Federal government investigators launched a probe Tuesday into how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “manages and monitors” its ongoing grant program to foreign labs, such as the Wuhan lab that Dr. Anthony Fauci has funded.
“We share stakeholders’ concerns regarding compliance and oversight of NIH grant funds. We have been monitoring this issue for some time and consider it a high-priority matter that can pose a threat to the integrity of the NIH grant program,” Director of Communications for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) Tesia Williams told CNN.
“Based on our preliminary research and analysis,” Williams continued. “HHS-OIG has decided to conduct an extensive audit reviewing how NIH monitored selected grants and how the grantees and subgrantees used and managed federal funds between years 2014 through 2021.”
CNN reported the probe “will look at how these grants are monitored and making sure the recipient’s use and management of NIH grant funds is in accordance with federal requirements.”
The NIH’s website says, “Approximately 80% of NIH funding goes to support research grants, including grants to foreign organizations.”
Judicial Watch obtained records proving the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under Fauci provided the Wuhan lab $826,000 for coronavirus bat research from 2014 to 2019, beginning in former President Obama’s term.
The investigation is likely to encompass Peter Daszak, the man responsible for steering U.S. government funding to the Wuhan lab, and who thanked Fauci in April 2020 for publicly dismissing the theory coronavirus may have leaked from the lab, emails revealed.
Fauci defended himself against the “misconstrued” June 3 email, stating, “That email was from a person to me saying ‘thank you’ for whatever it is he thought I said, and I said that I think the most likely origin is a jumping of species.”
Meanwhile, three researchers from the Wuhan lab became sick in November of 2019, “according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report,” the Wall Street Journal reported May 23. Then the NIH said new evidence showed Americans were presumably infected with coronavirus in December 2019, Axios reported June 15.
The Wuhan lab’s so-called “bat woman,” Director Shi Zhengli, denied Monday that the Wuhan Institute of Virology kept live bats on the premises, a video released Sunday allegedly shows, countering NIAID’s records obtained by Judicial Watch.
Director Shi’s denial comes as Sky News Australia unveiled Sunday an alleged Chinese Academy of Sciences’ video which confirms the Wuhan Institute of Virology did keep live bats on its premises, opposing the World Health Organization which has always claimed such suggestions are a baseless conspiracy.
Fauci admitted on May 25 the NIH funded the Wuhan lab but still denies “gain of function” funding of bat or other species experiments.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) disagreed with Fauci’s contention, saying he lied and committed perjury over his gain of function comments.
“Absolutely, he lied to the America people. There was gain of function research going on with Dr. Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute,” Paul explained.
“It’s listed at the end of the paper,” Paul said. “This paper was fined by NIAID research and it lists a ten digit number that identifies the research money she got from from the United States. Was it gain of function?”
“Well it took a SARS virus, which is a coronavirus, that’s 15 times more deadly than COVID, and it added to it S protein, which is something in the surface of it, to make it more easily infectious to epithelial cells for the respiratory tract. That to me is gain of function,” he stated.
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