Ex-State Dept COVID investigator calls newly-unredacted Fauci communications 'an extensive cover-up'

A newly-unredacted missive from Dr. Anthony Fauci suggesting the COVID-19 pandemic may have been grounded in gain-of-function research is proof positive of an extensive "cover-up," according to a former State Department pandemic investigator.

On Friday, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum's team on "The Story" delved deeper into messaging from Fauci at the suggestion of a former top COVID policy official in the Trump administration, after the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released more unredacted documents this week.

The letter in question had been nearly completely redacted, save for about the first line. Fauci wrote to "folks" that the viral sequence found in the coronavirus strain contained "mutations in the virus that would have been most unusual to have evolved naturally in bats," adding there had been "suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted…"

According to new parts of the letter read on "The Story" by MacCallum, Fauci went on to say that upon further "considerable discussion, some of the scientists felt more strongly about this possibility. Two others felt differently, but they felt it was entirely conceivable that it could have evolved naturally with these mutations."

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Dr. David Asher, a former State Department investigator, bluntly said on "The Story" that "it's a cover up."

Asher said the letter was just one example from a tranche of correspondence and comments the House committee, led by Reps. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio and Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., uncovered.

"They've gotten through all the private communications of all of the scientists orchestrated by Fauci to draft this proximal origins paper that concluded that beyond a reasonable doubt, this thing came from nature," Asher said.

"I can only imagine what's going to come out in the coming weeks as more of these internal communications are uncovered and we go and double back with some of these scientists that testified under oath that they had never really taken the zoonotic story behind covered as a primary thesis."

Asher was not the first to recently accuse Fauci of covering up facts behind the true origins of COVID-19, as a top Republican and medical doctor of ophthalmology himself frequently sparred with the immunologist on the subject:

In March, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Fauci didn't want any attention drawn to the lab-leak theory because his office had for years supported and allegedly funded gain-of-function research with U.S. taxpayer funds.

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"He's even quoted as saying in 2012, if a pandemic should occur, if a scientist should be bitten by an animal and the virus gets out of the lab, it would be worth the knowledge," Paul said at the time.

At the time Paul also cited emails he had viewed between Fauci and his fellow now-retired health bureaucrat, then-NIH Director Francis Collins, that the situation would not be good for China or for science.

"[They] mean[t] it wouldn't be good for the business of science, for the money that changes hands," Paul said.

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In a 2021 Senate hearing where Paul sparred with Fauci about his or the NIAID's role in gain-of-function research and allegedly "obscur[ing] responsibility for four million people dying around them from a pandemic," Fauci declared Paul "officially, do[es] not know what [he] is talking about" and denied any such allegations.

"You are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals [and] I totally resent that," Fauci told Paul at the time. "If there is any lying here, senator it is you."

Fauci, who recently retired, had been a fixture at the NIH since 1968, and was appointed head of NIAID by former President Ronald Reagan in 1984.