Trump bans funding for controversial gain-of-function research



President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning gain-of-function research on pandemic pathogens that many believe was the true source of the coronavirus pandemic.

The research typically involves modification of existing viruses in order to make them more infectious and studying the outcomes in order to prevent and treat possible pandemics.

'Researchers have not acknowledged the legitimate potential for societal harms that this kind of research poses.'

After the global pandemic, many theorized that the source of the virus was a laboratory leak involving gain-of-function research, possibly at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The theory was initially ridiculed as a racist conspiracy theory by many, but has since been corroborated by more evidence.

The administration said the order would "drastically reduce" lab-related incidents involving gain-of-function research "like that conducted on bat coronaviruses in China by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology."

Trump's order ends federal funding for the research in countries like China, Iran, and others without sufficient oversight. It also orders U.S. agencies to identify such research that might imperil public safety and end federal funding for any programs.

"For decades, policies overseeing gain-of-function research on pathogens, toxins, and potential pathogens have lacked adequate enforcement, transparency, and top-down oversight," read a fact sheet from the administration. "Researchers have not acknowledged the legitimate potential for societal harms that this kind of research poses."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was among the most prominent critics of the lab-leak theory and defended the use of gain-of-function research.

"President Trump has long theorized that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has consistently pushed for transparency in investigating its origins," said the statement from the administration.

The Obama, Biden, and first Trump administrations all previously implemented policies pausing or limiting gain-of-function research.

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Trump obliterates Biden’s COVID rules for good



The Trump administration has wasted no time completely revamping the COVID-19 narrative — and has now made it official on the White House website.

The website now has a COVID-19 section, which goes into great detail explaining “misinformation” related to the virus.

“Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency. Most egregiously, the federal government demonized alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions,” the website reads.


“When those efforts failed, the Biden Administration resorted to ‘outright censorship—coercing and colluding with the world’s largest social media companies to censor all COVID-19-related dissent,’” it continues.

The website also highlights that Anthony Fauci was given a full and unconditional pardon by former President Biden.

“It is so refreshing to see this White House,” Sara Gonzales of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered” comments.

“I’m glad we all trusted the plan,” BlazeTV contributor John Doyle chimes in. “We were so angry when everyone started to realize what a sham this was, we were angry with Trump for promoting it, but I will say, I think that we get a little hindsight bias and forget how freaked out even Republicans, like older Republicans, were about COVID.”

“I would just say, their entire argument was ‘trust the experts.’ So if that’s their argument, then again, it’s Anthony Fauci’s fault, because Donald Trump was trusting the expert that they placed in front of him and said, ‘This is the guy,’” Gonzales says.

“So Donald Trump wasn’t in there in a lab with little droppers trying to figure things out; he was trusting the people that he was supposed to be able to trust,” she adds.

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White House endorses COVID lab leak theory, but will anyone be held accountable?



On April 18, the White House publicly endorsed the COVID lab leak theory. The government’s official COVID website was also redirected to a new page titled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19,” which contends that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, and was leaked by accident.

The revamped site criticizes Anthony Fauci, David Morens, Andrew Cuomo, the WHO, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Biden administration, among others, for actively promoting false information and covering up the truth.

It cites five points to support the lab leak claim:

1. “The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.”

2. “Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.”

3. “Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels.”

4. “Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.”

5. “By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.”

After years of the Biden administration and his loyal media allies promoting a lie, it’s refreshing to see the government proclaim the truth.

But while Glenn Beck sees the website as “an amazing thing,” the information on it isn’t exactly news.

“Most of this stuff we had within six or eight months of the actual outbreak,” he says.

The real question is: “Who’s going to jail over this?”

The other question is: Why doesn’t the legacy media seem interested in correcting the narrative?

“Millions of people died here. You'd think that it would be something [the media] would focus on and draw a lot of attention to and continue to kind of beat the drum until someone was held responsible, and they don't seem to have any interest in that,” says co-host Stu Burguiere, noting that most of these outlets “have run an op-ed” about the lab leak theory and called it good.

“If we make a mistake, we correct it because it drives us crazy that we made the mistake, and I don’t want anybody to believe that I’m standing behind something that is wrong and a lie,” says Glenn.

The legacy media clearly doesn’t have the same convictions.

