Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul detailed on Fox News how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is refusing to disclose important discussions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paul appeared on “Hannity” to discuss Dr. Fauci’s hearing with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Lawmakers pointed out issues under Fauci’s leadership as the former chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden during the pandemic. During the show, Fox host Sean Hannity asked Paul about Dr. Fauci’s skepticism regarding the origins of COVID-19.

Hannity asked Paul “how soon” into the COVID-19 pandemic could Fauci have potentially known that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China.

“January 27, there’s emails starting at 6 o’clock. They’re going across the ocean to Jeremy Farrar in England and back. They go on until three in the morning. At three in the morning, Anthony Fauci sends an e-mail to the head of the safety committee. The head of the safety committee should have seen this research but never did, and he sends him an email saying, ‘Hey, nothing to see here. Here’s a paper that says, in all likelihood, this came from animals, not from a lab.’ Why’s he sending that to the head of the safety committee? Because the safety committee was never allowed to review this,” Paul said.

“For three years I’ve been asking the NIH for the deliberations. If this is not gain of function, I want to see the discussion between the scientists. Fauci says,’Oh, the scientists! Up and down, they all said it wasn’t gain of function.’ Let me see the deliberations,” Paul added. “I want to see the arguments for and against. They won’t reveal this. They are tighter-lipped than the CIA on this. The NI[H] has resisted, really, requests from Democrats and Republicans.”

During the hearing, Dr. Fauci stated that he remains open-minded about the origins of COVID-19, including the possibility that it may have come from a lab. However, he added that the data suggests that it is more likely to be a “natural occurrence from an animal reservoir.”

Paul criticized Fauci for dismissing Dr. David Morens, a colleague who served under Fauci for two decades. In a January testimony, Morens acknowledged that the idea of COVID-19 emerging from a laboratory had never crossed his mind, confessing that he hadn’t examined scientific data related to a possible lab leak or the notion of an engineered virus.

“The Democrat chair of my committee has cosigned this request. It’s over a year old, and my individual requests are three years old. They have resisted, they have obscured and according to Fauci’s assistant that he threw under the bus today — David Morens — according to him it was a targeted cover up and that they destroyed emails and evidence. But today the most shocking and surprising thing was Anthony Fauci threw David Morens, a 20 year assistant, under the bus and acted as if he hardly ever met him. ‘He wasn’t part of the inner circle. He never made decisions, had no access to my office,’ all completely the opposite of what David Morens says,” Paul told Hannity.

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