By admin 
- Former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released internal documents she said prove Dr. Anthony Fauci funded research that sparked Covid-19.
- The documents include intelligence discussions about possible virus origins but provide no clear answers about how the pandemic began.
- The files also do not prove Gabbard’s assertions that Fauci manipulated intelligence or lied to Congress in 2024 testimony; the precise meaning of his 2024 comment to Congress is unclear.
On her final day as director of national intelligence last week, Tulsi Gabbard released internal documents that she claimed prove a series of damning facts about Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Covid-19 pandemic.
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They don’t. The documents fall far short of corroborating various Gabbard claims about Fauci.
Most notably: The documents do not come close to proving that “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID,” though that’s the assertion Gabbard’s team made in the bolded headline it used on the director’s official website announcing the document release. While the documents include some discussions within the intelligence community about the possible origins of Covid-19, they don’t provide any clear answers.
Nor do the documents confirm Gabbard’s claim in a social media video last week, which was repeated on the website, that Fauci worked with intelligence officials “to suppress the truth about his actions.” And while the documents include summaries of advice and opinions Fauci offered the CIA during a 2021 briefing about the virus’ possible origins, they don’t show that he “manipulated intelligence.”
They also don’t prove Gabbard’s claim in the video that Fauci “lied to Congress in 2024,” though there can be reasonable debate about the accuracy of his six-word comment in question. The record shows that Fauci’s remark came at the end of a convoluted multi-question exchange, making the precise meaning of his words unclear.
Fauci retired from the federal government in 2022 after 38 years as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and two years as then-President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor. He did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
No proof on the origins of the virus
The documents released by Gabbard contain nothing remotely resembling proof on the question of how the virus originated – and certainly not proof for the bolded claim on the director’s website that “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID.”
The first is a heavily redacted version of a May 2020 analysis from a federally funded laboratory in California that supports US intelligence agencies. The analysis, whose existence was reported in the media in 2021, found that “all of the necessary conditions” for an accidental release of a lab-modified virus were present at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid-to-late 2019, “specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors.” The analysis placed “equal weight” on the theory that Covid-19 came from a lab modification as it did on the theory that the pandemic was sparked by a natural virus outbreak or a lab leak of a naturally-occurring virus.
The analysis is valid ammunition for people who felt some federal officials, scientists and news outlets were unduly dismissive of lab-leak theories at the time; it shows that some experts connected to the government were, from early in the pandemic, taking the idea seriously. However, the analysis clearly doesn’t prove that the pandemic was indeed caused by a lab leak, much less that it was caused by a lab leak that resulted from research Fauci funded.
In fact, the documents a 2023 email in which an official whose name is redacted argues that the May 2020 analysis doesn’t substantiate its key claim that the Wuhan lab had “all of the necessary conditions” in mid-to-late 2019 for a leak of a lab-modified virus, saying “we do not now, nor did we back in 2020, have ANY reporting suggesting [Wuhan Institute of Virology]” had access to a potential precursor virus. And the documents also include a September 2020 email in which an official whose name is redacted says that “we do not see compelling evidence that China deliberately manufactured this virus, and there is no [intelligence community] consensus on whether an accidental lab release of a natural strain or a natural outbreak is more likely.”
What the documents show about the handling of a whistleblower complaint
The documents show internal discussions about how to handle a whistleblower complaint that claimed Fauci had lied to Congress when he testified in 2021 that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” (There is disagreement among scientists about whether or not certain Wuhan work that was funded with NIH grant money constituted “gain-of-function research.”) While the documents may prompt valid questions about how the intelligence community handled the complaint, the documents do not show that Fauci worked to suppress it.
The documents that on August 11, 2021, the acting inspector general for the intelligence community at the time, Tamara Johnson, wrote that the complaint wasn’t about an intelligence community matter – for one, Fauci wasn’t an intelligence community official – but also that there would be “no merit” in referring the complaint to the inspector general who watches health entities like Fauci’s.
Johnson wrote that the complaint having been made anonymously left them unable to follow up to get additional information, that the classified status of the complaint’s underlying information meant they could share only “very limited” information with the health inspector general, and that the fact there was already a public dispute about the accuracy of Fauci’s testimony made it “highly probable” that the health watchdog would already be aware of the allegation he had spoken inaccurately.
Five days later, a top lawyer in then-national intelligence director Avril Haines’ office, Christopher Fonzone, draft talking points for Haines that said “one idea” was for Johnson to transmit the whistleblower complaint to the health inspector general and make sure that official had access to the relevant intelligence. But three days later, Fonzone said they had decided to instead recommend referring the complaint to Xavier Becerra, then the Biden-appointed health secretary who oversaw the federal institute Fauci led.
The wording of Fonzone’s second email leaves it hard for an outsider to decipher why he was saying the change was made. (Fonzone wrote to Haines, “I think the key thing is that what we’ve seen is consistent with the point that Secretary Becerra made to you – that this is something they’ve considered and that Dr. Fauci has point he’s repeated about the NIH not funding gain-of-function at the WIV.”) Critics are entitled to make an argument that a referral to a political figure like a Cabinet secretary was tantamount to burying the complaint.
