In March of 2021, Dr. Robert Redfield, the former CDC Director, suggested that SARS-CoV-2 may have been accidentally released from a laboratory. He noted that this did not mean it was a deliberate act and that he, as a virologist, found it implausible for the virus to spread so quickly among humans at the start of the pandemic. In response to this suggestion, Rep. Jim Jordan criticized Dr. Fauci for suppressing the lab-leak theory and attempting to cover it up. Jordan accused Fauci of silencing those who hypothesized about a lab leak in late January. This includes virologist Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research Institute who studied the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and immediately suspected its laboratory origin rather than originating from bats.
“Why did Dr. Fauci work so hard for just one of those theories? Why was it so important to push one over the other?” Jordan questioned.
He then asked Dr. Redfield, “You were even called a crackpot by the very scientist who in late January sent emails to Dr. Fauci and said it came from a lab. They called you crackpot. Is that right, Dr. Redfield?”
“I think the most upsetting thing to me was the Baltimore Sun calling me a racist because I said this came from a Wuhan lab,” Redfield said.
Jordan went on to point out how Andersen was kept quiet at the start of 2022 and was eventually paid off by Fauci with a $9 million grant along with three other virology peers.
“Two of the signatures of the original email to Dr. Fauci, that’s Dr. Anderson and Dr. Gary, were awarded a $9 million grant for their research. So there’s 9 million reasons why they changed their position and the only intervening events a conference call with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, again a call that Mr. Redfield was not allowed to be on, the head of CDC and on the Coronavirus Task Force, and then three months later, shazam, they get nine million bucks from Dr. Fauci. Well isn’t that something?”
The situation changed after a conference call with Fauci, though no details about their conversation are known. An email sent by Dr. Francis Collins (Fauci’s then-boss) cautioned against promoting the lab leak theory due to potential damage to science and international cooperation which may result in conspiracy theories circulating freely. As such, Andersen altered his stance or public position regarding the leak theory despite his initial suspicions being correct.
Rep. Jordan concluded his criticism of Fauci by stating, “What was Dr. Fauci doing? He was trying to cover his backside and everybody knows it. And that’s the part that ticks us off because this is the highest paid guy in our government, getting all kinds of money to tell us things that were not accurate. Because we now know, U.S. tax dollars went to a lab in China, a lab that was not up to code, a lab that was doing gain of function research, and that’s where this thing most definitely came from.”
Jim Jordan just unleashed on Dr. Fauci for his role in covering up the COVID lab leak theory.
I have never seen him this fired up 🔥🔥pic.twitter.com/vPKFJgIAl3
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 8, 2023