Republican senators grill Fauci on COVID origins

Senate Republicans grilled the nation's top infectious disease specialist Wednesday over his positions on the origin of the COVID-19 virus and previous U.S. government funding of research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The aggressive questioning of Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing came as President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory.

After months of minimizing that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is joining worldwide pressure for China to be more open about the outbreak, aiming to head off GOP complaints the president has not been tough enough as well as to use the opportunity to press China on alleged obstruction.

Many Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory accident rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal in Wuhan, China.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio pushed that idea at the hearing Wednesday, saying "China has a history of lab accidents."

"This outbreak happened in a city that happened to be the home, coincidentally, of a lab which we know is involved in extensive research and what they do is they take this naturally occurring virus and they manipulate it and they change it to make it infectious to humans," Rubio said.  Then asked Fauci, "Why did you dismiss the lab leak theory as as credible?"

Fauci insisted he never dismissed the theory, but said that he and most others in the scientific community believe that there is "a high likelihood that this is a natural occurrence from the environment of an animal reservoir that we have not yet identified."

"I still maintain that," Fauci said. But he continued that he's in favor of further investigation "because no one knows, including me 100 percent, what the origin is."

Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy aggressively questioned Fauci about former National Institites of Health funding of research being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Kennedy asked Fauci if he believes the World Health Organization, tasked with investigating the coronavirus origins, is a fair and independent body.

"Can we agree that if you took President Xi Jinping, and turned him upside down and shook him, the World Health Organization would fall out of his pocket?" he asked.