SEN RAND PAUL: The COVID cover-up had layers. I’m peeling them back one at a time

For years, Americans were told the lab-leak theory was dismissed by science itself, settled by "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," the March 2020 paper cited by every fact-checker and health official who wanted the question closed for good. My investigation has now shown, document by document, that the people who peddled that certainty never believed it themselves.

Start with the authors. Newly released Slack messages show Kristian Andersen privately put the odds of a lab origin at 30 percent. Eddie Holmes said 20, then walked it back to 10. Andersen told colleagues about the "smoking(ish) guns" that left him "not comfortable" with his own conclusions. These scientists publicly ruled out a lab leak, but behind closed doors manipulated the narrative, hoping to stop the evidence building against their public assertions.

They weren't managing it alone. The same authors were in direct contact with the intelligence community and NIH leadership throughout the pandemic. Andersen expected to "have a handler" from within the Intelligence Community. Holmes cited a source in China he called "my spy." After the DARPA DEFUSE proposal leaked, the plan describing how to insert furin cleavage sites into bat coronaviruses, the group discussed the need to "stay off email" and curate their correspondence "for the FOI records," while Holmes promised to "chat to the intelligence folk." The authors even said they needed to "get something back to Tony's team at NIH."

SLACK MESSAGES RELEASED BY RAND PAUL APPEAR TO SHOW AUTHORS OF KEY COVID-19 ORIGIN PAPER HELD PRIVATE DOUBTS

That's not a coincidence. I have released records showing Dr. Fauci's ties to the national security apparatus going back to 2003, when he reviewed a National Intelligence Council paper on SARS threats. On January 31, 2020, weeks before Proximal Origin was even published, Fauci told Andersen directly to take his furin cleavage site concerns to the FBI, and in the UK, to MI5. He personally coordinated Andersen and Holmes's next moves while the public was told the question was closed. Later documents show Fauci received Top Secret/SCI intelligence briefings on origins for years afterward, arranged through the White House Situation Room.

His own diary backs it up. On January 26, 2020, before the country had heard the phrase "lab leak," Fauci wrote in his private notes that the wet market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Days later, twelve scientists took part in the call that produced Proximal Origin. Only two concluded natural origin. The diary also documents his private frustration over gain-of-function funding tied to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, recorded while he told Congress under oath that no such research had occurred.

And Fauci wasn't the only scientist with a quiet government relationship. Records I obtained show the CIA and ODNI reached out to Dr. Ralph Baric, a preeminent coronavirologist, in 2015 — years before the pandemic, to discuss coronavirus evolution and "natural human adaptation." In January 2020, Baric briefed ODNI's classified Biological Sciences Experts Group(BSEG) and raised the possibility of a lab origin, weeks before that theory was publicly ridiculed. That's why I asked DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to determine whether Daszak or Baric were ever used or compensated as FBI confidential informants — a question the public deserves answered.

LEGACY MEDIA IGNORES MASSIVE ANTHONY FAUCI DOCUMENT RELEASE ALLEGING HE MISLED CONGRESS ON COVID ORIGINS

Baric sat for a voluntary transcribed interview with my committee staff. He told the committee that the furin cleavage site work proposed in the DARPA project, that many have referred to as the blueprint of COVID-19, was to be conducted by him. That furin cleavage site sits at the center of the origins debate. He also confirmed an experiment done in his lab that showed an "optimal" receptor binding domain (RBD) may weaken a virus, undercutting a core argument against deliberate engineering. Finally, Baric asserted he was on the February 1 call that produced the Proximal Origin paper, but could not explain how.

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Then there's Peter Daszak himself. Documents show CBP flagged him as an "extremely high person of interest" before his return from the WHO's origins mission in February 2021, citing over fifteen years of collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his role funneling NIH money toward gain-of-function research. CBP built a formal action to search him. Three days before he landed, the FBI told them to stand down. He walked through JFK untouched.

RAND PAUL BRINGS CIA WHISTLEBLOWER TO SENATE HEARING ALLEGING 'DEEP STATE' COVID-19 CONSPIRACY

The committee has also released documents showing seizures of biological agents, including coronavirus samples, being smuggled in and out of the United States by Chinese-linked researchers. Just this year, two NIH virologists were charged with trying to smuggle monkeypox into the country. These apprehensions were the culmination of a decade of ignored warnings about the massive dangers that are all but commonplace within the modern virological community.

On July 29, Fauci will testify before my committee under subpoena. That hearing, set for 8:30 that morning, matters. But it will only cover one piece of what's laid out here. Americans don't need to wait for a hearing to see it for themselves.

The proof is already public at my new website, The Reading Room. And by the time you read this, there will be even more posted there. I’m not stopping until the full truth is out there.