Former White House Coronavirus Testing Czar Adm. Brett Giroir blasted Anthony Fauci for lying about COVID-19’s origins early in the pandemic.
In both April and May 2020, Fauci said evidence showed the virus likely came from “a jump of a species from an animal.” The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director claimed that “this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” but Giroir said there was and is no data to suggest that.
“[Fauci’s] statement from last year was completely false,” the admiral said. “There was no pattern of mutations that suggests that it went right from an animal in a natural situation to humans. And there’s still no evidence to show that. That statement was completely wrong. It was obvious to be antagonistic to President Trump, and to the administration, and I think there is a lot of CYA going on right now.”
Fauci also downplayed the idea that COVID-19 could have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which received American taxpayer dollars and was conducting dangerous experiments on coronaviruses.
“I always kept open and was very public about it that it could have been a lab leak. That was in distinction from Dr. Fauci who really argued very, very convincingly that this was something that evolved in nature,” Giroir said. “There was no data that showed it evolved in nature and there’s still no data.”
The “huge coverup” by Communist China, Giroir said, also played a role in keeping the Wuhan lab leak theory out of the mainstream.
“Look, there is a laboratory within five miles of the origin that was doing dangerous research on bat coronaviruses, you know. Sometimes the simplest explanation is that we do have lab leaks, they’ve happened multiple times. SARS has leaked out of laboratories and even cause secondary deaths,” Giroir said. “We know that in 1979, anthrax leaked out of a Soviet laboratory and killed 60 people. So lab leaks are not uncommon and I really think data like people getting ill in November from the laboratory, if that proves true, that coincides exactly when we know this virus [appeared].”
Giroir said he looks forward to learning more about the deadly virus’s origins but still thinks the “most likely explanation is that it was gain of function mutation work it leaked out.”
“It is not crazy … that this could have been part of a bio[weapons] program,” Giroir said.
