National Review
Dr. Anthony Fauci, January 2020: ‘Now We Know the Market Was Not the Source, It Was the Amplifier’
By Jim Geraghty
July 26, 2026 10:23 AM
Very few people seem to care much about the origin of the Covid pandemic anymore. But Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is an exception, and on Saturday, he dropped a bombshell.
According to Paul, “During his time as NIAID Director, and particularly during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci took meticulous notes about his work. He made note of conversations, decisions, and his thoughts about actions taken by politicians and other officials.”
On January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote:
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It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread. Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market. Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.
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If the wet market was not the source and was merely an amplifier, then the virus had to come from somewhere else. That “somewhere else” could have been the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the separate institution of the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control (which was also doing research on coronaviruses found in bats), or some other location. (Horseshoe bats are believed to be the type of bat that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, originated in. Their natural habitat is several hundred miles away. As of May 2021, Chinese authorities have “tested 50,000 animal specimens, including 1,100 bats in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located. But no luck: a matching virus still hasn’t been found.”)
Now, Fauci is not the be-all and end-all of science — despite his declaration, “I represent science.” But his public comments throughout 2020 emphasized the likelihood of a “natural origin” and rejected the notion that the virus could have leaked from a lab. While I can’t find an instance in which Fauci explicitly stated that SARS-CoV-2 came from a wet market, he certainly didn’t do anything to dispel that perception — at a time when he was doing many, many interviews and public appearances.
In a May 5, 2020, interview with National Geographic:
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“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” Fauci says. Based on the scientific evidence, he also doesn’t entertain an alternate theory — that someone found the coronavirus in the wild, brought it to a lab, and then it accidentally escaped.
block quote end
As usual, these comments blurred the line between engineered or “manipulated’ in a lab and escaped from a lab. “Gain of function” research accelerates the natural process of evolution, so some scientists may well argue it doesn’t represent “manipulation,” even though the process can make the virus more contagious and virulent. Also recall that Fauci insisted, under oath, that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” when NIH documents indicated otherwise. Fauci later disputed what the term “gain-of-function research” meant and contended that what the Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing didn’t meet his definition of the term.
Now we know that from very early on, Fauci concluded that he and other public health officials knew — not believed, knew — that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was not the source of the virus.
Do you have any idea how much time I spent, starting on April 3, 2020 and throughout the year, and into the next, tracking down everything that could possibly be learned about Chinese wet markets and the animals that were sold there and the likelihood that those animals could be the source of a virus that spread like wildfire through human beings?
Over and over again in my writing, I pointed to the assessment of Georgetown University professor and pandemic specialist Daniel Lucey, who concluded by looking at the early cases that the focus on the Huanan Seafood Market as the pandemic origin point is simply misplaced. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace.” There were simply too many early cases of patients who had no tie to the market. Enthusiasts for the wet market theory just hand-waved it away, contending that those patients just had to have some tie to the market, or someone who had been there, that just hadn’t been found by Chinese epidemiologists.
As late as 2023, writers in publications like The Atlantic were arguing that infected animals at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market were the most likely source of the pandemic. Last year, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, argued that the virus most likely came to Wuhan from animal traders. “Because of the large distances and short timing, the most plausible route of transmission was through the wildlife trade via intermediary hosts,” namely “palm civets and raccoon dogs.”
For the entirety of 2020 and long after, the “it started in a wet market” view was the respectable one. Believing that somebody at the Wuhan Institute of Virology hadn’t been careful one day and had gotten accidentally infected with a virus that had gained a function or two during its time in the lab made you a crazy conspiracy theorist. In fact, the lab leak theory was evidence of your racism.
And now — in July 2026! — we learn that Fauci himself had dismissed the wet market as a potential source at the end of January 2020.
Dr. Fauci will testify before Senator Paul and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday.
Update 07/30:
New York Post
Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly pleads the Fifth and his lawyer is thrown out in Senate hearing bombshell
By Josh Christenson and Ryan King
Published July 29, 2026
Updated July 29, 2026, 9:55 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci took the Fifth Amendment at the start of a Wednesday appearance before a Senate committee, accusing Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) of trying to put him “behind bars” over his handing of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci, 85, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), stunned the panel and millions of watching Americans when he claimed during his opening statement that “given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.'”
