‘Fire Fauci’: Rand Paul calls for dismissal in wake of email release

“Fauci has been lying,” said Sen. Paul.

By Josh Plank, World Israel News

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is calling for the firing of Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), following the release of thousands of Fauci’s emails from early 2020.

The emails, obtained by Buzzfeed News following a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that Fauci may have known much more about the possibility that COVID-19 was created in a NIAID-funded Chinese lab than he has publicly admitted.

“Told you,” tweeted Paul, “#firefauci.”

“It’s time to fire Fauci! Emails that have been released now under Freedom of Information Act show two very important things: 1. FAUCI has been lying 2. I’ve been right all along,” he said in another tweet.

In a Senate hearing last month, Paul had asked Fauci whether he still supported the funding of “gain of function” coronavirus research in China.

“Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect, that the NIH [National Institutes of Health] has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci responded.

In an April 2020 email, Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, thanked Fauci for telling the press that the coronavirus originated in nature.

“I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Daszak said.

Daszak, whose organization funneled $600 thousand in U.S. funding to the Wuhan lab, was also a member of the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origin of the coronavirus.

Another email shows that Fauci knew about the gain of function research being conducted by Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan lab.

On February 1, 2020, Fauci sent an email to NIAID Principal Deputy Director Hugh Auchincloss with an attachment titled, “Baric, Shi et al – Nature medicine – SARS Gain of function.pdf.”

“It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on,” Fauci said in the email.

“Read this paper as well as the e-mail that I will forward to you now. You will have tasks today that must be done,” he said.

Auchincloss responded, “The paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH. Not sure what that means since Emily is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone through the P3 framework. She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.”

Earlier the same day, researcher Kristian Andersen emailed Fauci that some of COVID-19’s features “look engineered.”

“I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” he said.

Anthony FaucicoronavirusCOVID-19Rand Paul