A top Republican is demanding that the Pentagon explain why it tried to hide taxpayer money sent to China for risky virus research.
A shocking new report from the Department of Defense has revealed that the agency has lost track of millions of taxpayer dollars sent to America’s adversary.
Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, is now demanding that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explain what exactly happened, according to correspondence obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.
Paul says he is “deeply concerned” by the Pentagon report that found the department failed to determine whether it sent money to China for pathogen research.
“It is unacceptable that the Department of Defense cannot account for the full amount of taxpayer funding it has spent on pandemic pathogen research in Chinese research labs,” Paul wrote to Austin.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has requested records from the Pentagon on the use of taxpayer money to fund pathogen research in China. Paul has been researching the origins of COVID for years and was shocked by the Pentagon’s negligence in tracking funding to foreign countries.
The Republican asked Secretary Austin to turn over files related to the Pentagon’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) that funded research into Chinese pathogens, similar to the research conducted on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the COVID pandemic.
The senator has been aggressively investigating the origins of COVID and former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci for his role in the pandemic and his policies.
He is now examining the Pentagon’s role in using “American taxpayer dollars for risky virus research in China and other foreign countries.”
“This lack of oversight represents a significant breach in our national security and undermines public confidence in the Department of Defense,” Paul said.
The senator previously revealed to DailyMail.com how Fauci still receives a 24/7 taxpayer-funded security detail from the US Marshals Service, despite not being a government employee.
“The only other person who would likely get his level of security would be the president, the vice president, maybe members of the Cabinet and some members of the House and Senate leadership,” Paul told DailyMail.com.
Virologists working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) when Fauci headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
DailyMail.com recently spotted Dr Anthony Fauci walking around his neighborhood with a taxpayer-funded security team.
At least six U.S. Marshals Service officers were seen along the walk with Fauci.
Paul has also been outspoken in accusing Fauci of hiding the origins of the virus.
The Republican has twice sent requests to the Justice Department to prosecute Fauci and told DailyMail.com that he “committed a crime by lying to Congress saying he didn’t fund research on gain and function. He keeps saying that.”
“It’s annoying that he’s still out there bragging about how great he is, when in fact his philosophical view that gain-of-function research is worth the risk is something that I think history should remember, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that history remembers that he was philosophically in favour of the research that I think allowed millions of people to die from this lab leak,” Paul told DailyMail.com.
Last month, the Kentuckian grilled several prominent physicians during a Senate hearing on the origins of COVID and the definition of gain-of-function research.
The hearing became heated as lawmakers and witnesses argued over the benefits that could arise from research that improves viruses to make them more effective.
And Paul said that if Republicans win control of the Senate in November and he gets power over the committee, his first action will be to subpoena those records.
“The most important information is the NIH’s deliberation on what is and what is not gain of function,” he told DailyMail.com. “They won’t give us the information.”
Fauci signs autographs outside ABC studios in New York with a member of his team of U.S. Marshals behind him.
Those documents will actually reveal whether Fauci lied to Congress about whether he was overseeing the dangerous research method, something he previously denied doing before the Senate, Paul said.
Still, the damage to the reputation of U.S. public health officials has already been done, he added.
“We have public health officials who seem to be more salesmen for Big Pharma than objective scientists, and that remains a problem,” Paul told DailyMail.com.
“This has generated a lot of distrust, much more distrust than ever about what the Government tells us,” he said.
