Robert E. Moffit, PhD
It seems President Biden won’t stop at letting his convicted son Hunter off the hook. The White House staff is reportedly pondering an unprecedented, pre-emptive set of presidential pardons for numerous officials who haven’t been formally charged or convicted of federal crimes but may be liable for indictment or conviction under the incoming Trump administration.
Prominent on that list is Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID).
Why Fauci? Team Biden is mum. But the most likely rationale is a possible perjury charge: Fauci testified under oath in congressional inquiries. At issue: Fauci’s responses to the crucial question of whether American taxpayers’ dollars were used to fund viral “gain-of-function” experiments—research designed to enhance transmissibility or virulence of a pathogen—in a Chinese laboratory.
That issue just resurfaced in a meticulous 520-page report issued by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. “Dr. Fauci’s testimony was, at a minimum, misleading,” congressional investigators concluded. “As established, at the time of Dr. Fauci’s testimony senior NIH (National Institute of Health) officials and the NIH website defined gain of function research as a ‘type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers a new or enhanced activity to that agent.’ Further witness testimony and a plain reading of Eco Health’s research conducted at the WIV (Wuhan Institute of Virology) using U.S. taxpayers’ dollars confirm it facilitated an experiment that conveyed new or enhanced activity to a pathogen—thus, satisfying the definition of gain of function research.”
The Tangled Web
For over three years, congressional investigators have been trying to untangle a complex web of relationships, financial and otherwise, between NIH grantees and American scientists and subgrantees, including top scientists in China, particularly at the WIV, a center of coronavirus research. Congressional investigators have also struggled to get clarity on certain controversial lab experiments in China, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/public-health/commentary/pardoning-fauci-would-be-disservice-him-and-americans