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.

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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.

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How a ‘lovers' spat’ nearly sparked a second pandemic in Biden-era high-security virus lab

The Department of Health and Human Services has paused work at certain laboratories, most notably at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) Integrated Research Facility, which studies high-risk pathogens.

The pause is in response to repeated safety incidents.

The incident gaining the most attention, however, involves a dispute between researchers that turned physical when one worker intentionally compromised another worker’s personal protective equipment.

To get the scoop, Glenn Beck invited the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, on “The Glenn Beck Program."

“A contractor actually punched a hole in the other person's biolab suit, I don't know, to get them sick? I mean, is that what happened at that biolab?” asks Glenn in shock.

“That is exactly what happened,” says Dr. Bhattacharya. “A lab worker cut a hole in a biocontainment suit of a fellow worker with the express intention of getting that worker infected.”

The lab where the incident took place, he says, is “a BSL-4 lab, which is the highest biosecurity level lab." According to Dr. Bhattacharya, the lab conducts experiments on highly infectious viruses and pathogens, including Ebola. A security breach could mean deadly consequences, not just for workers but for quite literally the world.

But it wasn’t just a “lovers' spat” that compromised the safety of the lab. The contractor who was overseeing the facility “did a very lax job.”

“I learned that this goes back to the Biden administration — that the safety environment in the lab essentially downplayed these kinds of security problems,” says Dr. Bhattacharya. “Personally, I'm not sold that all of these experiments are worth doing, but in any case, if you're going to run them, you have an absolute responsibility to have zero tolerance for safety problems.”

“Shouldn't that person be punished?” asks Glenn. “I mean, that really is attempted murder and maybe even on a mass scale.”

Because there’s an “ongoing investigation,” Dr. Bhattacharya can’t reveal much, but he does admit that the incident “scared” him deeply.

“I think Americans are actively scared because none of this stuff should be happening. I mean, we are just an accident or a stupid move or an intentional leak away from mass death,” says Glenn, noting that Bill Gates has been warning that “we’re on the verge of another pandemic.”

“Pandemics happen; they've happened all throughout history. The key thing to me though, Glenn, is we don't want to cause one. ... The irony of this past pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic, is that it was very likely caused by actions aimed at stopping pandemics from happening,” Dr. Bhattacharya explains.

To hear his plan for creating a new framework for scientific research that involves the approval of the American public, watch the clip above.

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Fauci Refuses To Take Media Questions At Protested Florida Speaking Event

While Anthony Fauci retired in 2022, his wife was recently laid off by cuts to Fauci’s former agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Damning new episode of BlazeTV's 'The Coverup' blows lid off Biden's 10-year pardon for Fauci

In an 11th-hour move as he prepared to leave office, former President Joe Biden granted Dr. Anthony Fauci a sweeping pardon covering any potential offenses dating back to 2014 — the same year the United States' ban on "gain-of-function" research took effect.

In the latest episode of BlazeTV's "The Coverup," Matt Kibbe and Dr. Richard Ebright expose the smoking gun behind Biden's unprecedented pardon.

Ebright explained how Fauci leveraged the 2001 anthrax attacks to rise to power. Fauci's willingness to effectively become the nation's "biodefense research czar" resulted in him becoming the highest-paid government employee.

'Fauci's response has been to double down and say he did the right thing.'

"9/11 and the anthrax mailings provided an opportunity, provided an opening, provided a pretext to support a number of activities, and one of those activities was the expansion of biodefense efforts and the redirection of those efforts away from countermeasures and towards research on the biological weapons agents themselves," Ebright told Kibbe.

He explained that former Vice President Dick Cheney sought an agency to conduct such research that did not have — and would not implement — a biological weapons convention compliance office. Cheney's solution was the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Ebright expressed concern about another "deliberate release or, inadvertently, an accidental release." He noted that in 2002, it had become clear that the anthrax mailings were a deliberate attack committed by a worker at a biodefense research laboratory.

"Ironically, the response to that attack from within — a response that began almost seven months before the source had been identified — was to increase the number of institutions ... and the number of individuals ... who had hands-on access to fully infectious biological weapons agents and to do that with no material increase in oversight in safety and security," Ebright said.

Ebright highlighted several harmful biological weapons research projects — including the recreation of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus and the reconstruction of the avian flu for human transmission — which he referred to as Fauci's "embarrassments."

He noted that the research was carried out without first conducting risk assessments.

