Admits he approved risky Wuhan coronavirus research proposal without reading it

• House GOP said Fauci’s pandemic policies full of drastic and systemic failures
• He ‘backtracked’ on past claims his agency never funded gain of function abroad

Dr Anthony Fauci evaded more than 100 questions about Covid, the lab leak theory and his ties to Wuhan during a landmark Congressional hearing Monday.

House Republicans who quizzed the ex-White House advisor said he ‘played semantics’ to avoid conceding that he funded dangerous research in China that is feared to have started the pandemic.

Dr Fauci, 82, also admitted that he signed off on millions of dollars worth of grants without reviewing the proposals – and appeared to admit his agency had little oversight of the foreign labs it bankrolled.

The all-day probe on Monday will be followed by another seven hours of questioning behind closed doors today.

Republican Congressman Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, who is heading up the hearings, said: ‘Dr Fauci’s testimony today [Monday] uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America’s public health systems.

‘Clearly, the American people and the United States government are operating with completely different expectations about the responsibilities of our public health leaders and the accountability of our public health agencies.’

According to House Select Committee on Coronavirus, Dr Fauci denied remembering key details of the response ‘more than 100 times’. 

The GOP also said he backtracked on his earlier insistence that the US did not fund experiments that could make viruses more transmissible or dangerous, known as ‘gain of function’ research.

Dr Fauci’s marathon testimony has been a long time coming. The House subcommittee on the coronavirus compelled him to appear before members nearly a year ago, but the finer details were only finalized late last year.

Congress, particularly Republicans, have criticized Dr Fauci’s policies to tamp down the spread of Covid in the early days, including flip-flopping advice on masks, and advocating for lockdowns, vaccine mandates and school closures.

The private hearings this week mark Dr Fauci’s first visit to Capitol Hill since his retirement from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which he ran from 1984 to 2022, last year.

Members of the Subcommittee compiled ‘more than 200 pages of questions and approximately 100 exhibits’, including evidence such as private emails between Fauci and other scientists that showed efforts to coverup dissenting opinions about the coronavirus’ origins.

In early 2020, Dr Fauci privately commissioned a scientific paper that denounced the lab leak theory as a conspiracy and attacked those who subscribed to it as racists.  

Dr Fauci then touted that paper to the public as evidence of a consensus among scientists that the virus emerged naturally – without disclosing his connections to it. 

Critics say his reasoning for doing so was to protect the controversial research being conducted in China. 

The former White House doctor oversaw the approval of $3million in NIH grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers tinkered with coronaviruses to make them more infectious to humans months before the pandemic.

That project was titled Understanding The Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence’.

In December 2022, Dr Andrew Huff, the former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, became a whistleblower and said he believed grant funding provided to the organization by the NIH was linked to the ‘creation of SARS-CoV-2.’

Dr Huff claimed the pandemic was the result of the US government funding of dangerous genetic engineering of coronaviruses in China.

During Monday’s hearing, Dr Fauci backtracked on his earlier claims that the NIAID never allocated government money to risky virus research. 

He had insisted to Senators last summer that his former department ‘has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’

Yet, recently publicized emails dated February 1, 2020 showed Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.’

He was also unable to confirm if the NIAID has protocols in place to provide the proper oversight of the labs overseas that receive federal dollars.

Rep Wenstrup said: ‘While leading the nation’s COVID-19 response and influencing public narratives, he simultaneously had no idea what was happening under his own jurisdiction at NIAID.

‘Dr Fauci signed off on all domestic and foreign research grants without reviewing the proposals and admitted that he was unaware if NIAID conducted oversight of the laboratories they fund.’

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EPSTEIN DOCS: Bill Clinton Visited Epstein’s Pedo Island: Victim Virginia Giuffre

Another tranche of documents from a defamation lawsuit related to Jeffrey Epstein were released on Tuesday.

Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Sarah Ransome, and Virginia Giuffre’s depositions were unsealed and released.

The Gateway Pundit obtained 7 new Epstein documents on Tuesday.

Read the new documents here:

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According to the documents reviewed by this reporter, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre said Trump never participated in any sexual abuse of minors. Giuffre also said she never personally saw Trump at Epstein’s New York mansion.

However, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre once again alleged former president Bill Clinton did indeed visit Epstein’s special island in the US Virgin Islands.

