Anthony Fauci’s pardon shames America His Covid cover-up undermined faith in science

In his inauguration speech four years ago, Joe Biden declared his determination to ‘”restore the soul of America”, later insisting that his “galvanising mission” was to show how our democratic system of government, rooted on liberal ideals of freedom and justice, could still deliver for ordinary people in a turbulent world. So how sad and utterly shameful that on his last day in the job, he stained this noble cause by doling out a pre-emptive pardon to a figure who has done so much to destroy faith in both politics and science.

The departed President’s bid to throw a ring of legal protection around Dr Anthony Fauci, his former chief medical adviser, reeks of elitist arrogance, displaying shocking contempt for ordinary citizens. Biden defended this deeply anti-democratic measure — announced only after he entered the Capitol to watch his unwanted successor Donald Trump’s restoration to power — on the grounds he had to protect public servants who were facing “baseless and politically motivated investigations” that might “irreparably damage their reputations and finances”.

Given the dark political climate in the United States, such an argument might be sustainable for General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who called Trump a fascist after serving under him before in the White House, or for Liz Cheney, the ex-Republican congresswoman who took such a bold stance over the January 6 insurgency. Perhaps it was even understandable on a personal level, if unforgivable politically, that he tried to protect his own family members. But there is no defence for offering clemency to the central figure in a scientific scandal of epic global significance.

Fauci is the veteran infectious diseases expert and physician who was famed for his calming presence and constant urging to follow the science during the pandemic. Put aside, however, his stance on divisive decisions such as mask mandates, public safety rules and vaccinations. Controversial in many nations, they became toxic tribal issues in the US, fuelling the societal fissures that Trump exploited with such intuitive skill on his return path to the White House. Ultimately, though, these were policy decisions taken, rightly or wrongly, during an unprecedented, rapidly evolving health crisis that engulfed the planet.

The most noxious stench hanging over Fauci’s head relates to his central role in the clandestine efforts by a cabal of top scientists to stifle debate over the origins of Covid-19 that appeared so mysteriously in Wuhan. This central Chinese city was hundreds of miles from the nearest wild bat colonies carrying the most similar coronaviruses. But suspicions were aroused since it is home to one of China’s two maximum bio-security labs. It had known safety concerns. And, clearly, the initial outbreak was covered up by Beijing’s communist dictatorship, which inflamed the disease’s impact as it spread its deadly tentacles around the world.

Fauci spent almost four decades as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s biggest biomedical research agency. Early in the pandemic, it emerged that Wuhan Institute of Virology was funded by this body to carry out high-risk, gain-of-function research into bat diseases. This work, it transpired, was sometimes performed in dangerously low biosecurity conditions. But it emerged Fauci played a pivotal role in pushing the idea that it was conspiratorial nonsense to suggest Covid might have leaked from a laboratory in tandem with his friends Francis Collins, then head of NIH; and Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, another major research funding body.

This trio promoted an orthodoxy of natural zoonotic transmission that prevailed until it became impossible to ignore all the circumstantial evidence suggesting a lab leak. They pulled together a group of loyal scientists, some with close links to China or compromised by close ties to Wuhan, who wrote influential papers for prominent journals ridiculously praising Beijing for transparency and dismissing “any type of laboratory-based scenario”. Despite private concerns over “Wild West”  biosecurity in Wuhan, and the possibility of lab leakage, this group managed to focus media and political attention onto a Wuhan market selling wild animals, ignoring how this idea had been dismissed by Chinese public health leaders and scientists alike.

This scandal — which implies deliberate and self-interested obfuscation over the cause of this century’s biggest public health catastrophe — involved some of the most influential figures in global science. Though all three central players have since left the posts they held at the time, Farrar has moved to the World Health Organisation as chief scientist, despite his central role in trying to clamp down debate on the cause of a pandemic. (This is one more reason why it is tough to shed any tears over Trump’s decision to end US funding to this mismanaged UN organisation given it has kowtowed to China, pumped out misinformation and failed to probe the origins of Covid properly.)

Details about the activities of Fauci’s gang had to be pieced together from scraps of evidence gathered through leaks, freedom of information requests and Congressional inquiries by a small but tenacious group of online investigators, dissident scientists and determined journalists. Now even Tim Spector, the professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, who advised Downing Street in the pandemic, freely talks about “the trail of shredded documents” and fear there was a cover-up. As Spector stated two months ago: “The most likely source of this was a lab leak from Wuhan.”

Spector suggested these efforts were intended to protect scientific credibility in the early months of the outbreak. Other experts believe that Fauci and his friends were protecting their own backs after they outsourced dangerous experiments to China, work that had already been banned in the US itself. It must be stated that we do not have conclusive proof either way on the pandemic’s cause. But the evidence of deceit, exposed on an issue of such seismic importance for the world, is a betrayal of both science and government — and this is why Biden’s pre-emptive pardon does such a sordid disservice to democracy.

Fauci claims — in a curious echo of Trump — that he is the victim of partisan threats of investigation and prosecution. “Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he said in response to Monday’s news. Yet it was noticeable that the pardon is backdated to 2014. This is, coincidentally, the same year that the US three-year ban on gain-of-function research took effect and also the start date for an NIH grant to Wuhan that biosafety experts such as Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, believe is linked to the “reckless” research that sparked global pandemic. “The pardon is a travesty,” he told me.

Rand Paul, leading the Republican charge against Fauci, responded by saying the pardon “seals the deal” over who bears real responsibility for the Covid pandemic, adding that he would not rest as chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee until the truth was fully exposed. Fauci sneered that the senator did not know what he was talking about when denying to Congress that he had ever funded gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan. Paul’s efforts should be assisted by Trump’s choice of Jay Bhattacharya to take over the NIH, given that the Stanford University health economist and lockdown sceptic sees evidence for a lab leak as “compelling” and has been critical of elitist efforts to silence dissident voices.

Yet in a strange twist, there are suggestions the pardon might help expose the truth. Why? Because Fauci has lost Fifth Amendment protection if (or when) Paul’s committee issues a subpoena forcing him to testify under oath about his actions. Meanwhile, others such as Collins have been left unprotected as have assorted aides and scientist stooges. “These pardons will not stop Department of Justice investigations,” one adviser to the Trump transition team told the journalist Paul D. Thacker. “We expected this and look at it as a predicate to get truth from people who can no longer use the Fifth Amendment. Now we can bring every one of them in front of a grand jury.” Or as Professor Ebright put it: “This sets the stage for full exposure of Fauci’s activities through prosecution of his co-conspirators.”

The evidence has shown clear efforts to avoid such scrutiny. One memo disclosed that “Tony” had told David Morens, a senior adviser to Fauci, how to avoid requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), suggesting that he stop using government-issued phones for his gmail accounts. A leaked email indicated that Morens was coached on evasion of FOIs by Margaret Moore, Fauci’s long-serving assistant — who pleaded the fifth when asked to testify. “I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” he wrote. Another senior aide to Fauci misspelled key conspirators, presumably to avoid searches intended to fulfil FOIA requests.

Fauci denied working closely with Morens when interrogated by Congress. But he also said “I’ve kept an open mind throughout the entire process” — which certainly does not seem to match the facts of some of his public statements, nor his secretive activities behind the scenes to clamp down on debate.

Despite Biden’s pardon, the disturbing saga of the slippery Dr Fauci and his Covid cover-up still has some distance to run.

---