"Each time, Fauci's response has been to double down and say he did the right thing. 'This is a risk, but I have reviewed this risk, and I, Dr. Fauci, have determined on behalf of 7.9 billion members of the global public that this a risk worth taking,'" Ebright stated.

Ebright accused Fauci of "repeatedly and flagrantly" violating U.S. policies and then lying in congressional testimony.

Fauci "participated in a conspiracy to defraud the public about the origin [of the COVID-19 virus] in a conspiracy to cover up the origin."

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) stated that he has referred Fauci to the Department of Justice for prosecution three times after he apparently lied to Congress in 2021, claiming that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research.

"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."

"The reason the Democrats, I think, coalesced around him is that he represents government, and they think government is the answer to most things," Paul continued. "Any attack on him is an attack on central planning or an attack on government."

Dr. Scott Atlas, one of President Trump's health advisers during his first administration, stated that Fauci, former White House coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx, and former Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield "presided over the worst fiasco in public health history."

"They destroyed — hopefully not irreparably — a younger generation, creating hysteria, massive psychological harms on teenagers and college students, suicidal ideation, cigarettes being put out on their skin, self-harm, a massive spike in anxiety and depression. These are all from the lockdown, not the virus. And an obesity crisis where more than over half of college-age Americans had an average weight gain during 2020 of 28 pounds," he stated. "They did that. They caused that. And the third massive problem with their legacy, they destroyed trust in public health and science."

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Matt Taibbi tells Tucker Carlson why Biden's pardon for Fauci could help bring curtain down on COVID cover-up

Investigative reporter Matt Taibbi and Tucker Carlson recently spoke at length about long-standing efforts by deep-staters to control information flows, apparent last-ditch attempts by elements of the previous administration to embroil the U.S. in a direct conflict with Russia, and the likelihood that President Donald Trump has been targeted for assassination on more occasions than have been publicly admitted.

While the conversation was wide-ranging, it largely centered on the question of what impact Trump's mass disclosures — particularly his planned declassification of government documents — might have, not only on his safety but regarding various matters left unresolved or swept under the rug over the past four years, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its possible manufacture.

Taibbi told Carlson that in this time of revelation and reopened investigations, former President Joe Biden's strategic blunder could ultimately prove to be what forces Anthony Fauci to spill the beans.

While Biden apparently sought to spare Fauci from accountability, Taibbi indicated that the former president's pardon of Fauci on the eve of Trump's inauguration actually painted a target on his back and deprived the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of his key means of self-preservation.

"The thing is about these pardons — they're a mistake. If you want to know what's happening, they just made it a lot easier for us to find out," said Taibbi. "Once the pardon's delivered, the person can't plead the Fifth. If they're brought before a grand jury, they can't take the Fifth any more. If they're brought before a congressional committee, they can't invoke the right against self-incrimination."

'It's going to be like a turkey shoot.'

Citing the insights of past and current congressional investigators as well as criminal defense attorneys, Taibbi suggested that the consensus is that it is "illogical to give somebody a pardon if you're trying to cover up things" unless "there are very serious crimes involved."

In either case, the pardon serves as a giant "red flag."

When asked what possible crimes Fauci might have needed cover for, going all the way back to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for dangerous gain-of-function research that makes pathogens more deadly and/or more transmissible — Taibbi noted that "the one thing that comes to mind immediately is perjury."

"Lying under oath to the Congress. In particular, saying, you know, that we have never funded gain-of-[function] research, that we weren't doing it during this time period — even as there are other people in the government, like the deputy director of the NIH, saying, 'Yes we were,' or Ralph Baric, who was one of the scientists at UNC, saying, 'Yes, absolutely, that was gain-of-function,'" said Taibbi.

Fauci misled Congress by stating in May 2021 that the National Institutes of Health "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

In addition to putting the former NIAID director back on the hot seat, Taibbi suggested that other people with fingerprints all over the pandemic, including Peter Daszak — the British zoologist who was formally debarred along with his scandal-plagued organization EcoHealth Alliance this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — may similarly be trotted out to answer questions, including questions about documents that the Trump administration may release.

"There are documents that we know exist that we're going to get now with FBI communications between the bureau and a lot of these scientists dating back 10 years, and it's going to tell a very crazy story," said Taibbi. "There's a reason why Fauci's pardon is backdated to 2014, because that's the time period that they're going to have to start looking [at]."

The investigative reporter suggested that key questions to revisit with these scientists will be, "When did we start defying the ban on gain-of-function research? ... Why were we doing it? What connection did that have to the Wuhan thing? What kind of advanced notice did we get? What kind of lies were told about it? Who were responsible for those lies? What kind of information did we get about the inefficacy of the vaccine?"

