Over two years ago, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., sent a criminal referral to President Joe Biden's Justice Department alleging Dr. Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about gain-of-function research.
This weekend Paul shared the direct evidence for Fauci's alleged lie to Congress, as proven by his own email to fellow Health and Human Services staff.
"This directly contradicts everything he said in committee hearing to me, denying absolutely that they funded any gain of function, and it's absolutely a lie," Paul tweeted Saturday. "That's why I sent an official criminal referral to the DOJ."
The email accompanying Paul's tweet quotes Fauci as saying there were "suspicions" by "several highly credible scientists" that there were "mutations" of the COVID-19 virus that "would be most unusual to have evolved naturally."
The suspicion was heightened by the fact scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan," Fauci wrote in the Feb. 1, 2020 email passage highlighted in yellow in the post.
There is no word on what action the Biden Justice Department might have taken now or since July 2021, when it was first reported Paul had officially sought a DOJ criminal referral for Fauci's alleged lie to Congress.
Newsmax reached out to the DOJ with a request for comment and have not yet heard back.
In an extensive April interview with The New York Times Magazine, Fauci pointed to an issue of semantics in his denials of gain-of-function research, admitting it has to be allowed by law.
"You have to have a totally transparent process that involves scientific input and community input — informed community input," Fauci told The Times. "Because if you do what some people are saying we should do and shut down all gain-of-function research, you've got to make clear what you're talking about.
"What do you mean by 'gain of function?' Some want to pass a law: All gain-of-function should be stopped. But if all gain-of-function stops, you will have no vaccines for flu. You will have no vaccines for any of the other diseases, because all of that manipulates a virus or a pathogen to gain a certain function to be able to make a vaccine.
"So first of all, we've got to do a better job of getting people to understand what gain-of-function is. So when Rand Paul asked me, did you fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan? I said, absolutely not. So if you and I talk about gain of function, David, we better define what we're talking about, because we're going to confuse the crap out of everybody."
Paul argued against Fauci's "word salad guidance" denials of having lied to him in congressional testimony.
"Dr. Fauci still claims it isn't 'gain-of-function' research because the scientists didn't know in advance that the newly created virus would be enhanced or more deadly," Paul wrote in a November 2021 op-ed, alleging the National Institutes of Health changed the "gain of function" definition to cover up Fauci's alleged lie. "But isn't that the very purpose of the experiment, to see if the newly created virus has gained function?
"Under Dr. Fauci's convoluted definition, no experiment, no matter how deadly the combination, would be considered 'gain-of-function' unless the scientists knew in advance that the combination would lead to enhanced lethality.
"Under Dr. Fauci's word salad guidance no experiment combining viruses would ever be denied funding.
"The NIH's old and newly altered website admits that the NIH funds 'gain-of-function' research but that it needs to be 'conducted in very high biosecurity laboratories.' But we can't even get to the question of whether the Wuhan lab was secure because Dr. Fauci won't admit that 'gain-of-function' research even occurred."