Senator Rand Paul: Whistleblower Hearing on Multi-Agency COVID Cover-up Of Illegal Gain-Of-Function Research

Chairman Paul Delivers Opening Remarks During Whistleblower Hearing on the Multi-Agency Cover-Up of COVID-19 and Gain-of-Function Research

Editor’s note: The real story of how the COVID 19 pandemic came to be is likely more complicated than anyone realizes.  There are many players and apparently the cover up went much deeper than anyone thought. Another report released by Rep. Malliotakis revealed that the doctor in charge of Eco Health Alliance, the company involved in the research, can never be a doctor again by order of HHS. This is due to his involvement in illegal and dangerous gain of function research. A different scientist may also be implicated in creating the virus who worked in the US labs run by Dr. Fauci. And Senator Paul demanded testimony from Dr. Fauci and others when even more cover up evidence, including records deletion, came to light.  

The original hearing announcement: 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) will convene a full committee hearing to receive testimony from a whistleblower who will expose the coverup over the origins of COVID-19 and the lack of transparency from government agencies.

Senator Rand Paul’s Opening Remarks at the Hearing: 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) will convene a full committee hearing to receive testimony from a whistleblower who will expose the coverup over the origins of COVID-19 and the lack of transparency from government agencies.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) convened a full committee hearing to receive testimony from a decorated CIA officer, Jim Erdman III, who exposed the cover-up over the origins of COVID-19 and the lack of transparency from government agencies.

Chairman Paul’s Opening Remarks as Prepared:

The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the most consequential events of our lifetime — and to this day, the American people have never received a full accounting of where it came from, what our government knew, or why they had to fight their own government to find out.

Today, this Committee will hear from an intelligence-community whistleblower about those questions. The witness will testify that CIA scientific analysts repeatedly concluded that a laboratory leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19 — and that those conclusions were buried, softened, or withheld from Congress while the public was told to trust a different story.

For years, Americans were told to trust the experts, trust the agencies, trust the intelligence community, and trust the officials who assured us they were following the science. But the evidence before this Committee tells a very different story.

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Today we will expose a system in which the same small circle of officials, scientists, grantees, and intelligence advisers moved from agency to agency, meeting to meeting, and briefing to briefing — reviewing one another’s work, shaping one another’s conclusions, and presenting those conclusions to Congress and the public as independent judgment.

Only, it was not independent. It was a circle.

One part of that circle is a body most Americans have never heard of: the Biological Sciences Experts Group — BSEG, also known as the “B Group”.

BSEG operates under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Its stated purpose is to give the intelligence community access to outside scientific expertise on biological threats. That may sound reasonable. But not when those experts are not independent.

For example, Dr. Ralph Baric collaborated with Dr. Zhengli Shi in Wuhan, China, to create gain-of-function coronaviruses. But Dr. Baric was also part of BSEG and an active consultant to intelligence agencies on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Likewise, Peter Daszak received hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government and worked with Dr. Shi on gain-of-function experiments. Daszak was also sent to China with the WHO to investigate the origins of COVID.

So, the scientists commissioned to investigate COVID origins were, in some cases, the very scientists who were complicit in the gain of function experiments that may have created COVID.

In essence, the intelligence community pays researchers to review work and write papers. NIH funds their grants. The CIA consults them and gives them access to classified information. The National Academies publishes their work. Policymakers then cite the result as consensus.

At the center of the government side of this circle was Dr. Anthony Fauci.

For years, Dr. Fauci was not merely a public-health official speaking from NIH. He had a long-standing relationship with the national security and intelligence apparatus — on biological threats, dangerous pathogens, classified life-sciences research, pandemic preparedness, and COVID origins. Again and again, documents show him being brought into national-security discussions far beyond ordinary public-health messaging. During COVID, intelligence officials arranged for Dr. Fauci to review highly classified intelligence assessments that could not even be sent outside the White House complex.

But… how can Anthony Fauci objectively comment on a discussion of COVID origins when he approved the very funding that may have created the pandemic virus?

From the outset of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci shaped the conclusions. Dozens of times, he referred to the idea that the pandemic originated in the lab as a conspiracy.

Dr. Fauci convened the now-infamous February 1, 2020 call. Some scientists on that call privately raised serious concerns about a laboratory origin. Yet, ironically, those same scientists later co-authored the Proximal Origin paper, which publicly dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis. One author received a $9 million grant from Dr. Fauci’s own agency after he changed his opinion from lab leak to natural origin. At the same time, Dr. Fauci coordinated with the National Academies on coronavirus origins and public-facing messaging. These were not independent experts reaching consensus. They were parts of the same machine, designed to reach the same conclusion.

The question is not whether the government may consult experts. The question is whether those experts were independent, whether conflicts were disclosed, whether dissenting views were preserved, whether the lab-origin possibility was fairly evaluated, and whether Congress and the American people received the truth — or a curated result.

When Congress asked those questions, government officials lied to our faces. They classified documents. They suppressed information. They changed definitions. They invoked sources and methods. They told Congress only what they wanted Congress to know.

In 2023, John Ratcliffe, the former Director of National Intelligence, testified before Congress with a stark warning. He said a lab leak was the only explanation credibly supported by intelligence, science, and common sense. He warned that partisan politics and analysts’ disagreement with Trump Administration policy had created illegitimate roadblocks to the truth. He said the COVID-19 Origin Act — which Congress passed unanimously — should finally make intelligence on COVID’s origins public.

Despite an unanimously passed law requiring the declassification of information related to COVID origins, the deep state still resists this congressional mandate.

Our witness today will explain what happened inside the CIA. According to his testimony, CIA scientific analysts concluded multiple times between 2021 and 2023 that a laboratory leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19. Yet those conclusions never shaped the official narrative — and Congress was never told.

It was not until after the 2024 election that the outgoing Biden Administration directed the CIA to issue an assessment — not because of new intelligence, but so officials could walk out the door claiming there was nothing left to find.

That is not analysis. That is a cleanup operation.

This hearing is about more than one witness, one assessment, or one agency.

It is about a federal apparatus that told the American people to trust the science while hiding the machinery that shaped the science. It is about an intelligence community that relied on outside experts whose conflicts were never disclosed. It is about public-health officials with access to intelligence that Congress has struggled to obtain. It is about researchers and advisers cycling through grants, contracts, classified briefings, federal service, and advisory committees — and presenting the result as independence.

The coverup is not just about protecting one research grant. It is about protecting an entire network — of labs, grants, intermediaries, and bureaucratic architecture —quietly engineered to outlast any moratorium, any congressional inquiry, and any election.

After millions died, children lost years of learning, small businesses were destroyed, civil liberties were restricted, and dissenting Americans were censored and smeared, the government owed its people the evidence.

Our witness is testifying publicly today at great personal risk. He and other brave whistleblowers have come forward because the truth was being buried, and because government secrecy cannot become government impunity.

I want to acknowledge the Trump Administration officials who made good on their commitment to transparency and cooperated with this investigation: Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Director of the National Institutes of Health Jay Bhattacharya, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

They set a standard. I expect the rest of this Administration to meet it.

We owe the American people a complete record. We owe every family harmed by this pandemic a government that does not hide behind secrecy, conflicts, and curated science when the stakes are life and death.

In public. Starting now.

Banner Image: During the pandemic. Image Credit – Edwin Hooper