Doctor to face questions while under oath across two days.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is appearing before Congress on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9 to answer questions for some 14 hours on how he flipped his position on public policy for masks, how the agency he headed funded risky research in China, and how post-infection immunity was downplayed.
Dr. Fauci, 83, a chief architect of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is sitting down behind closed doors to face questioning from the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. It’s the first time he’ll answer questions under oath since November 2022.
Dr. Fauci agreed to appear to answer questions for about seven hours each day but only if he could bring two personal lawyers and two government lawyers, the panel announced in late 2023.
Members of the panel plan to ask Dr. Fauci about how he flipped positions on mask policy, a committee aide said. Dr. Fauci started from the position that masks wouldn’t work to curb transmission of COVID-19, according to emails he sent in early 2020, to being an ardent supporter of not only wearing masks but mandating masks.
Dr. Fauci, who was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for more than 30 years, will also face questions about an email that described him as prompting the drafting of a publication that downplayed the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China; on his agency sending money to that same lab through a nonprofit; and on his communications with other top government officials on the origins of COVID-19.
Dr. Fauci spoke with scientists who drafted a publication called “Proximal Origins” that claimed to disprove the theory that COVID-19 came from the Wuhan lab. The theory has not been disproven, many experts say.
Dr. Fauci promoted the paper from the White House podium without disclosing his involvement in it, even though one of the scientists said in an email obtained by the House subcommittee that Dr. Fauci “prompted” the paper.
