House pandemic panel subpoenas author of COVID-19 origins paper ‘prompted by’ Fauci
Gabrielle M. Etzel
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The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic issued its first subpoena, demanding the private communications of Dr. Kristian Andersen regarding the drafting and publication of a paper on the origins of the coronavirus that was cited by top officials and scientists in arguing against the hypothesis that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
“We are following the breadcrumbs of a COVID-19 cover-up straight to the source,” Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) said. “Dr. Kristian Andersen played a pivotal role in potentially suppressing the lab leak hypothesis, and Americans deserve to know why this happened, who was involved, and how we can prevent the intentional suppression of scientific discourse during a future pandemic.”
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Andersen, an immunology professor at Scripps Research, published an article titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” with four other authors in Nature Medicine in March 2020 that discredited the lab-leak theory on the origins of the virus.
Andersen voluntarily testified before the subcommittee on June 16, during which he indicated that the primary mechanism for communication on the paper was via the instant messaging platform Slack. He also said in his testimony that his co-authors would not consent to communicating with the subcommittee voluntarily.
A copy of the subpoena obtained by the Washington Examiner reveals that Andersen will be required to testify before the entire subcommittee, as well as present all Slack communications from Jan. 1, 2020, to June 23, 2023, regarding the “drafting, publication, and critical reception” of the paper published in Nature Medicine.
The subcommittee says that Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a top COVID-19 adviser to President Donald Trump, promoted the writing and publication of the paper and that the authors had significant conflicts of interest in promoting the zoonotic origins of COVID-19. The committee previously produced an email in which Andersen said that the paper was “prompted by” Fauci.
This subpoena comes on the heels of President Joe Biden missing the deadline passed on a bipartisan basis in March to declassify intelligence documents relating to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its connections to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Documents from the summer of 2020 that were leaked from the State Department this month indicate the WIV had strong connections with the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese Academy of Science, and several military intelligence apparatuses for the Chinese government.
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“Fully investigating the internal messages between the co-authors and contributors is a crucial step to inform future legislation and hold guilty parties accountable,” Wenstrup said.
Andersen must present the requested documentation by noon on June 30.