell to pay," he concluded ominously.

Paul's feud with Fauci has manifested in numerous rhetorical skirmishes that erupted during congressional hearings. Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 until 2022. He was responsible for the U.S. health response to the AIDS epidemic, as well as the coronavirus pandemic.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

In 2021, Fauci and Paul traded blows over whether the nation's top epidemiologist had lied to Congress when testifying that he had not signed off on funding for controversial gain-of-function research. Many believe the risky studies might have been responsible for a laboratory leak theorized to be the source of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Dr. Fauci, as you are aware it is a crime to lie to Congress," Paul said at the time. "On your last trip to our committee on May 11, you stated that the NIH 'has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.' And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute by Dr. Shi and was funded by the NIH."

Fauci and Paul went back and forth in debate over the evidence.

"Sen. Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you're referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function," Fauci replied.

"Sen. Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially," Fauci angrily declared. "You do not know what you are talking about."

Fauci retired from his office and was pardoned by former President Joe Biden pre-emptively against any politically motivated charges that might be filed by the Trump administration. Some have since cast doubt on whether Biden had the mental capacity to sign the pardon and wondered if others falsified the signing.

Here's the video of Paul's comments:

“There WILL be hell to pay.” @RandPaul gives a fiery update on COVID investigations: “We’re not done, and I WILL bring Anthony Fauci back in. We’ve finally discovered the records as to who determined that the money went to Wuhan.” pic.twitter.com/MwVft0se7h
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) May 14, 2025

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Researchers tied to Fauci’s COVID cover-up still scoring big NIH grants

COVID lab leak denial lingers on NIH’s website: 'Misleading and false'

Unsettling the system

A precedent for censorship

Strong-arming social media

The silver lining

Rand Paul to refile criminal referral of Fauci to DOJ after Biden autopen revelations

Multiple Pardons Granted By Autopen Without Biden Approving Recipients, Staff Admit

What happened to RFK Jr.’s red line on risky vaccines?

The COVID Reckoning Cometh

Patel's 'breakthrough' in COVID origins probe spells trouble for Fauci — especially if his pardon is voided

Propaganda Press Rediscovers Its Outrage Over Presidential Pardons

'There will be hell to pay': Rand Paul tells Glenn Beck he's not done with Anthony Fauci over Wuhan funding

Here's the video of Paul's comments:

Science's God-denying narrative just got crushed again

One for the ladies: Educate yourself about the risks of hormonal birth control

The day of separation: Why every Christian must wake up now

Yes, Trump’s flag-burning executive order is constitutional

Charlie Kirk's suspected assassin lived with trans-identifying lover

How James Dobson's leap of faith helped reshape Republican politics

Unsettling the system

A precedent for censorship

Strong-arming social media

The silver lining

Here's the video of Paul's comments:

We’ll keep you informed with top stories for conservatives who want to become informed decision makers.