Longtime government scientist Anthony Fauci pushed back against Republican accusations tying him to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic while testifying before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday. In his first appearance before Congress since he retired in December 2022, Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, sought to defend himself from GOP accusations that he tried to cover up the origins of COVID-19 and used his personal email for official government work. He said the idea that he sought to cover up a theory that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, was “simply preposterous” and emphatically told the subcommittee that “I do not do government business on my private email.
” The subcommittee has been investigating the origins of the virus and the government’s potential involvement for 15 months, but do not appear to have found anything connecting Fauci to the start of the virus in China. However, their investigation did lead to the federal government last month recommending EcoHealth Alliance, a company that received federal funding and that worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, be debarred. During a contentious hearing frequently interrupted by protesters, Republican subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup accused Fauci of covering up the origins of the virus and trying to dissuade people that the virus came from a lab.
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