Authored by Austin Alonzo and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has said he's pursuing federal criminal action against Dr. Anthony Fauci for perjury before Congress.
In an interview on EpochTV's "American Thought Leaders" with Jan Jekielek, Dr. Paul said he has asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute Dr. Fauci for giving false testimony during multiple congressional hearings.
"We haven't had a lot of luck," Dr. Paul said. "Garland is not paying attention to the referral, but [Dr. Fauci] did lie to Congress."
The Epoch Times reached out to Georgetown University, where Dr. Fauci is employed, for comment but didn't receive a reply by the time of publishing. In July, Dr. Fauci joined the university as a distinguished university professor in its school of medicine’s department of medicine.
Dr. Paul alleges that Dr. Fauci—and multiple other parts of the federal government—engaged in an "extensive" coverup of the origin, threat, and potential treatments for COVID-19. The senator said he detailed the two-year misdirection in his book "Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up," which was published in October.
"Virtually everything they said in private, they said the opposite in the public at the same time," Dr. Paul said.
As early as February 2020, Dr. Fauci and other scientists convened and discussed their conclusion that the genetic sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19 appeared to have been manipulated in a lab to make it more infectious to humans. They were doubly concerned because they knew that the Wuhan, China, lab performed gain-of-function research.
Dr. Paul also alleges that many of the scientists involved in the U.S. public health response to COVID-19 were "funding the lab in Wuhan."
"They actually have a direct conflict of interest because they are the ones that will be culpable," Dr. Paul said. "Why is [Dr. Fauci] so wedded to trying to make you believe it came from the animal kingdom and not the lab? Because he funded the lab."
The entire motive of the alleged conspiracy was to do everything possible to avoid attachment to money that went to the Wuhan lab or to gain of function research "because it attached guilt for the pandemic to them," according to Dr. Paul.
Although the pandemic has been declared over in the United States and the worst of the hysteria surrounding it is fading from public memory, the executive branch of the government is still hesitant to share non-classified information with Congress and the public.
Dr. Paul said the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health are more secretive and hide more materials than the CIA. There are long waits for relevant documents. When they arrive, much of the information is redacted. He said the secrecy is indicative of having something to hide.
Dr. Paul said Dr. Fauci personally chose to avoid safety procedures to fund and conduct research in a dangerous, totalitarian country such as China.
The goal of Dr. Paul's book, he said, isn't just to correct the record on Dr. Fauci and the pandemic but also to prevent another, worse situation. If it had been a more virulent pathogen, such as the Ebola virus, undergoing gain-of-function research and that escaped into the world, the consequences would have been much more dire.
"So this is a discussion ... that's as important or more important than nuclear weapons," Dr. Paul said. "It needs to be treated that way."