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Paul said the subpoena was valid and that the questions were pertinent to Fauci’s decision-making as head of NIAID as well as chief adviser to the president.
David Schertler, an attorney representing Fauci, was removed from the hearing for trying to speak to senators. Schertler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The hearing unfolded following Paul’s release of a diary Fauci wrote while leading the government’s response to COVID-19. Diary entries undercut some of Fauci’s public comments, including his claim that he was never involved in the closure of schools.
In one entry in March 2020, Fauci recounted a conversation with then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, writing, “[I] convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools.”
Then he said he spoke with the chief of staff for California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“[The chief of staff] said that based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the Governor has decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants,” he wrote.
Fauci also outlined a call he held with scientists shortly after COVID-19 was detected in Wuhan, China, writing that nine of 11 of the scientists said that it was possible humans inserted a feature of the virus called the furin cleavage site. A research proposal that was later made public went over experiments that would insert a furin cleavage site into a bat coronavirus, and the work would potentially take place in China.
“This was either an extraordinary coincidence or a smoking gun,” Paul said on July 29.
Fauci repeatedly said in public that COVID-19 likely came from nature, not from a lab, and he said that his agency never funded gain-of-function experiments.
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 29 that from the beginning, he has said COVID-19 came from a lab in Wuhan.
“Fauci strongly disagreed, always trying to protect China,” Trump wrote.
An inspector general determined that NIAID funded risky experiments in a laboratory in Wuhan and that adequate oversight of the experiments was not carried out.
“Your primary concern was hiding the fact that you approved funding for this dangerous research,” Paul said to Fauci during the hearing.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the panel, said that Paul’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19 was aimed at reaching a predetermined conclusion and was biased.
He also said that the government needs to work to improve efforts to prepare for future health crises and should conduct oversight on actions taken by the Trump administration on vaccines and other health issues.
“I could go on on all the topics that we need to be looking at moving forward to protect this country,” Peters said. “We’re not doing that in this committee. That’s what this committee was designed to do; that’s what it has done throughout history. We should get back to that.”