“They knowingly lied” about COVID, Joe Biden’s cognitive state, and Russiagate, and yet, “There’s no consequence.”

“They’re not going to lose any advertisers. The New York Times hasn't lost any real money because of this. Their people just continue to watch,” says Glenn.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

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White House drops a trove of evidence in support of the laboratory leak theory of the coronavirus pandemic



The White House published a website Friday with the evidence bolstering the laboratory leak theory for the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

The lab leak theory was derided and ridiculed by the left and the mainstream media as a "racist" conspiracy theory meant to smear the Chinese government, but more and more evidence shows that the theory is likely true.

'They would rather we not uncover what really happened. They want us to just move on.'

The official story of the pandemic had claimed that the virus was likely sourced from the Wuhan wet markets in China, where exotic animals were often butchered in open air and eaten by humans who risked infection. Critics of that view pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was actively studying coronavirus infections in bats.

The website documents all of the evidence that has since been revealed in support of the lab leak theory.

A lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is the most likely the origin of COVID-19. Current government mechanisms for overseeing this dangerous gain-of-function research are incomplete, severely convoluted, and lack global applicability.

Much of the evidence points to involvement from the U.S. in the laboratories that were later identified as possible sources of the coronavirus leak.

EcoHealth — under the leadership of Dr. Peter Daszak — used U.S. taxpayer dollars to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. After the Select Subcommittee released evidence of EcoHealth violating the terms of its National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commenced official debarment proceedings and suspended all funding to EcoHealth.
New evidence also shows that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an investigation into EcoHealth’s pandemic-era activities.

The website also lays out the argument that many of the pandemic shutdown policies were known to be of dubious efficacy.

The “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation — which shut down schools and small business across the country — was arbitrary and not based on science. During closed door testimony, Dr. Fauci testified that the guidance “sort of just appeared.”

Among the most virulent opponents of the lab leak was Anthony Fauci, who had been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the pandemic. The website outlined how Fauci was involved with many of the main players who tried to cover up the evidence of a lab leak origin.

More of the evidence for the lab leak theory was documented in the BlazeTV documentary series "The Coverup" presented by Blaze Media and Free the People.

"Free the People produced 'The Coverup' to shine light on the shadowy government figures who caused so much pain and suffering with their tyrannical overreach during the pandemic," said BlazeTV host Matthew B. Kibbe. "They would rather we not uncover what really happened. They want us to just move on."

Here's some of the BlazeTV news video reporting on the lab leak theory:

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COVID cover-up exposed: New York Times article reveals conspiracy theorists were right all along



Five years ago, Americans were locked down to stop the spread of COVID-19, but they weren’t allowed to ask questions. Specifically, questions regarding “the science.”

Which is why it’s shocking that a recent New York Times op-ed by Zeynep Tufekci, titled “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives,” was even allowed to be published.

“Take the real story behind two very influential publications that quite early in the pandemic cast the lab leak theory as baseless. The first was a March 2020 paper in the journal Nature Medicine, which was written by five prominent scientists and declared that no ‘laboratory-based scenario’ for the pandemic virus was plausible,” Tufekci writes.


“We later learned through congressional subpoenas of their Slack conversations, that while the scientists publicly said the scenario was implausible, privately, many of its authors considered the scenario not just plausible, but likely,” the author continues.

The article reveals that evolutionary biologist Christian Anderson wrote in those Slack messages that “the lab escape version of the story is so freakin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work, and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.”

“Now, that’s kind of a big thing, right? They’re admitting this. You might remember. You might not remember how far this cover-up went,” Stu Burguiere of “Stu Does America” comments.

The article goes on to claim that Jeremy Farrar, who is now the chief scientist at the World Health Organization, suggested that the scientists researching the origins of COVID-19 rule out the lab leak theory “even more directly.”

Stu, while disturbed by the findings, is surprised that the New York Times is publishing a story calling this out — when it was guilty of this itself.

“The New York Times wrote about this stuff all the time and shamed people all the time for this type of stuff,” he says, adding, “and they went even farther than that.”

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Despite Biden’s pardon, Anthony Fauci still faces legal perils. Here they are.



Joe Biden’s pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci may protect the former National Institutes of Health official from immediate criminal prosecution, but some critics say he is not completely out of legal jeopardy and that public sentiment might still condemn the man who became known during the COVID-19 pandemic as “Mr. Science.”

