Elon Musk accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan, China lab where COVID-19 is believed to have originated from.
Musk said Fauci funded gain-of-function research “via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth)” on Twitter Sunday.
Musk’s fiery accusation came in response to a tweet that aggregated the multiple occurrences where Fauci denied any gain-of-function research and counter-signaled the idea that COVID-19 originated from a 2019 Wuhan lab leak.
“Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, lied to Congress about it, and now both the FBI & the Department of Energy have concluded that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan lab. Does that mean Dr. Anthony Fauci funded the development of COVID-19?” the video’s caption reads.
He did it via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2023
Hours earlier the Wall Street Journal released a bombshell report which revealed the U.S. Energy Department is now considering it likely COVID originated from a Wuhan, China lab leak. The Energy Department’s update came in a classified intelligence report shared with the WSJ. Previously, the Energy Department was undecided on COVID’s origin and numerous public health officials like Fauci disregarded a lab leak theory.
On Feb. 13 House Republicans formally requested Fauci, the former Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, Dr. Peter Daszak, come before Congress for an interview.
Fauci and Daszak were cited by thousands of media outlets as truth-sayers when they claimed “the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus” and “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
Musk’s tweet referenced Daszak’s company. Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance is a U.S. National Institutes of Health grantee that “passed taxpayer funds to the Wuhan lab to conduct gain of function research on bat coronaviruses – research that may have started the pandemic,” the House Republicans’ request stated.
Throughout the 117th Congress, Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) have “sent numerous letters to the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
“They have also requested information from several virologists who colluded with Dr. Fauci during the early days of the pandemic to downplay the lab leak theory and wrote a paper concluding with no evidence that COVID-19 is not a result from a lab leak or gain-of-function research,” the letter reads.
All of their requests have been ignored or insufficiently responded to.