Thursday, July 29, 2021

Republican senators raise questions after receiving unredacted Fauci email about Wuhan lab

Five Republican senators are questioning why the Department of Health and Human Services redacted a portion of an email between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak, the president of a research organization that worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on coronavirus studies before the pandemic.

The email in question gained widespread attention last month because Daszak, a key figure in research linked to the hypothesis that COVID-19 may have escaped from the Wuhan lab, thanked Fauci for downplaying the likelihood of a lab leak.

HHS officials this week sent the senators an unredacted version of the email, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, in response to one of two document requests the group had sent out weeks earlier - this one in pursuit of unredacted emails to and from Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Beyond the Fauci emails, which they requested on June 11, the senators sought records regarding coordination between teachers unions and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which they requested on May 19.

The one exception, according to the Republican lawmakers, was the email between Fauci and Daszak, which had been unredacted.

The senators said it appeared HHS "May have forgotten" to redact the portion of the email that was previously hidden under the law enforcement standard.

"It's been a very hard few months as these conspiracy theorists have gradually become politicized and hardened in their stance," Daszak wrote to Fauci and others in the unredacted version of the email.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/republicans-question-fauci-wuhan-lab-redacted 

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