But the documents do not include anything showing that Fauci himself worked to get the intelligence community to refer the complaint to Becerra.
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What Fauci told the CIA
The documents informal summaries of a meeting Fauci had with people from the CIA in June 2021 on the subject of the possible origins of Covid-19. The meeting was described as a CIA briefing on the key points of a May 2021 intelligence analysis on the “elusive” origins of the pandemic.
One summary said Fauci recommended that the intelligence officials read an academic paper he believed showed “a clear indication of natural origins of COVID-19” – he consistently said in public comments that he believed the virus likely had a natural origin – and that the intelligence officials contact a group of US scientists who “closely follow this issue.”
The online statement from Gabbard’s team denounced the academic paper Fauci suggested and complained that Fauci “provided hand-picked” experts to advise the intelligence community. But the summary said the CIA was “already in contact/in the plans to contact some of these individuals,” and there is no indication from the documents that Fauci was issuing orders, making intelligence decisions or changing intelligence documents rather than simply expressing opinions to the CIA. Gabbard is free to make her argument that the documents show members of the intelligence community were too deferential to Fauci’s views, but that would be a flaw in their decision-making, not Fauci’s.
The summary also said Fauci suggested questions the CIA should ask about the cases of researchers at the Wuhan institute who had become sick, an apparent reference to the researchers believed to have in the fall of 2019. And the summary said Fauci suggested that the CIA obtain key details of Chinese research on pangolins that the documents suggest the CIA mentioned to him in the meeting; there were questions at the time about whether these mammals might have been an intermediate host that transmitted the virus to humans.
Fauci’s 2024 comment to Congress wasn’t clear
The online statement from Gabbard’s team explained what she meant when she said in the video that the documents show he lied to Congress in 2024. It says the documents show he gave a false answer when asked at a committee hearing whether he had spoken to any US intelligence agency “concerning viral research.”
But the video of the committee hearing shows that the meaning of Fauci’s comment at the hearing was much less clear than Gabbard’s team suggests. Fauci uttered the words in question – “Not to my knowledge about Covid” – at the end of a convoluted multi-part exchange in which the final question did not use the words “concerning viral research.”
First, Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup asked him, “Are you or were you ever aware that the US State Department in 2005 issued warnings that the Chinese government was working on the creation of bioweapons?” Fauci said, “I was not aware of that.” Next, Wenstrup asked, “Did you ever discuss the Chinese bioweapons program with anyone in the intelligence community?” Fauci responded, “I’ve never discussed the Chinese bioweapons program, to my knowledge, with anybody.”
Then Wenstrup asked, “Before, during, or after the Covid-19 pandemic, did you speak to the FBI, CIA, DIA, or any US intelligence agency concerning viral research of any kind?” But he said “before,” without saying how long ago he was talking about, so Fauci returned to the subject of bioweapons and spoke of conversations he had with intelligence agencies amid the anthrax attacks back in 2001.
Eventually they arrived at this exchange:
Wenstrup: “But did you at any time talk to – concerning viral research of any kind?”
Fauci: “Again, I say that at the time, that there was concern about the fact that al Qaeda may have been using or potentially using bioweapons. We had discussions with intelligence agencies about that possibility.”
Wenstrup: “Sure. But not as related to, say, Covid-19?”
Fauci: “Not to my knowledge about Covid.”
So … Wenstrup had been trying to get Fauci to say whether he talked to intelligence agencies about any viral research related to Covid-19. But because Fauci was speaking about two-decades-old discussions with intelligence agencies about anthrax and bioweapons before Wenstrup interjected with the final question (“But not as related to, say, Covid-19?”) that prompted the Fauci words in dispute (“Not to my knowledge about Covid”), and because Wenstrup didn’t use the words “concerning viral research” in that final question, Fauci’s words could be interpreted as a comment about whether he had talked with intelligence agencies in relation to Covid-19 as a bioweapon.
Nothing in the newly released documents shows that Fauci did talk about Covid-19 and bioweapons in the CIA meeting or with an intelligence agency at another time. So even if Fauci’s comments in the CIA meeting qualify as talking with the agency about viral research, these documents leave it far from indisputable that he lied to Congress.
In fairness to Fauci critics, the documents do suggest Fauci wasn’t telling the full story of the CIA meeting with his next comment in the exchange; he said that “after the investigations began about Covid, I was briefed by intelligence agencies about possibilities of there being activities going on in different laboratories; I was briefed by intelligence agencies.” The documents do describe the CIA meeting as a “briefing” for Fauci, but also show Fauci expressed various opinions to the CIA in addition to receiving information.
That doesn’t make the comment Gabbard’s team highlighted a lie – and, regardless, there’s no apparent basis for Gabbard’s Saturday claim on social media that “there is a path” to prosecuting Fauci over the 2024 testimony. Biden granted Fauci a pardon for any federal offenses that may have arisen from his government positions from 2014 through January 19, 2025.
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CNN’s Brenda Goodman and Sarah Owermohle contributed to this article.