Republican Sen. Rand Paul is recommending the top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., pursue an investigation and possible criminal charges against Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly lying under oath about COVID-19 origins.

Paul sent a letter to D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves Tuesday, demanding an investigation into Fauci for allegedly committing perjury during a congressional hearing in 2021 when he said that COVID did not come from a Chinese lab.

‘Dr. Fauci testified that ‘the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’ In a subsequent hearing, I warned Dr. Fauci of the criminal implications of lying to Congress and offered him an opportunity to recant his previous statements,’ writes Paul in the letter exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com.

‘In response, Dr. Fauci stated that he had ‘never lied before the Congress’ and ‘d[id] not retract that statement.’ Dr. Fauci’s testimony is inconsistent with facts that have since come to light,’ the senator continues.

The move comes just weeks after he submitted an ‘official criminal referral’ to the Department of Justice. An aide to Paul confirmed to DailyMail.com that the DOJ never responded.

Perjury is a federal offense that carries up to five years in prison.

‘Before Congress, Dr. Fauci denied funding gain-of-function research, to the press he claims to have a dispassionate view on the lab leak hypothesis, and in private he acknowledges gain-of-function research at WIV to his colleagues  His own colleagues have acknowledged Dr. Fauci’s inconsistency,’ continues Paul in the letter to Graves. 

‘A congressional hearing, however, is not the place for a public servant to play political games – especially when the health and well-being of American citizens is on the line.’

Paul previously wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland on July 14 and July 23 calling for an investigation into whether Fauci lied under oath over his knowledge of dangerous virus research that was taking place at the Wuhan lab, in China. 

In July 2021, Dr Fauci testified how his former department ‘has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’

Gain-of-function research refers to a type of scientific investigation conducted on  viruses, with the purpose of enhancing their transmissibility or virulence. 

The aim is to understand how viruses evolve and potentially predict and prepare for future disease outbreaks, but also raises concerns regarding biosafety and biosecurity.

Fauci was the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until the end of 2022 and was responsible for signing off on such research grants.

On July 13, 2023 the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released emails sent by Fauci about a conference call regarding the origins of COVID attended by Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and other researchers.

In one email, Fauci admits the scientists had concerns that Covid might have been genetically engineered and that these were worsened by the fact that gain-of-function research was taking place in Wuhan before the pandemic.

Emails dated February 1, 2020 show Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.’

While the emails show that Fauci was aware of gain-of-function going on in the lab, he never admitted that the NIH funded it.

But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined last month that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan University did in fact receive NIH funding, Paul said in his letter to AG Garland.

Paul drew attention to the February 2020 email in which Fauci details a call between British medical researcher Jeremy Farrar, who was director of the Wellcome Trust at the time. 

On the call, Fauci, along with Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and other ‘highly credible’ scientists shared concerns about the ‘fact upon viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.’

‘The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan,’ Fauci wrote in the un-redacted email..

‘This directly contradicts everything he said in committee hearing to me, denying absolutely that they funded any gain of function, and it’s absolutely a lie. That’s why I sent an official criminal referral to the DOJ,’ Paul wrote on Twitter.

In July, Paul told Fauci that lying to Congress was a federal crime and suggested he had lied about the COVID-19 gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

Fauci went on to insist he ‘never lied before Congress’ during previous testimony in May.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Fauci told Paul.

Paul, who studied at the Duke University School of Medicine said that a paper that credited the NIH saw the author take two bat coronavirus spike proteins to combine them creating a new virus, not naturally found in nature but would spread in humans, Paul said in a July congressional hearing.

‘Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans,’ he said.

‘They took animal viruses that only occur in animals, and they increased their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that’s not gain of function – it’s a dance, and you’re dancing around this because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic.’ 

Fauci said the paper that Paul has been referring to ‘was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function.’

But the newly released emails show Fauci referring to the research by scientists at Wuhan University as ‘gain-of-function experiments’.

FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that a leak from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan likely caused the COVID pandemic.

‘The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,’ Wray said in February.

In June, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan University received NIH funding, Paul also noted in his letter to Garland.

It said: ‘The report noted that NIH funded the WIV’s project ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence’ and included ‘genetic experiments to combine naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in hybridized coronavirus strains.’

‘GAO also found that NIH funded the Wuhan University’s collaboration with WIV on viral detection in the Yunnan province.’

As the former head of the NIH, Fauci presided over the allocation of taxpayer-funded grants for virus-enhancing research at the WIV years before the pandemic began.

A federal watchdog found the NIH ‘did not effectively monitor’ those experiments or check whether they involved pathogens with pandemic risk.

The Energy Department, FBI and several government committees believe the virus leaked from a lab, pointing to a number of coincidences and indirect evidence.

Dr Anthony Fauci has claimed he would have ‘no problem at all’ if the GOP were to go through his records for connections to the Covid lab leak theory.

The White House’s top pandemic adviser said he would be ‘happy to cooperate’ with any probe because he had ‘nothing to hide’.

Republicans are poised to take the House, which will grant them the power to force Dr Fauci to hand over all official emails, letters, and documents involving him in his capacity as a government worker concerning the pandemic.  