In the days before Biden offered the pardon to Fauci, along with other critics of Donald Trump, some experts who have followed Fauci’s career and handling of the pandemic, as well as members of the Trump transition team, reiterated their assertion that Fauci perjured himself on several occasions during the pandemic — especially regarding his agency’s links to the lab in Wuhan, China, that may have created the virus that causes COVID-19.

Biden’s pardon negates the two Senate referrals for criminal activity. But future hearings could still require Fauci to respond to evidence that he may have perjured himself.

The pardon addresses any COVID-related offenses and is backdated to 2014 — the year a U.S. ban on so-called "gain of function" virus research took effect. Fauci has been accused of outsourcing that research to China.

Despite reporting that Trump is bent on revenge, the appetite among MAGA appointees for holding Fauci accountable hasn’t been particularly vocal. But former Senate investigator Jason Foster, who now runs the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight, says that Biden’s pardon creates new legal jeopardy for Fauci.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has vowed to continue investigating COVID’s origins, and sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and House Republican investigators plan to do so as well. When testifying in those inquiries or answering written depositions, Fauci will be unable to dodge questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

“They can ask him if he lied before, replow old ground,” Foster said. “And if he lies about any prior lie, he can be prosecuted for that or held in contempt.”

Andrew Noymer, associate professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine, said such hearings are necessary for scientific and historical reasons. “I’m hopeful that he will now come clean about everything he knows about the origins of the virus,” Noymer said. “For the sake of public trust in science — explaining what killed 20 million people — that a complete account is much more important than speculation about what criminal penalties he may have avoided.”

“These pardons will not stop Department of Justice investigations,” said one adviser to the Trump transition team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We expected this and look at it as a predicate to get truth from people who can no longer use the Fifth Amendment. Now we can bring every one of them in front of a grand jury.”

A legacy of deception

There is no consensus on Fauci’s handling of the pandemic. Legacy media outlets promoted Fauci throughout the pandemic as “America’s doctor” who “sticks to the facts” and applauded him as “the nation’s top infectious disease expert.” When he retired from the NIH after five decades in 2022, the New York Times granted him space on its opinion page to advise the next generation of scientists, citing his own accomplishments.

Numerous social media outlets have provided a polar opposite perspective. Several X accounts have uploaded videos that show Fauci’s inconsistencies. For example, Fauci claimed in early 2022 interviews that he never recommended lockdowns, but later said he recommended shutting the country down. Independent journalist Matt Orfalea circulated another set of clips that show Fauci claiming he kept an “open mind” about how the pandemic started while alleging in others that the evidence pointed against a lab accident and “strongly” in favor of a natural spillover.

As Fauci’s flip-flops generated attention in Republican circles and on social media, he charged that such criticism was “totally preposterous,” adding, “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”

Fauci’s many contradictory statements even caught the attention of a New York Times contributing opinion writer, Megan K. Stack, who chastised Fauci for “the largely one-sided nature of his public remarks” about the possibility that the pandemic started from an accident at a lab his agency had helped fund — the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Initially, Fauci dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident on a Feb. 9, 2020, podcast hosted by Newt Gingrich. Afterward, Fauci reversed himself, stating in several interviews that he had always kept an open mind.

Later reports zeroed in on Fauci’s secret involvement in prominent March 2020 research, called the “proximal origin” paper, that turned public and scientific sentiment against the possibility of a lab accident. “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the paper concluded, adding, “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” Published in the prestigious Nature Medicine journal, the “proximal origin” paper is the most-cited scientific paper of 2020.

Subsequent emails showed that Fauci helped guide the “proximal origin” paper to publication, as congressional probers found, “without revealing that he had been involved with its creation and had even, according to the emails, given it his approval.”

Distancing himself from his own emails, Fauci later told the Times that he wasn’t sure he even got around to reading the paper. But the House later released a multiday deposition of Fauci in which he was asked about his involvement in the “proximal origin” paper. Under oath, Fauci admitted to having received and read several drafts of the paper.

