Top US scientist Anthony Fauci said personal attacks by Senator Rand Paul distracted from the important work of tackling the pandemic, and made him a personal target for violence
Top US scientist Anthony Fauci said personal attacks by Senator Rand Paul distracted from the important work of tackling the pandemic, and made him a personal target for violence POOL via AFP / Greg Nash

Dr. Anthony Fauci is set to face House Republicans to answer questions concerning his response to the COVID-19 pandemic at a hearing on Monday. Aside from questions about his handling of the coronavirus, lawmakers also plan to scrutinize the origin of the virus.

Prior to the scheduled hearing, House Republicans have obtained information, which they claim leads to suspicion as to whether Fauci tried to keep a number of records from the public. They requested access to the cellphone records and personal email account of the former top infectious disease expert.

ABC News reported that Fauci previously stated that there was nothing that he was hiding and that he will be facing the House panel voluntarily. Fauci's appearance will be the first time that he will be testifying in public after leaving the government in 2022.

Republican members on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic have spent more than a year looking for evidence against Fauci, checking Slack messages, emails, and even research proposals. But even after more than 100 hours of past closed-door testimony, the panel was not able to find anything linking Fauci to the beginnings of the Covid-19 outbreak in China, New York Times reported.

However, the report says the panel had obtained emails that suggested that health officials working with Fauci had tried to evade public records laws at the medical research agency that Fauci ran for almost four decades.

At the hearing, Fauci will address questions concerning the agency's record-keeping practices. Fauci testifying will also be considered by Republicans on the committee as an apex of their long campaign against the scientists whom they viewed as having helped create the Covid pandemic.

Over the past year, there were already hearings on the subject, but there was no new evidence that pointed to the pandemic having emerged from a lab.

Democrats warned about the subcommittee's work as "an effort to weaponize concerns about a lab-related origin to fuel sentiment against our nation's scientists and public health officials for partisan gain."

Fauci has spent more than five decades in the government and has been advising presidents of both the Democrats and Republicans on infectious disease outbreaks. During the pandemic, he openly corrected false notions of former president Donald Trump about the coronavirus, and he actually appealed to the latter's critics.

Now, the Republicans on the Select Subcommittee cite the existence of alleged "new evidence," which warrants a perusal. The new evidence they are referring to is an email exchange between Fauci and his former senior adviser, Dr. David Morrens.