Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, June 3, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
Congress on Monday held yet another Covid hearing with Anthony Fauci on the stand.
Why?
Since early 2020, millions of Americans made life-changing, and in many cases life-ending, decisions based on Fauci's advice. He has time after time been caught in lies before Congress.
And he has yet to face any consequences.
As Human Events editor Jack Posobiec put it: "Fauci got away with it. Today is meaningless. He's gloating."
He's gloating with the most lucrative retirement package a federal employee has ever received.
So Fauci went before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday and, of course, denied any and all wrongdoing.
He was scolded by Republicans. The most forceful scolding came from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
“Children in school were put in plastic bubbles because of your science — your repulsive, evil science. And let’s go back to your very own email. … This is your own email where you said the typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective in keeping out virus. ‘I do not recommend that you wear a mask.’ This is your email. This is your own words. But yet children — children all over America were forced to wear masks. Healthy children, forced to wear masks, muzzled in their schools, and then they were forced to learn from home because of your so-called science and your medical suggestions,” she said, noting that, all the while, Fauci and his “cronies get paid from Big Pharma,” Greene said.
“You know that what this committee should be doing? We should be recommending you to be prosecuted. We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison, Dr. Fauci,” she added.
Americans know after years of Congress scolding Fauci that none of that is really likely to happen.
So what has actually been revealed by this committee?
On May 31, the committee released the transcript of Fauci's 14-hour closed door testimony in which the former U.S. Covid czar admitted:
• The “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation forced on Americans by federal health officials was arbitrary and not based on science. Fauci testified that this guidance “sort of just appeared.”
• Fauci testified that he did not recall any supporting evidence for masking children. Mask-wearing has been associated with severe learning loss and speech development issues in America’s children.
• Fauci acknowledged that the lab leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory. This comes roughly four years after he prompted the publication of “Proximal Origin” — a paper which attempted to vilify and disprove the lab leak hypothesis.
• Fauci testified that he signed off on every foreign and domestic NIAID grant without reviewing the proposals. He was also unable to confirm if NIAID has ANY mechanisms to conduct oversight of the foreign labs they fund.
Fauci was expected to be questioned by members of the subcommittee about secret royalty payments from Big Pharma and why agency officials are defying the Freedom of Information Act's (FOIA’s) requirement that all federal documents that aren’t covered by exemptions must be made available to the public on request.
Dr. David Morens, formerly one of Fauci’s closest advisers at NIH, testified before the panel about how he was advised by officials in the NIH FOIA office on how to avoid disclosure of emails, text messages, and other communications considered potentially embarrassing.
The secret royalty payments from drug companies to scientists, researchers, executives, and other employees of the National Institutes for Health (NIH) increased following the breakout of Covid in 2021, according to a new report from a nonprofit government watchdog.
“In 2022 and 2023, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies paid the [NIH] a sum of $710,381,160 in third-party royalties. These were payments healthcare companies made to NIH, its leadership, and scientists to license medical inventions created in federal, taxpayer-funded labs,” OpenTheBooks.com reports in an analysis being made public on Monday.
The Epoch Times obtained a copy of the full report.
“The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), led until recently by Dr. Anthony Fauci, collected nearly all of it: $690,218,610 of the $710 million,” the report said.
The $710 million total for 2022–2023 is double the $325 million OpentheBooks.com previously reported was paid to NIH employees between 2009 and 2021. The nonprofit watchdog has had to take NIH to federal court twice for failing to provide requested data not covered by any of the nine exemptions to FOIA.
Among the recipients of royalties was NIAID’s Dr. John Mascola, who was selected to manage Operation Warp Speed, the government’s crash program to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Mascola, who managed NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center since 2013, had received royalty payments from Moderna since 2018. He selected the company as one of the government’s partners in Operation Warp Speed.
Moderna received more than $10 billion from the government between 2020 and 2022 for its work developing a vaccine and delivering millions of doses to health care agencies. In 2013 to 2017, the government paid Moderna $60 million for development work on the mRNA technology that’s the basis of the coronavirus vaccine.
OpentheBooks.com obtained the data on which its report is based from NIH, after the agency resisted providing the information in response to the group’s second FOIA request, which was filed in conjunction with Judicial Watch, a nonprofit legal firm that specializes in FOIA litigation.
The NIH was required to provide the names of government employees receiving the royalty payments, the amounts paid, and when they were paid. However, OpenTheBooks.com claims in its report that the government is still refusing to disclose the names of NIH employees in connection with 4,851 royalty payments between 2009 and 2021.
In addition, nearly 1,000 names of NIH employees getting royalty payments made in 2022 and 2023 are being withheld. The government cites the FOIA’s exemption, which is meant to protect private firms’ commercial trade secrets.
“Why the names of NIH scientists are considered ‘confidential’ or ’trade secrets’ is unexplained, and something we are fighting in our ongoing FOIA litigation ... We have no idea who these scientists are, what they are in charge of, or why their names are redacted. All of this raises significant questions about conflicts-of-interest within the royalty structure at the NIH for obvious reasons,” the report said.
