By Corinne Murdock |
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) announced on Friday that her congressional committee will be questioning Anthony Fauci for the first time ever next month.
The hearing is scheduled to take place before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic for 14 hours over the course of two days: Jan. 8 and 9, 2024. Each day will consist of seven hours of uninterrupted, transcribed testimony. Additionally, Fauci will be made to appear at another public hearing before the subcommittee at a later date yet to be announced.
“Dr. Fauci will finally be answering the American people,” said Lesko.
In their announcement of Fauci’s hearing, the subcommittee issued an X thread highlighting some of Fauci’s “most egregious pandemic-era failures.” The subcommittee cited Fauci’s attempt to push the “Proximal Origin” theory published through mainstream media to disprove the Wuhan, China lab leak theory; Fauci’s awareness of the dangers of the gain-of-function research that resulted in COVID-19 prior to the pandemic, and his inaction to stop it; Fauci’s recent admission that COVID-19 vaccine mandates were a coercion tactic; and Fauci’s quick reversal on mask efficacy early on in the pandemic.
“[Fauci’s] upcoming testimonies will aid [our] ongoing effort to hold American public health officials accountable for pandemic-era failures,” stated the subcommittee.
The subcommittee, formed in 2020 under the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, consists of Lesko along with Republican Reps. Brad Wenstrup, chairman (OH-02), Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Michael Cloud (TX-27), John Joyce (PA-13), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Ronny Jackson (TX-13), and Rich McCormick (GA-06); and Democratic Reps. Raul Ruiz (D-CA-25), Debbie Dingell (MI-06), Kweisi Mfume (MD-07), Deborah Ross (NC-02), Robert Garcia (CA-42), Ami Bera (CA-06), and Jill Tokuda (HI-02).
One of the key focuses of the committee has concerned pinpointing the origins of COVID-19. Committee hearings and evidence point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research as the source of the virus, bolstered by proof of government health leaders’ relationship to EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit research organization that funded the research.
In July, the select subcommittee held a hearing to discuss the Proximal Origin theory, a zoonotic proposal that the virus jumped from animals to humans in the nearby wet markets. The subcommittee found that Fauci and former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins were behind drafting, publishing, and promoting the Proximal Origin theory, and that the theory lacked outside proof or verification.
The University of Arizona (UArizona) has continued to defend the Proximal Origin theory. Michael Worobey, head of the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department, maintains that COVID-19 originated in the Huanan Seafood Market, though his research acknowledged that a significant percentage of the first COVID-19 patients neither worked or shopped there, and that the researchers never tested market animals purportedly linked to the initial outbreak.
The Wuhan lab is less than nine miles from the wet market.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