But while dissembling to the media is not a crime, lying to Congress is illegal. And the Department of Justice has two referrals from Congress already requesting that Fauci be prosecuted for lying under oath.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Lies as legal jeopardy

Fauci’s habit of bending the truth, as some see it, was notably on display at a July 2021 Senate hearing when Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, bored into the funding Fauci approved for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While Fauci attempted to downplay his financial involvement with the Chinese government lab, reports were already percolating.

In April 2020, Newsweek reported that Fauci had approved a grant for risky gain-of-function virus research at the Wuhan lab. The Washington Post editorial board in March 2021 then called for an independent investigation into EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit funded by the Fauci-run National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. With this grant, EcoHealth subcontracted research to the Chinese, the Post noted, to do experiments involving “modifying viral genomes to give them new properties, including the ability to infect lung cells of laboratory mice that had been genetically modified to respond as human respiratory cells would.”

Fox News reported Sunday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has barred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. and its former president, Dr. Peter Daszak, from receiving federal funds for five years. EcoHealth allegedly failed to report dangerous gain-of-function experiments to the government, which eventually led to the five-year ban.

A month before Fauci’s hearing with Paul, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs confirmed that U.S.-funded research at the WIV consisted of gain-of-function virus research that could have started the pandemic. “[I]t is clear that the NIH co-funded research at the WIV that deserves scrutiny under the hypothesis of a laboratory-related release of the virus.” At that time, Sachs led a commission formed by a British medical journal, the Lancet, to investigate how the pandemic began.

But when Paul began grilling Fauci about these details and called him out for what he characterized as evasive answers, Fauci pointed the finger back at Paul. “If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you,” Fauci said. Paul then sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice requesting that it investigate whether Fauci had committed perjury.

“He definitely misled the senator,” said former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield. When Redfield looked at all the evidence, including still-classified information, he said the weight falls in the direction of a lab accident. “Fauci manipulated the public to believe there was only one possible cause for the pandemic, a natural spillover.”

Months after Paul’s referral to the Justice Department, liberal news nonprofit ProPublica released new documents confirming the Wuhan lab had conducted such studies. “Grant money for the controversial experiment came from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci,” ProPublica reported on September 9, 2021.

“NIH admits funding risky virus research in Wuhan,” Vanity Fair reported a week after ProPublica, referring to a letter the NIH sent to Congress.

Paul sent a second referral to the Department of Justice in July 2023, reiterating his demand that Fauci be investigated. At that time, House investigators released emails showing that in early 2020, Fauci admitted that scientists were concerned the COVID virus had been engineered and researchers in Wuhan were engaged in gain-of-function research.

“Everything he has been telling us from the very beginning has been a lie,” Paul told Fox News. “We have documented it’s a lie, and it’s a felony to lie to Congress.”

Biden’s pardon negates the two Senate referrals for criminal activity. But future hearings could still require Fauci to respond to evidence that he may have perjured himself and open him up to future prosecution if he stands by statements that can be proven to be false.

Hiding the use of private email

Another area of potential inquiry is Fauci’s congressional testimony last summer denying his use of private email to conduct official business. “Let me state for the record that to the best of my knowledge, I have never conducted official business via my personal email,” Fauci wrote in his sworn statement to Congress.

This testimony seemed to contradict evidence in a 35-page memo compiled by Republican investigative staff. One email showed Fauci’s second in command, Dr. David Morens, suggesting that someone speak with Fauci through an unofficial, private channel. In another email, Morens wrote that he would contact Fauci on Gmail.

After Fauci’s testimony, the writer of this article reported in the DisInformation Chronicle that Morens had connected KFF Health News reporter Arthur Allen with Fauci on Fauci’s private email back in May 2021. The NIH did not respond to comment about Fauci’s use of private email to conduct government business with reporters.

In a second example, the New York Post reported that the watchdog group the White Coat Waste Project accused Fauci of lying to Congress about his private email use after the group released documents showing Fauci was back-channeling with a Washington Post reporter on his private email.

“I will send you an e-mail via my gmail account,” Fauci wrote in an email dated Oct. 29, 2021, to Washington Post reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb.

Fauci’s lawyer told the Post that Fauci was discussing a personal matter with the Washington Post reporter, although he did not explain what this personal matter was.

Justin Goodman, senior vice president at the White Coat Waste Project, said the evidence is clear that Fauci contacted the Washington Post about issues regarding his NIH work and then denied it to Congress. “He should be prosecuted, not pardoned.”

