Dr. Anthony Fauci angrily suggested on Tuesday that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was lying about the origins of COVID-19.
The confrontation occurred during a Senate Health Committee after Paul said that Fauci could be punished with jail time for allegedly false testimony to Congress about the funding of a lab in Wuhan, China.
"Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress," Fauci said. "And I do not retract [my previous] statement."
"You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans," Paul interrupted. "You're saying that's not gain of function?"
"That is correct," Fauci continued. "And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about."
Paul interrupted again: "They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increased their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain of function."
"It is not," Fauci insisted.
"It's a dance and you're dancing around this," Paul argued, "because you're trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic."
"Now you're getting into something," Fauci complained. "If the point you are making is that the grant that was funded as a sub-award from EcoHealth to Wuhan created Sars-CoV-2, that's where you are getting. Let me finish."
"We don't know," Paul remarked. "All of the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab and there will be responsible for those who funded the lab including yourself."
"I resent the lie that you are now propagating," Fauci replied. "Because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments that were given in the annual reports that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible."
"No one is saying those viruses caused the pandemic!" Paul shouted. "What we're alleging is gain of function research was going on in that lab and NIH funded it. It meets your definition and you are obfuscating the truth."
"I'm not obfuscating the truth!" Fauci shot back. "Are you are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals. I totally resent that and if anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you."
