by WorldTribune Staff, June 21, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
Documents released by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard as she exits the position show that then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra played a central role in shutting down whistleblowers who were prepared to expose Anthony Fauci’s misleading statements to Congress about gain-of-function research.
Xavier Becerra
Becerra, who is currently the Democrat Party’s candidate for California governor, worked to save Fauci from public embarrassment and keep the Covid lab leak theory out of mainstream debate, the documents reveal.
“Gabbard’s release points to a deliberate effort to reroute and suppress a whistleblower complaint that could have dismantled the official narrative about Covid’s ‘natural origins,’ ” LifeZette noted. “It all happened as Americans were locked down, businesses were dying, and honest scientists were being smeared for questioning Washington’s preferred storyline.”
Related: DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s last day: Fauci funded ‘gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab’, June 19, 2026
In Senate exchanges with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul in May and July of 2021, Fauci angrily declared, “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute.”
Paul called him out months later, asking if he wanted to retract that statement. Fauci refused.
The documents released by Gabbard show the whistleblower was ready to testify that Fauci’s responses to Paul were false.
“But his testimony was killed on Becerra’s desk,” LifeZette noted. “That suppression allowed Fauci’s story to stand unchallenged, shielding the administration from accountability.”
The Becerra-led HHS “launched a watered-down ‘alternative investigation’ that accomplished little more than cutting off funding to EcoHealth Alliance and its president, Peter Daszak, the same group that had funneled U.S. taxpayer dollars to Wuhan,” LifeZette added. “The move looked impressive on paper, but it let every powerful player walk away untouched.”
The third batch of documents made public on June 18 by Gabbard includes a letter from DNI General Counsel Chris Fonzone.
The letter Fontone sent on Aug. 19, 2021, to then-DNI Avril Haines acknowledged the whistleblower was going to testify that Fauci lied to Sen. Paul at two Senate hearings claiming that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute.”
The intel officials sent the matter to Becerra instead of the HHS’s inspector general. Becerra’s office buried it.
Writing for PJ Media, Victoria Taft noted: “Becerra may want to add a new phalanx of lawyers to his stable of legal minds already trying to save him from being swallowed up by the scandal involving his chief of staff. That scandal, resulting in federal indictments of Sean McCluskie, Becerra’s chief of staff at both the offices California Attorney General and HHS secretary, allege he conspired with California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff and political adviser, Dana Williamson, to steal funds from Becerra’s dormant campaign fund to give McCluskie a raise when he moved to Washington, D.C. Neither Becerra nor Newsom have not been criminally implicated at this point.
“The documents show that Fauci prevailed over the IC to convince the nation’s spooks to go with his evolving story about the natural origins of COVID — to keep his program and friends free from deep scrutiny.
“Hope Becerra’s still got some leftover cash in that dormant campaign account to pay for the lawyers he’s probably going to need.”
Meanwhile, legacy media have no interest in another bombshell released by Gabbard’s office.
As WorldTribune.com reported on June 12, Gabbard’s office released what it said is new evidence of longstanding United States government funding of more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries.
“Until now, evidence regarding the full existence and funding of these laboratories had been knowingly withheld from the American people. The information surrounding the existence, history, locations and funding of these U.S. funded biolabs has been intentionally covered up by powerful people falsely, claiming that they do not exist and accusing anyone who says otherwise to be foreign assets and traitors to America,” ODNI said in a press release.
