Trump blasts Fauci, says he ‘always tried to protect China’ during COVID-19 pandemic | Today’s news
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday (July 29) renewed his criticism of former top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, just hours after Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions before a Republican-led Senate committee investigating the federal government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump defended his administration’s pandemic response and accused former President Joe Biden of restoring Fauci’s influence after he left office.
“Far more people have died from Covid under the Biden administration than under the Trump administration,” Trump wrote, describing Operation Warp Speed as a “spectacular success” and saying it was “one of the most successful things an American president has ever done.”
Trump also repeated his long-standing claim that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and accused Fauci of opposing that view.
Fauci invokes the Fifth Amendment
Earlier Wednesday, Fauci declined to answer senators’ questions after being called to testify before a Republican committee chaired by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Fauci invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination and said he was acting on the advice of his attorney.
In his opening statement, Fauci accused Paul of being determined to prosecute him.
“The only conclusion I can come to is that the only reason he’s calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that might justify his repeated public promises to end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.
Fauci added that revoking the Fifth Amendment was a difficult decision, but was believed to be necessary under the circumstances.
Rand Paul releases Fauci’s pandemic diary
Before the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary from the years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Kentucky senator who posted on X claimed the diary showed that “what Fauci wrote in private and what he told the country are two different stories.”
Some of the records detail Fauci’s uncertainty during the early stages of the pandemic as scientists raced to understand the virus. Much of this material has previously appeared in Fauci’s memoirs and 2024 public interviews.
Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, dismissed Paul’s allegations as “false and shameful” and said all legal options were being considered.
The debate over the origins of COVID continues
The hearing is part of a multi-year effort by Republicans to investigate the origins of COVID-19 and whether US-funded research in China contributed to the outbreak.
Many scientists continue to believe the virus most likely emerged naturally through animal-to-human transmission linked to Wuhan, while some Republicans say it escaped from a lab.
Republican lawmakers have also repeatedly accused Fauci of lying to Congress about National Institutes of Health funding for coronavirus research involving the Chinese Institute of Virology in Wuhan and whether it constituted research benefit.
Fauci has consistently denied wrongdoing, saying NIH-funded research does not meet the definition of risky gain-of-function experiments capable of creating the virus responsible for a pandemic.
A House Republican subcommittee investigating the issue in 2024 found no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.
