Fauci, who helped steer the Trump and Biden administrations’ efforts to fight the virus, is scheduled to testify
June 3 in front of the House Oversight select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, with lawmakers expected to press him on the still-unknown origins of the pandemic, the government’s vaccine mandates and other issues that remain politically divisive, more than four years after the outbreak began.
[This new testimony will be in a public hearing.]
That's today.
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One is a Republican, the other a Democrat. The quest to understand the pandemic tests the bonds of friendship between two members of Congress.
Wenstrup and his fellow Republicans have focused much of their effort on the possible lab origins of the coronavirus, suggesting federal officials worked to cover up U.S. ties to researchers in Wuhan. The issue is set to receive national attention Monday, when Anthony S. Fauci — to many Americans, the face of the nation’s coronavirus response — testifies in front of the panel. Republicans are poised to grill the former National Institutes of Health official on the agency’s funding of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that participated in risky virus research in China before the pandemic. Federal officials in May
halted funding to the organization, citing irregularities uncovered by the coronavirus panel.
Ruiz and other Democrats concede there were episodes of pandemic-era wrongdoing, such as EcoHealth misleading the government on its potential work and a
former Fauci adviser admitting he deliberately deleted emails. But they say the GOP-led investigations have amounted to a wild-goose chase, wasting taxpayer dollars and a crucial opportunity to prepare for the next health crisis.
Despite repeated
calls from
politicians and
editorial pages, there are no plans to establish a Sept. 11-style commission on the pandemic, with Trump and Biden officials worried about revisiting unpopular decisions or spotlighting mistakes. Congress is unlikely to continue the covid panel past this year, making Wenstrup and Ruiz’s fragile partnership perhaps the last, best hope to get bipartisan answers about a still-mysterious outbreak and the government’s response.
Rain pelted the Capitol on Jan. 9 as Tony Fauci strode through its depths, escorted by Capitol police, his own security detail, a pair of government lawyers, two personal lawyers, even a couple of junior legal aides, navigating underground corridors hidden from visitors.
It was a walk Fauci and his entourage had already made a dozen times by that evening, shuttling between a room of congressional investigators and his holding room every hour.
The 83-year-old doctor had been summoned to the nearly empty Capitol to privately testify about the pandemic for 14 hours across two days. On Monday, he will face lawmakers’ questions in public for the first time since leaving government in 2022.