The GOP's Deal with the Devil
By Hans Mahncke and Jeff Carlson
This week, Anthony Fauci finally testified before Congress. Judging by how Republicans, and even Democrats, completely exposed David Morens, Fauci's senior advisor of twenty years, there was some hope that they would, at a minimum, give Fauci a hard time. But that hope was quickly extinguished. By the time the chairman of the Covid Select Committee, Brad Wenstrup, had finished his opening remarks, it was clear that Fauci would be given a pass. Instead of hammering Fauci for his incessant lies about everything, Wenstrup praised Fauci for purportedly saving numerous lives with the so-called Covid vaccines.
Wenstrup's colleagues followed suit. No one seriously challenged Fauci. No one presented Fauci with evidence of his lies. No one brought video clips of Fauci's constantly changing statements. No one exposed Fauci for playing shell games with the definition of gain-of-function research, even when it was obvious to even casual observers that Fauci was conflating the official National Institutes of Health (NIH) definition in 2016 with a more recent, self-serving definition. Perhaps most notably, the Committee gave Fauci a pass when he claimed he did not and could not know what goes on in Chinese labs. It was Fauci who knowingly and recklessly funded those labs for over a decade. Why did he do that if he had no way of knowing what happens in those labs? Doesn’t that prove his guilt all by itself? No one asked.
Before we delve into the reasons behind the GOP's abrupt shift from interrogating Morens to praising Fauci, let's first look at some significant opportunities that were either missed or deliberately overlooked:
Unknown to most of the public, Fauci is the mastermind behind the gain-of-function agenda. In 2011, Fauci boldly stated that supercharging viruses in labs was a "risk worth taking." It was Fauci who allocated substantial amounts of taxpayer money to implement his risky gain-of-function project.
In 2015, scientist Ralph Baric, funded by Fauci, collaborated with Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create, in a lab, a SARS virus that exhibited "potential for human emergence." The experiment was funded with the assistance of EcoHealth Alliance, the group which funneled Fauci funds to China. That should have been a big red, flashing warning for Fauci to stop the recklessness. He didn’t.
In 2016, Fauci's own staff recognized that EcoHealth was engaged in gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They immediately suspended EcoHealth's grant. If they had not been overruled by Fauci, the Covid catastrophe would likely have been prevented. But they were overruled, and the experiments continued.
In October 2019, the authors of the DEFUSE blueprint, an instruction manual for creating Covid in a lab, suddenly had a conference call with Fauci’s office. The only other times this group of authors appeared together was when they initially drafted the proposal in 2018 and when they all gathered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the same year. The timing is notable because the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the project was supposed to be conducted, deleted its database of viruses in September 2019, indicating that the lab leak occurred around that time.
On January 13, 2020, Fauci signed an agreement with Moderna to fully commit to the production of mRNA “vaccines”. At the time, nothing was publicly known about the new disease other than the purported fact that it was not transmissible. Why the need to go all in for a virus that allegedly posed no threat?
During his deposition in the Missouri v Biden free speech case, Fauci lied under oath, feigning that he didn’t know who Baric was. In truth, Fauci knew Baric well. Baric even came to Fauci’s office in person in February 2020 to talk about the origin of Covid.
The contrast between the Committee’s demolition of Morens and its kids glove treatment of Fauci could not be more stark. And there is no legitimate explanation for it. Morens' testimony repeatedly revealed that Fauci was not only involved in the conspiracy to conceal the origin of Covid but also directed it. According to Morens, he would either send sensitive emails to Fauci's private email address or hand-deliver them to Fauci's home. Morens even stated in an email to EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak that Fauci “is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.” If anything, Morens' revelations about the Fauci-led cover-up should have prompted even more aggressive questioning of Fauci than Morens was subjected to.
Yet, Fauci wasn’t pressed on anything. When he blatantly lied, for instance, when he claimed that he had nothing to do with the fraudulent Proximal Origin paper, he was not confronted with the emails that proved that he was lying. Over and over, the Covid Select Committee let Fauci off the hook. Why?
Looking at the average member of Congress, one can be forgiven for attributing incompetence to what could also be attributed to malice. But this time, we can be sure that incompetence was not the deciding factor. We know this both because the Committee demonstrated its capability when interrogating Morens, and more importantly, because the Committee's counsel, who had aggressively questioned Morens, was hugely deferential to Fauci.
Thus, there is no other explanation than that the exoneration of Fauci was intentional. The Committee, as exemplified by Wenstrup's glowing opening statement, had its hands tied. But who tied those hands? It appears that, at some point, a deal was made to let Fauci be. In return, the Committee would be allowed to go after two Fauci flunkies, Morens and Daszak. This interpretation is supported by the fact that Fauci, during the Congressional hearing, threw both Morens and Daszak under the bus.
Judging by a recent tweet from the Committee, they may even have received permission to go after a third Fauci flunky, Peter Hotez. Hotez is another scientist through whom Fauci funneled money to Chinese labs, including supporting a scientist who worked for the People’s Liberation Army. This scientist reportedly fell off the roof of the Wuhan Institute of Virology under mysterious circumstances at the onset of the Covid pandemic.
So it’s ok to pursue the flunkies but not the godfather.
As to why Fauci is being protected, and by whom, the answer is multi-faceted. Democrats went all in with Saint Fauci early in the pandemic. They're not going to suddenly admit that Fauci is a crook. Then there's the military and the intelligence community. After the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks of 2001, Fauci was appointed as the Bioweapons Czar by the George W. Bush administration. That, in and of itself, made him untouchable, even if just to avoid the embarrassment of revealing how terrible he was at that job. Or perhaps Fauci knows too much.
But how did the powers that be get the committee to make a deal with the devil? Unfortunately, we still lack sufficient information about the inner workings of these deals. However, it is widely known that they occur. This fact was recently highlighted when Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who had previously opposed warrantless surveillance, entered a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) and emerged as the country's most ardent supporter of warrantless surveillance. This is how Johnson explained his sudden change of heart: “I went to the SCIF and got the confidential briefing from sort of the other perspective on that”.
Makes you wonder what it is that people like Johnson are told in the SCIF. Another matter one wonders about is why, back in November 2023, Covid Select Chairman Wenstrup suddenly announced that he would be retiring in 2024.