Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Newsmax on Wednesday that multiple reports about three scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China working on gain of function research becoming ill shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, including one who received funding from the U.S. government, could signal a broader conspiracy.
A report published June 13 on the Substack Public, written by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag, followed by one in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday detailed how the first people sickened by COVID-19 were three researchers at the Wuhan lab.
The Journal article, citing current and former U.S. officials, said one, Ben Hu, was a prominent scientist who worked on coronavirus projects funded by the U.S. government and contracted symptoms in November 2019. The other two scientists were Yu Ping and Yan Zhu. None died after becoming ill.
"We first heard about this when [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo at the end of the Trump administration declassified a report that said three people at the Wuhan lab had gotten sick and that their illness seemed to be the same kind of symptoms you get with COVID," Paul told "Rob Schmitt Tonight." "If they have known their names the whole time and didn't release this, the names are important because it wasn't like researchers who had nothing to do with coronavirus.
"These were three coronavirus researchers — three researchers doing gain of function research and three famous researchers who worked with Dr. Shi [Zhengli], the most famous gain of function coronavirus person in the world."
Paul said these reports shed light that one of these three scientists was "patient zero," the first to contract SARS-CoV-2, and rules out any dispute the virus came from a lab and not a wet market, as many have claimed.
"It should be game over. It should be everybody coming together — all Republicans and Democrats coming together — and saying, this came from the lab," Paul said. "Why aren't we going to do something to regulate this research — not only in China, but here as well?
"It turns out because we funded it. There's at least some culpability to people like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, who denied this from the beginning. I think it's worse than that. There was actually an elaborate cover-up led by Dr. Fauci to prevent the guilt attaching to him and his mistakes."
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