'He Directly Implicates You': Morgan Griffith Confronts Dr. Fauci Over 'Conspiracy' At His Agency

3 months ago

At a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing on Monday, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) spoke to Dr. Anthony Fauci about his work and Covid-19.

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Transcript

00:00 And I yield back.

00:03 I now recognize Mr. Griffith for a three-minute statement.

00:07 Good morning.

00:08 I want to again thank the leadership of this committee for including the Energy and Commerce

00:11 Committee in this hearing.

00:13 Dr. Fauci, the recent revelations that Dr. Moran, a senior advisor and your chief of

00:18 staff, Greg Fulkers, routinely evaded federal records laws, including the Freedom of Information

00:24 Act, or FOIA, and those were a shock.

00:27 That was a shock.

00:28 I've been doing oversight now for over 14 years, or right at 14 years, and the scale

00:33 of the effort to evade FOIA by some at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious

00:38 Diseases, or NIAID, has surprised even me.

00:42 These men were among your most senior and trusted staff at an agency you led for nearly

00:47 40 years.

00:48 They worked for you for decades.

00:50 Your calendars show that you met with them multiple times a week during the pandemic.

00:54 You co-authored dozens of papers with Dr. Moran.

00:59 He directly implicates you.

01:02 Even the head of the NIAID FOIA office was apparently in on some of this conspiracy.

01:09 And I know my colleagues on the other side love to say we're always talking conspiracy,

01:13 but when the facts lead you there, whether you knew about it or not, when the facts lead

01:16 you that your agency was involved in some form of a conspiracy related to COVID origins,

01:22 we have to follow those facts.

01:24 It is hard to believe that all of this occurred without your knowledge and/or approval.

01:32 In civil law, when one party has destroyed or refuses to produce evidence that's within

01:37 its possession, a jury is allowed to draw an adverse inference that the information

01:43 destroyed or not produced was unfavorable.

01:47 Therefore, until we get a full accounting of all of the communications among NIAID's

01:52 leadership, it's reasonable for us to assume that missing information would mirror the

01:58 private doubts expressed by so many virologists and other scientists related to your public

02:04 positions.

02:06 While telling the public, the media, and Congress that COVID-19 almost certainly emerged from

02:10 nature, experts you convened as a team privately worried that a research-related incident was

02:18 a possible, if not the probable, origin of the virus.

02:23 Dr. Christian Anderson even said in February of 2020, quote, "I think the main thing still

02:29 in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin' likely to have happened

02:35 because they were already doing this type of work and molecular data is fully consistent

02:40 with that scenario."

02:41 Further, while you and other NIAID officials were assuring us that the virus could not

02:47 have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, NIAID didn't actually have an idea as to what

02:54 the full scope of Wuhan's coronavirus research was or even the trajectory of its gain-of-function

03:00 research.

03:01 Now, that may be because EcoHealth wasn't giving you the reports.

03:03 I grant that.

03:04 But this joint investigation has shown just how little oversight NIAID does of risky experiments

03:11 involving potential pandemic pathogens.

03:15 NIAID set up a system designed to greenlight potentially risky experiments while avoiding

03:19 HHS department-level review.

03:22 The same program officers who act as advocates for their scientific area are responsible

03:27 for assessing whether an experiment is too dangerous.

03:30 That creates a conflict of interest.

03:32 I think that means that when an agency is taking the final approval, we ought to take

03:37 that final approval away from the agencies like NIAID that fund it.

03:41 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

03:42 I yield back.

03:43 I now recognize Ms. Castor for a three-minute statement.

'He Directly Implicates You': Morgan Griffith Confronts Dr. Fauci Over 'Conspiracy' At His Agency

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