WASHINGTON (NEWSnet/AP) — Anthony Fauci, former chief White House medical adviser, is expected to testify before Congress in early 2024 as part of Republicans' yearslong investigation into the origin of COVID-19 and U.S. response to the disease.
Fauci, who served as the nation's top infectious disease expert before retiring in 2022, will sit for transcribed interviews in January and a public hearing at a later date.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic first requested a sit-down with Fauci in February 2023, but an agreement about timing and details of the interviews was reached with Fauci’s attorneys in early November, according to a letter sent Thursday from the committee.
"It is time for Dr. Fauci to confront the facts and address the numerous controversies that have arisen during and after the pandemic," said Rep. Brad Wenstrup, chairman of the committee.
House Republicans have investigated whether Fauci or other U.S. government officials took part in a cover-up about the origin of the virus. Fauci, who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has called the GOP criticism nonsense.
Wenstrup, also a longtime member of the House Intelligence Committee, has accused Fauci and U.S. intelligence of withholding key facts about its investigation into coronavirus. In 2022, Republicans on the committee issued a staff report arguing there are “indications” that the virus may have been developed as a bioweapon at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That would contradict a U.S. intelligence community assessment released in unclassified form in August 2021 that said analysts do not believe the virus was a bioweapon, although it may have leaked in a lab accident.
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