Rand Paul says Fauci should ‘go to prison’ over COVID-19 ‘dishonesty’

Their objection is that GoF isn’t well defined and it also includes research that isn’t risky.

Fair enough, and that probably accurately describes the way that Fauci himself thinks about it. So when Rand Paul asked him if he had funded GoF, and replied “The NIH has not ever, and does not now, fund ‘gain-of-function research’ in the Wuhan Institute.”, he gets off the hook by saying that GoF isn't well defined in the first place, and understood the question to be referring to the ultra-dangerous flavor of GoF.

He could have made that claim in his testimony, but he didn't. He could have demanded that Paul clarify his question "What kinds of GoF research are you asking about?" But he didn't do that, either.

Instead, he preferred the Clintonian denial "I did not have GoF with that woman, the bat lady". Yeah, but Peter Daszk did, and Fauci funded him. That grant lay at the root of Paul's initial questioning of Fauci, and describes that one thing they're going to do with the money is

"Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice."

Fauci's defenders have resorted to the obfuscation of claiming "Hey, that doesn't fit the definition of Prohibited GoF research in the Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO) framework", so it's not really GoF. And anyway, GoF is such a poorly defined term itself it really isn't possible to answer the question in general terms anyway.

But that dog won't hunt.

There were many ways that Fauci could have answered that question honestly, but the answer he did give was clearly intended to decieve, and is only defensible with the most narrowly tailored and lawyerly redirectrions.

It's clear that Fauci lied to Paul, to the Senate, and to the American people. He funded research that any reasonable and honest person would admit could be described as GoF, through a cutout. That doesn't make it better, it makes it worse, showing mens rea.

Nothing that Paul has presented so far would have been a crime, at least as the criminal justice system was understood by most of us before January 6, but at minimum, Fauci, and those who supported him and benefitted from his mendacity and arrogance should at least pay a political price.

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