"COVID is a gigantic rats' nest of stuff," continued Taibbi. "It's going to be like a turkey shoot, where every direction they look, they're going to find something revelatory."

The investigative reporter suggested that the Republican-controlled government could illuminate what authorities actually knew about what was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where American tax dollars ended up courtesy of Fauci; whether there was advance warning that the pandemic was coming; and whether investigations into the possibility of a lab leak were suppressed "because of the connections to U.S. research."

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White-coat supremacy forever?

Dr. Anthony Fauci announced his retirement in 2022 but continued to receive a private chauffer and a U.S. Marshal security detail, funded by taxpayers. That constitutes evidence that under the Biden-Harris junta, Fauci remains in power, a serious matter that should come as no surprise.

Fauci has been a government bureaucrat since 1968, and during the COVID pandemic, Joe Biden let slip that, in effect, Fauci was the real president. Fauci recently authored “HIV and COVID-19: Shared Lessons from Two Pandemics,” which leaves the key by the front door.

Never again should anyone, let alone a Lysenko figure like Fauci, be allowed to control a government health agency for decades.

HIV, by which Fauci means AIDS or HIV/AIDS, fails to qualify as a pandemic. Back in the 1980s, Fauci contended that AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) could be spread by simple family contact and would ravage the general population. As Michael Fumento noted in “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS,” the syndrome never moved beyond male homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and intravenous drug users in any significant measure. As with COVID, the origin of AIDS was a matter of dispute.

In 1983, Luc Montagnier, director of the Viral Oncology Unit at the Pasteur Institute, discovered the human immunodeficiency virus, better known as HIV. That came to the attention of Fauci, who earned a medical degree in 1966 but in 1968 took a cushy “yellow beret” job with the National Institutes of Health. Fauci’s bio showed no advanced degrees in biochemistry or molecular biology, but in 1984, the NIH made him director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where he flagged HIV as the sole cause of AIDS. Medical scientists much more qualified than Fauci disagreed.

‘Copious scientific evidence’

Harvard and Johns Hopkins molecular biologist Charles Thomas, biochemist and Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, and UC Berkeley molecular biologist Peter Duesberg — a member of the National Academy of Sciences with an outstanding investigator grant — had never seen a retrovirus with such destructive capabilities. Never had a retrovirus been shown to cause a human disease or even a disease in animals. Nobel laureate Walter Gilbert found “no animal model for AIDS,” and Harvey Bialy, scientific editor of the journal Biotechnology, could locate “no pathogenic relative” for the virus. Some 40 years later, here’s how Fauci spins it:

Several years after the discovery of AIDS, Peter Duesberg, a prominent molecular virologist from the University of California at Berkeley, claimed that HIV was not the cause, but that the syndrome was the result of noninfectious factors such as recreational and pharmaceutical drug use and sexual promiscuity unrelated to the virus. He was joined in AIDS denialism by other prominent scientists including Kary Mullis, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. It was remarkable that these scientists made claims based on no credible scientific information and in the face of copious amounts of scientific evidence that negated their assertions.

Fauci leaves out a key point. Kary Mullis also contended that Fauci “doesn’t understand electronic microscopy, and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in.” The unqualified NIAID boss, who never invented anything, did not attempt to debate Mullis, Duesberg, Thomas, or any member of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis. In 2024, Fauci has it exactly backwards.

It was the NIAID boss who failed to show “copious scientific evidence” that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS. His new paper fails to cite any peer reviewed, replicated study confirming that causation, and avoids an Italian study on “non-HIV AIDS.” At 83, the evasive bureaucrat is still quick on the trigger.

Dr. Fauci maintained that COVID-19 virus emerged naturally in the wild. Other medical scientists detected a laboratory origin. Instead of engaging in debate, Fauci smeared them as “conspiracy theorists.” To this day, he piles it on:

Misinformation and disinformation have been rampant during the COVID-19 pandemic and were made worse by online platforms that amplify untruths faster than any other time in history, some of them spread by well-funded bad-faith actors. From a public health standpoint, this has been particularly damaging with hesitancy to accept the safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccines.

For Fauci, “misinformation” and “disinformation” mean any departure from the views of the NIAID boss. The medical scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration, most if not all more qualified than Fauci, challenged his lockdown policies, particularly with schools. As with the AIDS dissenters, Fauci did not debate these scientists and chose to attack them as “fringe epidemiologists.” Obama NIH director Francis Collins tasked Fauci for a “quick and devastating takedown” of the GBD scientists.

