Members of the House Oversight Committee and Energy and Commerce panel grilled President Biden’s former chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci over myriad topics in the interviews this week.
Lawmakers questioned Fauci over the origins of COVID-19, gain-of-function research and his current views on how the pandemic was handled.
Members in both parties had very different views on what went down during the interview. Republicans indicated Fauci wasn’t forthcoming, pointing to the number of times he said he did not recall certain things.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, told reporters Fauci responded that he did not recall “maybe over 100” times on the first day.
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In a statement following the first day of questioning, Wenstrup said it was “concerning that the face of our nation’s response to the world’s worst public health crisis ‘does not recall’ key details about COVID-19 origins and pandemic-era policies.”
Democrats, in turn, blasted Republicans for focusing on the early parts of the pandemic instead of looking toward the future.
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“The Republicans have remained focused on January and February of 2020, rather than using this incredible opportunity to talk to a longtime public servant, health expert — who has served this country with distinction for decades — to get to the lessons learned from COVID-19 and how we protect Americans and protect our communities. And it’s a real missed opportunity,” Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) said on the second day of the interview.
Both sides acknowledged that Fauci had provided a great deal of clarification on several issues they brought up over the course of the interview, though the biggest clash was about gain-of-function research.
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Wenstrup said Fauci was “playing semantics” with the definition to repeatedly deny that the U.S. was funding the controversial research in China.
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But Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) accused Republicans of distorting what Fauci told lawmakers following the first day of interview, saying social media posts made by the GOP-controlled select subcommittee afterward were “disinformation.”
“They did not reflect the discussion that — I was feeling at the end of the day when I left here that it had been a respectful discussion and we had had good conversations,” she said.
