'If anyone is lying, it is you': Fauci tears into GOP Senator Rand Paul for saying he lied to Congress about gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and implying NIH funding led to the deaths of Americans

Anthony Fauci lashed out at Rand Paul on Tuesday during a Senate hearing as he accused the Kentucky Republican of being a 'liar' who 'doesn't know what you're talking about' when it comes to COVID origins and gain-of-function research. 

'Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11 where you claimed the NIH National Institutes of never funded gain of function research in Wuhan?' Paul asked of the nation's top immunologist and Joe Biden's top COVID advisor.

'Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement,' Fauci shot back in the heated exchange on Capitol Hill during a Senate Health Committee hearing.

When Paul asked Fauci if taking an animal virus and increasing its transmissibility to humans is not the definition of 'gain of function', Fauci said: 'That is correct.'

'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,' Fauci lambasted as the two began talking over each other in front of the hearing room. 

'You won't admit the truth,' Paul rebutted.

'You are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individual . I totally resent that,' Fauci said.

'And it could have been,' Paul interjected.

'If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you,' Fauci said as he grabbed hold of the microphone and pointed at the Kentucky senator. 

This isn't the first time Paul and Fauci have gone at it in hearings, which are publicly broadcasted – in fact, the duo have frequently clashed publicly both in the Senate and out over NIH funds.

Senator Rand Paul got in a heated exchange with Dr. Anthony Fauci at a hearing Tuesday when he again pushed the nation's top immunologist on whether the U.S. funded gain of function research in Wuhan. Fauci responded with, 'You do not know what you are talking about'

He defended allocating $600,000 to a group called EcoHealth Alliance, which then paid the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study the risk that bat coronaviruses could infect humans.

Paul grilled Fauci in May about the $600,000 in funding allocated for EcoHealth Alliance, which turned around and paid the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study how bat coronavirus could infect humans.

Fauci defended that allocation during a hearing before a congressional budget committee

The $600,000 in funding was reinstated in August after a different earlier grant was blocked in April 2020 amid concern over safety at the Wuhan lab.

Paul insisted during the terse exchange that the money was being used for gain of function research. Fauci, however, insisted the money was not used for this purpose.

'You are entirely and completely incorrect,' Fauci told Paul at the hearing. 'The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute.'

Gain of function research looks at both transmitting disease between animals and humans and is a way for scientists to alter organisms and diseases to study how they could become deadlier or more transmissible.

The NIH definition of gain of function includes 'scientific research that increases the transmissibility among animals is gain-of-function.' 

The Kentucky senator repeatedly questioned Fauci on gain of function – and the U.S. indirectly funding that research in China – on a few occasions. The theory has emerged in conservative circles as a potential answer to the origins of COVID-19. 

Last month, Paul also accused Fauci of lying and demanded he be fired after a slew of his emails were made public.

Paul claimed to Fox News early in June that thousands of emails revealed by Buzzfeed News and the Washington Post proved Fauci may have been in-part responsible for the development of COVID-19.  

The emails reveal that Fauci was warned privately of the possibility that the origins of COVID were due to a lab leak in Wuhan – even though he publicly dismissed the ideas and allowed Democrats to call it a conspiracy.

The email revelation did not show Fauci’s personal take on the theory.

Paul gave Fauci the opportunity to retract his May 11 statement claiming the U.S. did not fund gain of function research with it's $600,000 grant, saying 'Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement?'

Fauci got quite animated during the exchange, as he pointed his fingers at Paul for being a 'liar'

Paul pointed back his pencil, and insisted the evidence shows National Institute of Health funding went to the Wuhan lab, who he claims then used that money to do research on how to make a bat coronavirus transmittable to humans and more infectious and deadly

Fauci v Paul: The debate over gain-of-function research and the $600K NIH grant to the Wuhan lab

Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci have been at loggerheads over gain-of-function research and a $600,000 grant the National Institutes of Health gave to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2014.

Gain of Function Research is a controversial practice that involves altering a virus or pathogen in order to study the development of new diseases and their transmission. The research can ultimately make the virus more contagious or more deadly in a lab. 