Bill Clinton was good friends with Epstein and traveled on his private jet dubbed ‘Lolita Express’ over two dozen times and according to pilot logs, underage teenagers were on the flights with Clinton.

It was previously reported that Virginia Giuffre claimed Bill Clinton was at Epstein’s pedophile island with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and “2 young girls.”

Portion of the interview with Virginia Giuffre released in 2020:

“When you say you asked him why is Bill Clinton here, where was here?”

Virginia Giuffre: On the island

JS: When you were present with Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?”

Virginia Giuffre: Ghislaine, Emmy, and there were 2 young girls that I could identify. I never really knew them well anyways. It was just 2 girls from New York.”

JS: And were all of you staying at Jeffrey’s house on the island including Bill Clinton?”

Virginia Giuffre: That’s correct. He had about 4 or 5 different villas on his island separate from the main house, and we all stayed in the villas.”

JS: “Were sexual orgies a regular occurrence on the island at Jeffrey’s house?”

A Clinton spokeswoman denied Giuffre’s claims and said the former president has “never been to Little St. James Island.”

According to the deposition released Tuesday and reviewed by this reporter, Virginia Giuffre again said former president Bill Clinton visited Epstein’s property on Little Saint James, US Virgin Islands dubbed “pedo island”:

Q. Is Bill Clinton a witness to the sexual abuse of minors?

MS. MCCAWLEY: Objection. You can answer.

SPECIAL MASTER: You can answer.

MS. MCCAWLEY: Just what you know.

A. Yes, he would be a witness because he knew what my purpose there was for Jeffrey and he visited Jeffrey’s island.

MS. MCCAWLEY: Shhh please. Let her finish her answer.

A. There’s pictures of nude girls all around the house at all of his houses and it’s something that Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t shy about admitting to people.

Virginia Giuffre also claimed in her deposition that she met former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper Gore at one of Epstein’s properties.

Giuffre said she wasn’t sure if she met the Gores at Epstein’s New York mansion or on the financier’s pedo island:

Q. Right above the photograph there it says, Virginia disclosed that Mr. Clinton’s Vice-President, Al Gore and his wife Tipper were also guests of Epstein on the island. Do you see that?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Is that true statement in the article?

A. It is a true statement that I did meet Al Gore and his wife, but I cannot 100 percent lock down that it was at the island, it could have been New York.

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The Lloyd Austin fallout is growing: ‘Someone’s head has to roll’

At a White House meeting last week, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, noticed that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was absent. A top Pentagon official, Sasha Baker, was there in his place.

There was nothing obviously unsettling about this. Austin was scheduled to work from home and lower-level aides often sit in for their boss.

But what neither Sullivan nor Baker knew at that moment was that Austin was already hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, with complications from an undisclosed surgical procedure.

Days later, Austin’s secret hospitalization has spiraled into a drama engulfing the upper echelons of the Biden administration. Senior White House officials are struggling to answer questions about who knew what, and when, about the former general’s medical emergency. Criticism is pouring in from Congress and the media.

And since the Pentagon went public with the situation Friday night, new reports are coming in, including POLITICO’s disclosure on Saturday evening that the Pentagon had not informed President Joe Biden or the National Security Council for days that Austin was indisposed.

The strange saga has fixed Washington on one question: What is going on with the secretary of Defense?

White House and Pentagon aides insist that Austin’s job is not in jeopardy — at least not yet. But they are sticking to that line despite seeming to lack full information about what’s actually been going on at the Pentagon. The precise nature of Austin’s surgery, medical complications and even his current condition remain unclear or addressed only in vague terms. Senior Defense Department and White House officials still don’t know the details of the procedure.

There has also been no accounting yet for the decision to withhold information about Austin’s medical emergency from the public and even the president.

That eventual disclosure blindsided Austin’s close colleagues. Austin joined a White House meeting about attacks in the Middle East by Iran-backed proxies by phone on Jan. 1 — the same day he was hospitalized. Baker’s appearance at another White House meeting last week — this one about the deteriorating situation in Haiti — did not raise any eyebrows.

So officials were shocked when Kelly Magsamen, Austin’s chief of staff, sent an email to top DOD civilian and military officials only two hours before the Pentagon publicly announced the secretary’s hospitalization on Friday. The email was bare bones, containing no more information than the public statement. DOD notified Congress about the news only 15 minutes before the official statement.

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