A top doctor who helped fuel Dr. Anthony Fauci-led ‘propaganda effort’ to discredit Covid Wuhan lab leak theory put on the spot by a top Republican.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., spoke to Dr. Robert Garry at a Senate hearing on the origins of COVID about his March 2020 paper that threw cold water on the lab leak theory.
The Republican blasted the doctor for publishing the piece — often touted by Fauci to discredit speculation about lab leaks — while privately casting doubt on whether it was possible the virus originated in a Chinese market.
In the newspaper, Garry wrote that Covid probably came from bats, but a month earlier he emailed his colleagues that he actually doubted that the virus could have jumped from bats to humans.
Hawley claimed Garry must have had a ‘revelation from God’ to change his view on the origins of Covid so quickly.
Dr. Robert Garry — the top doctor at Tulane University’s medical school — pictured above left at an earlier hearing, was criticized Tuesday by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., for publishing an article on the zoonotic origins of COVID-19, while at the time he claimed in emails that he did not know how such a virus could jump from animals to humans
Hawley read aloud the email to his colleagues, written by Garry: “I really can’t think of a plausible, natural scenario in which you could get the bat virus, or one very similar to it. I just don’t understand how this happens in nature.’
Garry replied defiantly, “You know, all we did was write a paper. 3000 words. It is one of the most researched articles in history.”
Still, the doctor reiterated the publication, saying, “It has held up very well.”
Hawley was furious and accused Garry of being aligned with Fauci, who he claimed had led a “cabal” to discredit the possibility of a lab leak.
“Fauci goes to WHO (and) asks WHO to intervene to discredit the lab leak.”
“Then Fauci did these multiple interviews where he said, ‘No way, lab leaks are not possible at all.’
“And then he coordinates — and the entire federal government coordinates — with the largest tech companies in the world to suppress, and with media companies, to suppress any American who would ask questions about it. It’s absolutely disgraceful.’
‘Dr. Gary, you are part of this propaganda effort,” Hawley continued. “I mean, you’re in the middle of it. It is astonishing.’
He gave Garry another critique of the article to which the doctor responded by saying it was just an opinion piece.
Hawley claimed that Garry’s publication of the now famous “proximal origins paper” in March 2020 helped Dr. Anthony Fauci discredit the lab leak hypothesis. Hawley also said that Fauci-led cabal of other medical professionals tried to quash the idea that COVID started in a lab
According to Tuesday’s testimony, Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (left), seen in the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in 2017, learned the research practices of Americans and funded the research on coronaviruses in the Wuhan laboratory with the help of US government subsidies
Hawley said Garry must have had “a revelation from God” to change his mind about the origins of COVID, from his private emails in February 2020 – in which he said he could not draw a line from animal to human origins – until publishing an article stating that the virus definitely existed. came from animals in March 2020
Garry’s paper destroying the lab leak hypothesis was published on March 17, 2020, but his private emails from February 2020 reveal that he thought, “I just can’t figure out how this is achieved in nature,” according to e emails in Hawley’s possession.
Hawley’s fellow Republican — Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the top Republican lawmaker on the panel — also accused America’s top federal health agencies of deliberately misleading the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which held the hearing.
“Today we are here to explore one of the most critical and debated questions of our time: Did COVID-19 originate in a laboratory?” Paul said at the beginning of the hearing.
He then told the packed Senate hearing room that for years the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) have refused to provide Republicans and Democrats with documents about their allegedly high-risk laboratory work.
“This has been a deliberate, long-term effort to mislead the committee about certain gain-of-function research experiments that the agencies have withheld,” Paul charged.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., opened the hearing claiming that the top U.S. federal health agencies — HHS and NIH — deliberately lied to the Senate committee to prevent documents from being turned over.
No HHS or NIH officials attended Tuesday’s hearing
Additionally, another eminent physician on the panel, Dr. Richard Ebright, testified that COVID had to have originated in a laboratory based on its molecular configuration.
“No – zero – safe evidence points to the natural origins of COVID,” he told the committee.
He told how the nearest animals found with the virus were more than 800 miles away from Wuhan in southern China.
Ebright also noted how the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where the laboratory leak theory claims the disease originated, has “the largest research program in the world on SARS viruses from bats.”
And at the time of the outbreak, the WIV, Ebright testified, had “the largest collection of bat SARS viruses in the world.”
Previously, Fauci had dismissed the idea that COVID originated in a laboratory as a conspiracy theory and worked with social media companies to stifle discussion online about the origins of the virus.
But earlier this month, while testifying before Congress, Fauci said that despite his actions, he remained open about the onset of the pandemic.
Fauci claimed on June 3 that he was “open” to the lab leak theory and had no role in the “drive to downplay the lab leak theory.”
However, Republicans claim that Fauci is lying about it.
Fauci’s account is ‘contradicted by Facebook“The administration’s decision to remove content about the lab leak theory due to ‘pressure’ from the Biden administration, particularly the Response Team, of which you were a member,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to the pandemic patriarch.
The Judiciary Committee has requested Fauci for further interviews.