BREAKING: Fauci prompted the drafting of paper to 'disprove' lab leak theory

On Sunday, the GOP-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, released a memo citing evidence that showed Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, "prompted the drafting of 'Proximal Origins' to disprove the lab leak theory."

According to the Congressional memo, "On February 1, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, and at least eleven other scientists convened a conference call to discuss COVID-19. It was on this conference call that Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China and, further, may have been intentionally genetically manipulated." The Proximal Origin document was first drafted days later on February 4 and "The evidence available to the Select Subcommittee suggests that Dr. Anthony Fauci 'prompted' Dr. Kristian Andersen, Professor, Scripps Research (Scripps), to write Proximal Origin and that the goal was to 'disprove' any lab leak theory."

In a February 2020 email, Anderson wrote to Nature and said,  "There has been a lot of speculation, fear mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space and we thought that bringing some clarity to this discussion might be of interest to Nature [sic]. Prompted by Jeremy Farrah [sic], Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins, Eddie Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Bob Garry, Ian Lipkin, and myself have been working through much of the (primarily) genetic data to provide agnostic and scientifically informed hypothesis around the origins of the virus."

According to the memo "Dr. Andersen actually did not find the pangolin data compelling" but wrote Proximal Origins after being "prompted" by Fauci, Collins, and others.

Later in April 2020, "Dr. Collins emailed Dr. Fauci expressing dismay that Proximal Origin—which they saw prior to publication and were given the opportunity to edit—did not squash the lab leak hypothesis and asks if the NIH can do more to 'put down' the lab leak hypothesis."

In February, the US Energy Department concluded the Covid pandemic likely began because of a leak from a Chinese laboratory. The FBI arrived at the lab leak determination in 2021.

In August 2021, unredacted emails showed that Fauci knew that EcoHealth's Peter Daszak was working with Chinese virologists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and evidence suggested the virus escaped from the lab. 

Ohio Congressman Brad Wenstrup is the Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

This story is breaking and will be updated.