Sen. Rand Paul Demands U.S. Intelligence Records on Fauci, Baric and COVID Origins

Written by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. on November 5, 2025. Posted in Current News

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is under pressure to release communications between the U.S. intelligence Community, and virologist Ralph Baric, Ph.D., Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health officials.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is demanding that U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard turn over documents showing connections between the U.S. Intelligence Community and key virologists and public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, as part of his investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

“Over the course of the investigation, I have obtained information that leads me to believe the Intelligence Community is in possession of records critical to the Committee’s ongoing inquiry,” Paul wrote in an Oct. 30 letter asking Gabbard to release documents dating back to 2012.

Gabbard has until Nov. 13 to comply with Paul’s request.

In a series of posts on X last week, Paul, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, revealed documents showing that University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric, Ph.D., communicated with “members of the U.S. intelligence community … well before the outbreak of the global pandemic.”

The documents Paul published included interactions suggesting SARS-CoV-2 emerged due to a leak from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, even as the virologists involved in the communications publicly claimed the virus had a natural origin.

Baric previously came under scrutiny for his support of controversial gain-of-function research and for a risky research proposal he submitted with Zhengli Shi, Ph.D., a researcher at the Wuhan laboratory widely referred to as the “Bat Lady” for her coronavirus research involving bats.

Nicholas Wade, former science editor for The New York Times, told The Defender, “Paul’s demand that the intelligence agencies turn over all information about their dealings with Baric will be of great significance if successful, because it could help assess the degree of U.S. government complicity in the COVID catastrophe.”

Virologists privately discussed lab-leak theory but used taxpayer funds to refute it

According to Paul’s letter, in September 2015, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA contacted Baric to discuss a “possible project” relating to “[c]oronavirus evolution and possible human adaptation.”

A press release from Paul’s office last week said that less than two months later, Baric and Shi published the results of their “joint coronavirus experiments” in the journal Nature Medicine under the title “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence.”

The press release said taxpayer funds from the USAID PREDICT program and grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported the research. It also said that the scientific community widely recognizes the work as involving gain-of-function experiments.

In 2018, Baric and Shi collaborated to draft the DEFUSE proposal, which “sought funding for a project that included plans to insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus, strikingly similar to what would later emerge as SARS-CoV-2 that caused COVID-19.”

Although the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) rejected Baric and Shi’s proposal, “Two years later, in early 2020, COVID-19 spread from Wuhan, the same location named in the DEFUSE proposal.”

“As the virus began to circulate globally, the same circle of scientists who had proposed risky gain-of-function experiments were suddenly advising the U.S. government on how to respond,” the press release stated.

In 2015, Col. Daniel J. Wattendorf, then a program manager for DARPA, delivered a presentation at the 3rd International mRNA Health Conference in Germany on the development of mRNA vaccines that would “decrease the outbreak response timeline.” He discussed DNA- and RNA-based vaccine and gene transfer technology.

Wattendorf is now director of innovative technology solutions in the Global Health Division of the Gates Foundation.

In a recent X post, Paul referenced a January 2020 email in which an unidentified individual, called “the Sponsor,” asked Baric to give a presentation on the “current Coronavirus situation” at a “B Group” meeting the following week.

The B Group “appears to be a reference to the ODNI’s Biological Sciences Experts Group,” according to Paul’s letter.

On Jan. 29, 2020, Baric responded with an emailed copy of a PowerPoint presentation, which included a slide titled “Origins.”

The Free Beacon obtained a copy of the presentation from a whistleblower and published it today.

The presentation included a slide that “discussed the possibility of an accidental release” from the Wuhan lab — “a hypothesis that was later publicly dismissed, labeled a conspiracy theory, and vilified by Dr. Fauci and his inner circle,” the press release stated.

According to The Free Beacon, Baric delivered an almost identical presentation to the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus a month later — but without any content suggesting that COVID-19 could have leaked from the Wuhan lab.