Several GOP lawmakers have signaled their intent to probe Dr Fauci’s involvement in the emergence of the pandemic.

Republican Senator Rand Paul said in February during a podcast interview: ‘If I have subpoena power, we’ll go after every one of [Fauci’s] records.’

The Democrats have kept the Senate in the midterm elections, but the Republicans are likely to take the House, meaning they can issue a subpoena to gain documents from Dr Fauci. 

Dr Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD), which previously funneled money into the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab at the center of the lab leak theory.

The lab was known to be experimenting with Covid’s closest relatives before the pandemic, and a US intelligence report told of several scientists who worked at the lab who fell ill with a mysterious flu-like sickness in November 2019.

Dr Fauci was a staunch critic of lab leak early in pandemic, denouncing it as a conspiracy theory.

But he has changed his tune in recent months as indirect evidence mounts and there is still no sign of animal host to cement the theory that the virus jumped from animals to humans.

Dr Fauci was quizzed about Paul’s warning on Saturday, The Hill reported.

He told reporters at the National Portrait Gallery gala in Washington: ‘I have nothing to hide at all, despite the accusations that I’m hiding something. 

‘I have nothing that I could not explain clearly to the country and justify.’

Asked if the Republicans not winning control of the Senate would be a ‘relief’, Dr Fauci said: ‘It doesn’t matter to me how the elections go.

‘If they have oversight hearings, I’m happy to cooperate. And if they don’t, that’s good, too. I could get on with other things.’

Dr Fauci, 81, announced in August that he would be stepping down from his role as Biden’s medical advisor in December.

He is set to rake in the highest-ever federal government retirement package in US history with his annual payment exceeding $350,000, according to a Forbes estimate.

The GOP is one seat away from taking control of the House, and Republicans there have also voiced their intentions to investigate Dr Fauci, even after he retires from government service.

In August, House Oversight and Reform Committee ranking member James Comer said in a statement: ‘Retirement can’t shield Dr Fauci from congressional oversight.’

In the same month, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted: ‘Dr Fauci lost the trust of the American people when his guidance unnecessarily kept schools closed and businesses shut while obscuring questions about his knowledge on the origins of Covid.

‘He owes the American people answers. A @HouseGOP majority will hold him accountable.’

In a leaked email from 2020, disgraced scientist Dr Peter Daszak appeared to express gratitude to Dr Fauci for downplaying the theory that the Covid-19 was created in a lab.

Some allege that Dr Fauci, whose agency in 2014 issued a $3.7million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, directly contributed to the pandemic spread by providing funds that were used to support gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

EcoHealth issued WIV nearly $600,000 in sub-awards before the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suspended the grant in July 2020 due its controversial work, Vanity Fair reported.

There are multiple theories surrounding the birth of the Covid pandemic, with natural-origin proponents arguing the virus jumped from a bat host to an intermediate species and then infected humans.

Others suspected a lab-related incident from the ‘inadvertent exposure of a scientist during field research to the accidental release of a natural or manipulated strain during laboratory work,’ the magazine claimed.

There is reportedly a ‘lack of concrete evidence’ to support either theory, prompting journalists, scientists and other sleuths to place scrutiny on Dr Daszak, EcoHealth, and WIV researchers for the work in the lab, as well as Dr Fauci for indirectly supplying U.S. government funds to the facility.’

In June 2021, biologist Jesse Bloom – whom colleagues allege wanted to ‘dig deep and discover the truth’ about how Covid evolved – confronted Dr Fauci by providing him with a preprint of a paper he was seeking to have peer reviewed and published.

Dr Bloom’s paper, which was obtained by Vanity Fair, detailed how early genomic sequences of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, had ‘somehow vanished without a trace’.

The biologist claims the genomic sequences were initially published in a Chinese paper but had since been deleted from NIH databases at the ‘request of researchers in Wuhan’.

Dr Bloom, alleging the deleted genomic sequences could be ‘key to tracking when the virus emerged and how it might have evolved,’ believed the disappearance of the sequences ‘raised the possibility’ that the Chinese government was trying to cover-up evidence about the early spread of Covid.

After receiving the preprint of Dr Bloom’s paper, Dr Fauci and his boss, NIH director Francis Collins, allegedly organized a Zoom meeting with the biologist to discuss his findings.

Four additional scientists, biologist Kristian Andersen and virologist Robert Garry, who were invited by the NIH, and biologists Sergei Pond and Rasmus Nielsen, who were invited by Bloom, attended the call.

After he presented his research, Dr Bloom claims Dr Andersen interjected, claiming his preprint was ‘deeply troubling.’

Andersen reportedly told the research that NIH policy entitled the Chinese scientists to delete their sequences from the database if they wanted to and that it was ‘unethical’ for Dr Bloom to analyze them further.

He also allegedly claimed ‘there was nothing unusual about the early genomic sequences in Wuhan,’ prompting a heated argument between Andersen and Nielsen.

‘Fauci then weighed in, objecting to the preprint’s description of Chinese scientists ‘surreptitiously’ deleting the sequences,’ Vanity Fair stated, claiming the immunologist said: ‘The word was loaded and the reason they’d asked for the deletions was unknown.’