According to an NIH definition, GOF includes studying and altering viruses in animals to make them transmissible to humans – and potentially more contagious and deadly. 

Paul accused Fauci on May 11 of misleading Congress by saying the U.S. has never funded gain-of-function projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The Kentucky Republican points to a $3.7million grant NIH gave EcoHealth Alliance in 2014.  EcoHealth Alliance in turn distributed nearly $600,000 of that funding to its collaborator, the Wuhan Institute of Virology . 

Paul has maintained that emails from Fauci showed that he was worried NIH funded gain-of-function research in February 2020 when the pandemic first started to emerge. 

In an interview in June, Paul told Fox News: 'I think we've had a change of opinion. Everybody left-of-center was saying this was a conspiracy, no way it could have happened in the Wuhan lab. Now even Dr. Fauci is saying we should investigate it'

'But the emails paint a disturbing picture, a disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci form the very beginning worrying that he had been funding gain of function research. And he knows it to this day but hasn't admitted it.'

Paul claimed in the interview that 'there is a lot of evidence' that Fauci's views on the Wuhan lab-leak theory were compromised by a 'conflict of interest.'

'If it turns out this virus came from the Wuhan lab, which it looks like it did, that there's a great deal of culpability in that he was a big supporter of the funding,' Paul said.

'But he was also a big supporter to this day of saying that we can trust the Chinese on this, that we can trust Chinese scientists and I think that's quite naïve and really should preclude him form the position that he's in.

In June, Fauci dismissed revelations that he was warned at the start of pandemic that COVID-19 may have been 'engineered'.

Fauci seemed to play down a mass trove of damaging emails which include warnings from the start of the pandemic that the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

He said his emails are 'ripe to be taken out of context' but he 'can't guarantee everything that is going on in the Wuhan lab'

At the hearing on Tuesday, Paul attempted to prove Fauci was lying in his May testimony by presenting a Wuhan Institute of Virology paper that details efforts to produce man-altered coronaviruses.

Fauci 'stated that the NIH has never and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,' Paul said in the committee chamber. 'And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan institute by Doctor Shi and was funded by the NIH.'

He then cited the paper by WIV scientists titled 'Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus'.

The paper specifically talks about ongoing efforts to produce a 'chimeric' coronavirus, which means it has been altered by man – otherwise known as 'gain of function.'

It also details, Paul noted, that the NIH was a source of funding for that research.

Paul asserted that the research recorded in the paper 'explicitly matches the definition of gain-of-function research.'

'This paper was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function,' Fauci insisted. 

Paul came back with saying WIV researchers 'took animal viruses' and 'then increased their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain-of-function—it's a dance, and you're dancing around this, because you're trying to obscure responsibility for four million people around the world dying from a pandemic.' 

Paul, an ophthalmologist before being elected to Congress, was the first known senator to test positive for COVID-19 in March 2020 – the same month the nation went into lockdown in response to the rapidly spreading virus.

After he completed quarantine and returned to work, Paul refused to wear a mask at the Capitol, insisting he was now 'immune' since he already contracted and recovered from COVID-19. 

The Fauci email leak in early June showed the NIH doctor was warned several times in January, february and April of 2020 by different experts that COVID-19 was likely the result of testing at the Wuhan lab in China.

On April 18, 2020, Fauci received an email from the head of a research group that’s partnered with WIV. In the email, the individual was thanking Fauci or publicly insisting evidence doesn’t point to the lab as the source.

Then, after mounting evidence supporting the lab leak theory was revealed in June, Fauci finally deflected by saying the origin is likely a natural occurrence, where it goes from an animal reservoir to a human. 

In an interview with CNN, Fauci said he is 'keeping an open mind that it might be a lab leak' but dismissed the idea of bioengineering as 'far out'.

U.S. vaccination rates have plateaued, with the one-dose vaccination per cent remaining around the mid-50s

The case rate has increased over the last month with the emergence of the Delta variant, which was first detected in India

Despite the case rate spiking, the death rate has remained relatively low