In 2021, the nonpracticing doctor proclaimed, “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” To all but the willfully blind, Fauci is a certified megalomaniac, but there’s a method to his madness.

“It has been firmly established that the origin of HIV is zoonotic,” Fauci now proclaims, without showing how that has been established by any replicated study. In effect, Fauci is working backwards, applying his false claim for the COVID virus to HIV. On the other hand, Fauci is looking ahead.

With the state calling the shots, and many diseases proclaimed “zoonotic,” government health bosses can lay down mandates with no scientific verification, as Fauci modeled during the COVID pandemic. In 2021, the same year he claimed to represent science, Fauci told a Montreal audience:

I think what people have to appreciate is that indeed, you do have personal liberties for yourself and you should be in control of that. But you are a member of society, and as a member of society — reaping all the benefits of being a member of society — you have a responsibility to society. And I think each of us, particularly in the context of a pandemic that’s killing millions of people, you have got to look at it and say there comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision, for the greater good of society.

Time for accountability

As it turns out, white-coat supremacy is standard-brand totalitarianism. That is Fauci’s vision moving forward, but the NIAID boss has a problem. President Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author of “The Real Anthony Fauci.” In his cover endorsement, Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier proclaimed: “Dr. Joseph Goebbels wrote that ‘a lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.’ Tragically for humanity, there are many, many untruths emanating from Dr. Fauci and his minions. RFK Jr. exposes the decades of lies.” RFK Jr. can continue the exposure but not alone.

Trump’s choice to head the National Institutes of Health is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, smeared by Fauci and Collins as a fringe epidemiologist and censored from social media. Trump’s choice to run the Centers for Disease Control is U.S. Army veteran David Weldon, a physician, former congressman, and critic of the CDC and its vaccine policies.

Kennedy, Bhattacharya, and Weldon face an urgent and monumental task: the dismantling of white-coat supremacy, whose institutional structures remain intact. New NIAID director Jeanne Marrazzo is a Fauci disciple, and if anybody thought Fauci still runs the show, it would be hard to blame them. His plan for the future must not stand.

Never again should anyone, let alone a Lysenko figure like Fauci, be allowed to control a government health agency for decades. Never again should one person wield executive-level power without ever facing the voters. Never again should the same people control public health policy and spending on medical research.

Kary Mullis, who called out Fauci as unqualified for the NIAID job, died in 2019, but at this writing, Peter Duesberg is still around. As he explained in “Inventing the AIDS Virus,” Fauci worked behind the scenes to cancel Duesberg’s media appearances and targeted his NIH grants, which in time, hindered the cancer research that brought Duesberg to UC Berkeley in the first place. Without Fauci’s campaign against him, a cure for cancer might be closer at hand.

The damage wrought by Anthony Fauci is truly fathomless. At some point, Kennedy, Bhattacharya, and Weldon should bring in Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, to make a case for reparations. The time for justice is now. In 2025, the people will be watching.

Fauci’s empire exposed: How Trump can cure America’s health bureaucracy

Earlier this week, I wrote a column exposing the cancer metastasizing within America’s body politic — a malignancy created and nurtured by the progressive project over the last century. I focused on how this cancer had infected the “eyes and ears” of our nation: the media. From Big Tech suppressing dissent to mass media corrupting public discourse, the disease has eaten away at our ability to pursue the common good through civil disagreement and the free flow of information.

But this cancer has deeper roots, spreading into the very organs meant to protect and nourish our republic: our immune system.

The 2024 election isn’t just a mandate. It’s a diagnosis.

The Department of Health and Human Services, specifically the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration, once acted as the body’s natural defenses. Today, the agencies resemble a compromised immune system — infested with power-hungry elites and corrupted by self-interest.

This failure was laid bare during the COVID-19 pandemic, which shredded the last vestiges of trust Americans had in their government. At the center of this catastrophe stood Dr. Anthony Fauci, the epitome of progressive rot — a man who turned his government post into an untouchable kingdom.

The Fauci empire

Fauci’s career should serve as a cautionary tale. As the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he wielded unparalleled influence, setting pandemic policies that devastated lives and businesses. Behind the scenes, his agency funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the likely source of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Even when confronted with this inconvenient truth, Fauci sidestepped accountability. In 2021, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) exposed his agency’s involvement in funding this dangerous research. Months later, an NIH official confirmed it. Yet Fauci remains unscathed, unaccountable, and celebrated by the elites.