Intelligence agencies ‘have continued to stonewall’ investigations into COVID origins

Paul’s letter asks Gabbard to release U.S. intelligence communications with Fauci, former NIH Director Francis Collins and former top Fauci aide David Morens, who is under congressional investigation for using his personal email to discuss topics such as COVID-19’s origins in an attempt to evade federal recordkeeping rules.

The letter also asks for communications involving Peter Daszak, Ph.D., former president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which received federal funding for gain-of-function research, and Jeremy Farrar and several other prominent virologists.

In early 2020, Fauci, Collins, Farrar, Daszak and several other virologists named in Paul’s letter collaborated to publish “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.”

The paper, which promoted the natural origin of COVID-19, was published in Nature Medicine in March 2020 and became one of the year’s most-cited scientific papers — even though some co-authors privately doubted that COVID-19 emerged naturally.

On Feb. 11, 2020, Fauci met with Baric, according to a copy of Fauci’s schedule. Farrar later became the WHO’s chief scientist and now serves as its assistant director-general for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and Control.

The Trump administration is currently investigating whether the authors and publishers of “Proximal Origin” allowed Fauci and others to influence the paper’s conclusions in exchange for federal funding.

In January, just before leaving office, former President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci, shielding him from federal prosecution for “any offense” related to his official duties, including his leadership of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease at the NIH. The pardon is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2014.

That date is key for Fauci and COVID-19, according to Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., a critic of gain-of-function research.

He said 2014 “is the start date of NIH grant AI110964 — the NIH grant that funded Wuhan research that caused COVID and that Fauci approved for continued funding in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, in violation of a moratorium [on gain-of-function research] in 2014-2017.”

Ebright added:

“Fauci knew the risks and knew that U.S.-government policies in effect in 2014-2019 prohibited him from taking the risks, but Fauci, placing his ego over the interests of 7.9 billion members of the global public, chose to take the risks and chose to violate the policies.”

In September, documents Paul released as part of his investigation into COVID-19’s origins showed that Fauci instructed colleagues in 2020 to delete emails related to COVID-19, potentially in violation of federal law. Paul has asked Fauci to testify before Congress by the end of this year.

Paul’s letter to Gabbard also requests all emails sent between January 2012 and last month by any ODNI employee that discuss the origins of COVID-19, Shi and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, DARPA and the DEFUSE Proposal, USAID’s PREDICT program, and domestic and foreign biolabs “that receive funding or support from the U.S. government.”

Paul also requested emails involving ODNI and the EcoHealth Alliance. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended all U.S. government funding for EcoHealth Alliance.

Ebright said:

“Starting as early as 2002, U.S. intelligence agencies sought to monitor China’s coronavirus bioweapons-agents research. Daszak and Baric, cooperative research funding flowing through them, and collaborative research involving them were part of this intelligence monitoring scheme.”

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense, said that during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, “The coronavirus spontaneously gained a function in the same city as a research institute conducting gain-of-function research on a coronavirus,” yet the public was “told very strongly not to question the origins.”

“Why not entertain every possibility of origins? Following the money directs you to EcoHealth Alliance and back to the American taxpayers,” Jablonowski said.

In April, the Trump administration launched a new version of the government’s official COVID-19 website, presenting evidence that COVID-19 emerged due to a leak at the Wuhan lab. The CIA, FBI, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Congress and several foreign intelligence agencies have endorsed this theory.

In May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting all gain-of-function research in the U.S. for 120 days and ending federal funding of such research in some countries.

According to Ebright, now that the 120 days have passed, “Federal funding for gain-of-function research of high-consequence viral pathogens continues.”

Wade suggested that federal investigations into COVID-19’s origins are being stymied. He said:

“When Trump returned to the White House it seemed he would throw open the government’s archives to shed all possible light on the origins of the COVID-19 virus and the high probability that it was concocted in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“It’s strange, therefore, that the intelligence agencies have continued to stonewall and that the University of North Carolina has managed to defy all Freedom of Information requests relating to the work of Baric, the leading U.S. researcher on coronaviruses.”

source  childrenshealthdefense.org

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