“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” Fauci added. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”
Fauci went on to give the same response dozens of times as senators proceeded with their planned questions: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
Paul, who had planned to press Fauci about federal funding of risky so-called “gain of function” research in China, appeared flustered and agitated by the doctor’s move — which came despite Fauci receiving a full pardon from then-President Joe Biden in January 2025.
“The chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer them, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege despite the existence of the pardon,” Paul said at the conclusion of his questioning.
“The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so. It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress.
“There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”
The Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman had also asked Fauci if he had refused Biden’s pardon or if he had “any reason to believe this full and unconditional pardon, this grant of immunity would somehow require you to plead the Fifth Amendment.”
In his opening remarks, Paul had called attention to Fauci’s defense of gain of function research funded by the NIAID and the alleged concealment or destruction of federal records related to the pandemic.
An adviser to Fauci, David Morens, was indicted by federal prosecutors in May for concealing and destroying federal records.
“It is a crime to destroy federal records,” Paul reminded the witness. “Yet our investigation reveals your assistant diligently reported that she deleted tons of emails in 2024. You testified that you did not delete federal records. Who’s telling the truth? You or your assistant?”
“The committee has obtained repeated instructions, from you, telling federal officials to delete communications,” Paul added. “On February 2nd, 2020, one day after [a conference call on COVID-19 origins], you told [then-NIH Director Dr.] Francis Collins, ‘Please delete this email after you read it.’”
During the early stages of the hearing, Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, sat by him. After Paul began threatening repercussions against the former COVID-19 czar, Schertler began speaking out in protest, setting off the Kentucky senator in an explosive exchange.
“You will respect these proceedings. You were told not to sit at the [witness] table. You insist on sitting at the table, and we told you you would not be recognized. You are not invited here for testimony, sir. You are being disruptive,” Paul shot back.
After Schertler ignored Paul’s admonition not to speak again, the senator ordered security to escort him out, to applause from the audience.
“You are not recognized, sir. Security, please remove him from the room,” Paul said. “Let the record state that Dr. Fauci will still have the advice of the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today.”
Schertler later said in a statement that his ejection was “outrageous and demonstrates the completely biased and baseless nature of this proceeding.”
AH: Reminds me of the gangsters in "Casino."
Update 08/01: And here's the Babylon Bee with some spot on satire:
Babylon Bee
Fauci Appears On 'Jeopardy!', Pleads The Fifth To Every Question
Entertainment
Jul 31, 2026 · BabylonBee.com
CULVER CITY, CA — Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on the beloved trivia game show Jeopardy! last night, only to invoke the Fifth Amendment in response to every clue.
Host Ken Jennings welcomed Fauci to the stage with enthusiastic applause before reading the first category, "Historic Pandemics."
"Wow! Lucky break for Dr. Fauci to have that category on the board, wouldn't you say?" asked Jennings.
"On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution," Fauci replied.
"Erm. Well, okay," said Jennings. "First clue, for $200. Killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide, this disease is named after a country, even though that country wasn't where the disease originated. Yes, Dr. Fauci?"
"On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution," said Fauci.
"Um... okay?" responded Jennings. "The correct response was 'What is the Spanish influenza?' Let's just move on to the next clue. For $600, this lentivirus integrates its genetic material into the DNA of host immune cells using the enzyme integrase, allowing it to establish lifelong infection. Buzzing in once again, it's Dr. Fauci. Yes?"
"On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution," responded Fauci.
"Dr. Fauci, you know this is a game show, right?" said Jennings. "You don't have to buzz in if you don't want to. You do know you're not under oath right now?"
"On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution," responded Fauci.
At publishing time, though it had been confirmed that Fauci had somehow managed to give the correct response for "Final Jeopardy," given the clue "The Supreme Court's decision in Miranda v. Arizona is rooted primarily in the Self-Incrimination Clause of this Constitutional amendment," Fauci steadfastly refused to tell Jennings how much he had wagered, once again pleading the Fifth.