When retiring in 2022, Fauci boasted the highest salary of any federal employee — over $400,000 annually. His golden parachute includes a taxpayer-funded security detail at a cost of $15 million and, as revealed by watchdog group Open the Books, hidden royalties from pharmaceutical companies. These revelations paint a damning picture of a man — and a system — that enriches itself at the expense of the American people.

The deification of bureaucracy

When Fauci infamously claimed, “If you’re attacking me, you’re attacking science,” he wasn’t just defending his actions; he was embodying the progressive vision of government: a pantheon of unelected “experts” ruling unchallenged over the masses. Agencies like the NIH, CDC, and FDA, once meant to serve the public, now tower over us like Greek temples, demanding faith while suppressing dissent.

This progressive model — centralized control under the guise of expertise — is the cancer undermining our republic. It prioritizes bureaucratic power over individual freedom and accountability. Trump’s election represents a rejection of this model. But a rebellion is meaningless without action.

Trump’s window of opportunity

The 2024 election isn’t just a mandate. It’s a diagnosis. Americans are demanding bold action to excise the rot. The federal health bureaucracy must be among Trump’s top priorities. His administration must:

Audit the agencies: Investigate the NIH, CDC, and FDA for abuses of power and conflicts of interest.
Pursue accountability: Hold figures like Fauci accountable for misleading Congress and the American people.
Decentralize power: Transfer authority from federal agencies back to state and local governments.
End corporate cronyism: Shine a light on the relationship between Big Pharma and federal agencies.

This is the next step in America’s surgery — a treatment that targets not just the tumor but the system enabling its growth.

We can no longer allow unelected officials to wield unchecked power. Agencies like the NIH, CDC, and FDA must return to their rightful role: serving the people, not ruling over them. Trump’s presidency offers a rare opportunity to reclaim government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The cancer is deep, but it’s not untreatable. It will take bold leadership in the Trump administration and the courage to challenge the progressive elites who have corrupted our system.

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Retired Fauci drains taxpayer funds with lavish security detail: Report

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, received $15 million in taxpayer money to cover the cost of his private security detail after stepping away from his government position and returning to private citizenship, according to documents obtained by independent journalist Jordan Schachtel and Open the Books.

The funds covered the cost of his 24/7 chauffeur, U.S. Marshals security detail, and their law enforcement equipment from January 2023 to September 2024, as stated in a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, Open the Books reported.

'I get so many threats.'

The document revealed that the contract was eligible for extension; it is unclear whether it has already been extended. The protection costs were distributed through HHS' fund, according to the nonprofit organization.

The reported millions do not include costs associated with his personal security detail from April 2020 to December 2022, while he was still a government employee. Fauci retired in December 2022.

Fauci's critics have slammed him for pushing draconian government restrictions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. He was the highest-paid federal employee from 2019 to 2022, retiring with a record-breaking $480,654 annual salary. According to Open the Books, his pension is estimated at approximately $355,000 per year. Over his five and a half decades of government service, Fauci amassed a personal fortune of $11 million.

Last year, Fauci claimed that the costs to cover his security detail were necessary, citing alleged threats from the "extreme, radical right."

"I get so many threats. Some of them are credible threats of violence against me and my family that I have to be walking around with federal marshals protecting me, which is completely crazy," he told Newshub.

He concluded the interview by issuing a warning about the dangers of what he referred to as "disinformation."

"I don't want to make it seem so melodramatic, but it seems to erode the foundations of democracy because if you can't believe the truth," Fauci said. "If you look back historically on how governments have failed, and tyrannies ever have risen, it's when people essentially take control over information, a lot of which is untrue. That's a very scary situation."

Open the Books reported that after his retirement, Fauci remained on the NIAID's staff list, apparently in a no-show job to ensure he continued to receive his taxpayer-funded security detail.

Schachtel called the arrangement "unprecedented" and "clandestine." He noted that he "could find no other cases of a former federal employee receiving this level of protection."

The U.S. Marshals Service, a subagency of the Department of Justice, confirmed to the Daily Caller it "provided a protective detail for Dr. Anthony S. Fauci from January 2023 to August 2024," one month short of Schachtel's reporting.

HHS did not respond to the Daily Caller's request for comment.

The reports about Fauci's extensive security detail come after news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was repeatedly denied Secret Service protection, and at least nine of President-elect Donald Trump's requests for increased Secret Service protection were reportedly turned down.

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