Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic response, will participate in back-to-back marathon meetings with lawmakers to discuss the origins of the virus and how to manage future outbreaks.
The House select committee on COVID-19 will conduct a closed-door interview with Fauci on Monday and Tuesday, with the sessions expected to last at least seven hours.
Committee Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, described the interviews as an after-action review, focusing on lessons learned and decisions made during the pandemic. The Ohio Republican hopes the committee’s final recommendations can be bipartisan and focus on revealing what worked, what did not work, and how to improve in the future.
Wenstrup, who is a physician of over 30 years, is also interested in hearing insights that could help his committee provide bipartisan recommendations on how to handle the next pandemic. He plans to demand answers on pandemic political decisions, including vaccine mandates, which he considers “egregious.”
Wenstrup’s committee has been investigating whether government officials, including Fauci, worked to suppress questions about the lab leak theory. Many Republicans accused those officials of pushing the natural origin theory to protect China.
Wenstrup also intends to ask Fauci about the controversy over whether COVID originated naturally or in a Wuhan, China lab. Some people believe that Fauci ignored signs suggesting that COVID originated from a Wuhan lab leak despite emails weakly supporting this theory.
Fauci has been a politically polarizing figure during the pandemic, facing criticism from opponents of lockdowns, masking rules, and vaccine mandates. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has been his most significant antagonist and accused him of lying about the origins of COVID.
Fauci denied that the virus could have originated in the Chinese laboratory, where U.S.-funded experiments took place.
