The question of whether COVID originated from a lab was critically important, particularly after it was clear that China had lied to us about what they knew when and then let people travel to other parts of the world.

Both the Department of Energy and FBI are now admitting it is likely that COVID originated from a lab leak.

But as I wrote earlier, there’s now been a leak from a CNN insider that Jeff Zucker was telling his people to attack the lab leak theory because he considered it a “Trump talking point.”

Now, there’s also a bombshell from the House Republicans probing the pandemic.

It turns out that in the early days of the pandemic in February 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci commissioned a paper — The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 — to disprove that COVID came from a lab leak. Standing next to President Donald Trump, he cited that paper to the public as evidence that the lab leak was “improbable” — without admitting his role behind it.

Emails discovered by the House GOP show that he commissioned the paper and had final approval on it.

In the emails, Dr. Kristian Andersen says that Fauci prompted him to write the paper with a focus to disprove the lab leak theory. He later claimed that Fauci didn’t influence his work. But the GOP says that isn’t the case, pointing to the email in February that says, “Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory.” Andersen also submitted the paper to Nature Medicine with the note that “[This paper was] Prompted by Jeremy [Farrar], Tony Fauci and Francis Collins.”

Farrar — who was then the head of the British nonprofit the Wellcome Trust, which has historic ties to the pharmaceutical industry, and is now the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization — tried to push through an edit replacing the word ‘unlikely’ to ‘improbable’ in a statement about the possibility of a lab leak origin.

Under the changes, a sentence in the report read: ‘It is improbable that SARS CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus.’

Still, even with the edits, Collins emailed Fauci ‘expressing dismay that Proximal Origin — which they saw prior to publication and were given the opportunity to edit — did not squash the lab leak hypothesis and asks if the NIH could do more to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis,’ the House Republicans write in a report.

‘The next day … Dr. Fauci cited Proximal Origin from the White House podium when asked if COVID-19 leaked from a lab.’

He said at the time: ‘There was a study recently where a group of highly-qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequence… in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of species from an animal to a human.’ he said.

‘So the paper will be available,’ Fauci continued. ‘I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you.’

There was also a call where Fauci and his NIH boss Francis Collins had a discussion with the paper’s authors about the possibility that it might have leaked from the lab and “may have been intentionally genetically manipulated.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) spoke about that call and the emails with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo. He described how after that phone call, the researchers’ attitude about COVID origins changed, against the possibility that it came from a lab. Jordan also says that they subsequently got a “several million dollar grant” from Fauci for further research.

Rep Jim Jordan: Dr. Fauci Organized Conference Call to Downplay Lab Leak Theory on COVID-19

“The fundamental question is why was Dr. Fauci so consumed with making sure the narrative wasn’t about the lab? I think it’s because they were doing gain-of-function research there. pic.twitter.com/RGchWbOZJX

— Vũ thế Hưng (@vuthehung_1995) March 6, 2023

Why was Fauci so desperate to steer people away from the possibility that it was a lab leak, Jordan asked. “I think it’s because they were doing gain-of-function research there,” Jordan said, and Fauci didn’t want that to get out. So much of what they told us wasn’t true, Jordan said, including the gain of function question which we have been reporting on for years now.

We reported on the emails and on Andersen’s indications in June 2021 and how after those thoughts “changed,” Andersen kept Fauci “in the loop” about the paper being accepted. Then Fauci wrote to Andersen telling him “nice job” on the paper.

We’ve reported how Fauci has not been straight about gain of function research in the past.

This is a huge thing, as Bartiromo said, that everyone should be on the same page about. But Democrats and so much of the media have been stonewalling this for so long. Finally, hopefully, with the Committee, they will get to all this information we’ve been talking about for years and start holding people accountable.