Former US President Donald Trump has demanded that China pay a ten-trillion-dollar fine for its part in the coronavirus epidemic, adding to mounting pressure on US health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci to clarify just how much he knew about studies done at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Trump openly feuded with Dr. Anthony Fauci throughout 2020, and now claims victory despite mounting concerns about how much his then-adviser Fauci knew about work being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Conspiracy theories claim that the new coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory rather than crossing the species barrier spontaneously.
After two news organizations got his emails through a Freedom of Information request, Fauci’s participation in the early days of the crisis is being reexamined.
Republicans believe that the conversations prove Fauci knew the Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing studies with genetically altered coronaviruses, which is at the crux of the lab leak scenario for the origins of the COVID-19 issue.
They also demonstrate that he was informed about the risk of a lab leak at a time when he was publicly maintaining that the pandemic had arisen spontaneously by moving from an animal host to a human host.
‘Now everyone, even the so-called “enemy,” are beginning to say that President Trump was right about the China Virus coming from the Wuhan Lab,’ Trump said.
‘The correspondence between Dr. Fauci and China speaks too loudly for anyone to ignore.
‘China should pay ten trillion Dollars to America, and the world, for the death and destruction they have caused.’
Trump demanded to find out how much Fauci really knew about the Wuhan lab.
‘There are a lot of questions that must be answered by Dr. Fauci,’ he said. ‘The funding of Wuhan by the U.S. was foolishly started by the Obama administration in 2014 but ended under the Trump administration.
‘When I heard about it, I said “no way.”’What did Dr. Fauci know about “gain of function” research, and when did he know it?’ Fauci says his emails obtained by Buzzfeed News and the Washington Post have been taken out of context. ‘I have always said, and will say today to you … that I still believe the most likely origin is from an animal species to a human, but I keep an absolutely open mind that if there may be other origins of that, there may be another reason, it could have been a lab leak,’ he told CNN.