Follow the money

Congressional hearings might also delve into Fauci’s involvement in research misconduct with the “proximal origin” paper and a grant he approved for the paper’s lead author, Scripps Research Institute’s Kristian Andersen.

“There needs to be a criminal investigation of this grant and paper,” said a former law enforcement official who has worked with congressional staff investigating Fauci and his grants. “Nobody inside the executive branch has taken ownership of this.”

'It’s been a huge paradigm shift to see a hero actually turn into a villain.'

Shortly after the COVID virus outbreak, Fauci began discussing with several virologists, including Andersen, how the pandemic started. In a Feb. 1, 2020, email, Andersen wrote to Fauci that he had analyzed the COVID virus genetic sequence and “some of the features (potentially) look engineered.” Andersen added that while opinions could change, he and other virologists felt the virus was not natural or consistent with “expectations with evolutionary theory.”

Later that same day, Fauci held a phone call with Andersen and other virologists and then emailed that the scientists were suspicious that a “mutation was intentionally inserted” into the virus. Other emails show that Fauci was concerned that his funding for research in China may have led to the COVID virus.

Despite their initial suspicions, Andersen and other virologists reversed course six weeks later and published the “proximal origin” paper on March 16, 2020, that absolved Fauci of funding research that led to the pandemic. Fauci then promoted the Andersen “proximal origin” paper to reporters at a White House briefing on April 17 without disclosing that he had helped marshal the study into publication.

A month later, Fauci signed off on an $8.9 million grant to Kristian Andersen. Both Andersen and Fauci have denied that the grant was quid pro quo for Andersen publishing the “proximal origin” paper that absolved Fauci, but the group Biosafety Now has called twice for the paper to be retracted.

“It is imperative that this clearly fraudulent and clearly damaging paper be removed from the scientific literature,” reads an online petition signed by over 5,000 scientists.

Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and co-founder of Biosafety Now, said that Fauci should have been prosecuted for “criminal conspiracy” for his secret involvement in the “proximal origin” paper. Ebright added that the grant Fauci gave to Andersen after he published the paper likely also involved criminal behavior.

With Republicans running both the Senate and House, investigations of Fauci will likely continue as members resume digging into any NIH culpability in funding research that started the pandemic. Trump’s CIA nominee, John Ratcliffe, told House members during a 2023 hearing that classified intelligence points toward a lab accident. Ratcliffe is likely to be confirmed, and a Trump transition team source said he would likely then declassify that information, further undermining Fauci’s claims that the pandemic started from a natural spillover.

Ongoing investigations of Fauci, RCI has been told, will only further erode his credibility, even if criminal charges can no longer be filed. “This pardon means he can no longer be brought to justice,” said an adviser to the Trump transition team. “But it guarantees he will be further exposed.”

“I trusted everything Fauci said during the pandemic, and I did everything he told me,” said Bri Dressen, a former preschool teacher in Saratoga Springs, Utah. “I masked, wiped down my groceries with alcohol, kept my kids away from other kids so they wouldn’t catch the virus, and then I got vaccinated.” Dressen ended up injured by AstraZeneca’s vaccine as a volunteer in the company’s clinical trial and founded React19.org, whose 36,000 members advocate on behalf of victims of COVID vaccine harm.

“It was the steepest learning curve in my entire life. The people in authority like Fauci are the ones I shouldn’t have trusted,” Dressen said. “It’s been a huge paradigm shift to see a hero actually turn into a villain.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Former NIH Chief Of Staff Denies Lab Leak Theory Censorship Despite Overwhelming Proof

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2024-07-11-at-3.25.01 PM-1200x651.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2024-07-11-at-3.25.01%5Cu202fPM-1200x651.png%22%7D" expand=1]Despite Wolinetz's denial, several instances indicate censorship did, in fact, occur.

Fauci’s Testimony Reveals The Inconsistencies And Deceit Behind U.S. Covid Response

Fauci's testimony gave Americans further proof that many of his theories were based not on scientific research but on political expedience.

Fauci’s Agency Raked In $690 Million From Big Pharma In The Wake Of Pandemic Lockdowns

An investigation by Open the Books found pharmaceutical and health care companies paid more than $710 million to the NIH.