Key Scientist in Covid Origin Controversy Misled Congress on Status of $8.9 Million NIH Grant

Kristian Andersen had a major grant proposal on Anthony Fauci’s desk while writing a paper exonerating an NIH-funded lab in Wuhan, documents show.

Key researchers who testified before the House subcommittee investigating the origin of Covid-19 virus last week misled Congress about the nature of a multimillion-dollar grant that was pending at the time they joined a critical conference with Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci in February 2020, according to National Institutes of Health documents.

The debate over the origin of the novel coronavirus has also evolved into a meta-debate over how the narrative supporting a natural emergence was initially crafted in the winter and spring of 2020. That inquiry focuses on a group of scientists who spoke confidentially with Collins and Fauci — then the heads of the National Institutes for Health and its sub-agency National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, respectively — in February and quickly began writing a paper that would set the tone for public understanding of the virus’s origin for a year or more.