Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., accused "big tech" of censoring posts about the coronavirus originating from a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
In a Wednesday night tweet, Scalise wrote: "Big Tech was censoring posts about the Wuhan lab leak. The media was calling people who talked about the Wuhan lab leak conspiracy theorists. All while (Anthony) Fauci himself was emailing about COVID-19 possibly leaking from the Wuhan lab. Let that sink in."
And he added in a Thursday tweet: "We need to know what Fauci knew and when he knew it. These emails are just the tip of the iceberg. Fauci must testify. The fact that Democrats are STILL refusing to hold hearings on this tells you everything you need to know."
Scalise did not offer specifics on which "big tech" companies he was referring to in his initial tweet.
Meanwhile, Fauci insisted Thursday that he still feels that the coronavirus pandemic began with a virus, but even if it began with a leak from the Wuhan institute, he doesn't think the release was intentional.
"The idea, I think, is quite far-fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves as well as other people," Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday on CNN’s "New Day." "I think that's a bit far out."
Fauci's comments came in response to revelations surfacing after a trove of his emails was made public this week.
The doctor, who is President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser on COVID-19, insisted that even while some of the emails indicated early last year that he was aware that some of the coronavirus' features pointed toward its being engineered, he still leans toward the theory that it was transmitted from an animal.
"We're all in favor of a fair, open investigation to see if we can actually find out the origin, because we want to make sure this doesn't happen again," said Fauci, adding that he does not know if the possibility of a lab leak sounds more plausible now than it did a year ago.
The news that scientists from the Wuhan lab were ill in November 2019, before the news of the virus broke, has stimulated more interest, said Fauci, but the evidence still remains "very sparse" that the virus was engineered.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.