Just In: ‘Dr. Fauci’s Role in the Coverup was Intentional;’ CIA Whistleblower Testifies At Rand Paul’s Hearing on Government’s Long-Running Covid Concealment
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) amplified his efforts today to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for “lying to Congress” about gain-of-function research, with a crucial hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In an X post from May 12, Fox News Congressional correspondent Bill Melugin stated that Paul informed him “the COVID-19 whistleblower who will testify publicly [and] in person before his committee tomorrow morning is an active CIA employee.”
Although Melugin was not given a name, today’s hearing identified James Erdman III as the whistleblower. Erdman serves as a CIA Senior Operations Officer and a Co-Founder of Feds For Freedom. Notably, the organization’s mission revolves around “holding our government accountable.”
This morning, Paul’s Senate hearing aimed to accomplish precisely that, as stated in a press release from Feds For Freedom, by “exposing the CIA’s deliberate suppression of the COVID-19 lab leak origin and the ongoing weaponization of the intelligence community against the American public.”
At 10 AM, Paul commenced the Senate hearing by stating, “For years, Americans were told to trust the experts, trust the agencies, trust the intelligence community, and trust the officials who assured us that they were following the science. But the evidence before the committee tells a very different story.”
He outlined a system in which a select group of officials, scientists, grant recipients, and intelligence advisors shifted between different agencies, meetings, and briefings. They assessed one another’s work, swayed each other’s conclusions, and subsequently presented these results to Congress and the public as though they had been developed independently.
“Only it was not independent; it was a circle, Paul explained. Essentially, he explained that the intelligence community compensates researchers to analyze studies and produce reports. He mentioned that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides funding for their grants, the CIA seeks their expertise and grants them access to classified data, and the National Academies are responsible for publishing their findings. Policy makers then cite the result as a consensus, and “at the center of the government side of this circle was Dr. Anthony Fauci.”
“For years,” he said, “Dr. Fauci was not merely a public health official speaking from the NIH. He had a long-standing relationship with the National Security and Intelligence apparatus on biological threats, dangerous pathogens, classified life sciences researches, pandemic preparedness, and COVID origins.”
Repeatedly, Paul said, documents reveal Fauci’s involvement in national security discussions that extended well beyond typical public health communication. During the COVID crisis, intelligence officials arranged for Dr. Fauci to review highly classified intelligence assessments that were restricted from being shared outside the White House compound.
“But how can Anthony Fauci objectively comment on a discussion of COVID origins when he approved the very funding that may have caused the pandemic virus?” Paul asked. “From the outset of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci shaped the conclusions. Dozens of times, he referred to the idea that the pandemic originating in the lab was a conspiracy.”
Paul said that Fauci held “the now infamous” call on February 1, 2020. During that call, some scientists privately expressed serious doubts about a laboratory origin.
Concurrently, Fauci collaborated with the National Academies on messaging regarding coronavirus origins. Paul said these individuals were not independent experts reaching a consensus; they were part of the same system designed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion.
Paul asserted that “the question is not whether the government may consult experts. The question is whether those experts were independent, whether conflicts were disclosed, whether dissenting views were preserved, whether the lab leak possibility was fairly evaluated, and whether Congress and the American people received the truth or a curated result.”
“When Congress asked these questions,” he said, “the government officials lied to our face. They classified the documents. They suppressed the information. They changed the definitions.” He also observed that, in 2023, there was a desire for Congress to be informed. During that year, John Ratcliffe, the former Director of National Intelligence, gave testimony before Congress, issuing a strong warning that a lab leak was the only explanation that had credible support from “intelligence, science, and common sense.” According to his testimony, CIA scientific analysts determined on several occasions between 2021 and 2023 that a laboratory leak was the most probable source of COVID-19.
After pledging to tell the truth to the committee, Erdman stated that he was in charge of the National Intelligence Director’s Initiatives Group, known as the DIG, from March 2025 until April 2026. “I was responsible for leading the DIG’s investigation into COVID origins, anomalous health incidents, and unidentified anomalous phenomena,” he shared.
According to him, “Intelligence community (IC) leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that the COVID pandemic originated as a result of a lab incident.” Erdman admitted, “Motives are difficult to define given the scope of the DIG’s review,” but added, “Intentional or not, the IC’s actions resulted in a cover-up, wasted resources, and a failure to properly inform policymakers.”
He argued, “Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for emergency use authorization mRNA products being mandated by the former administration.”
“Dr. Fauci’s role in the coverup was intentional,” Erdman disclosed. “Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists.”
🚨 JUST NOW: CIA whistleblower confirms under oath that Dr. Anthony Fauci “INJECTED” himself into the intelligence community when they were about to confirm that COVID came from the Wuhan Lab
Then it “changed.” Imagine that.
“He injected himself into the IC.”
“As of August… pic.twitter.com/jXU1MHB6uh
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 13, 2026
This encompassed several authors of the paper, The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2, along with other public health experts who have been associated with him for over twenty years.
Erdman went on to say that some of the scientists belonged to the Biological Sciences Experts Group, commonly known as BSEG—an office within the Director National Intelligence Advisory Body, where members frequently obtain significant funding from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and various public health organizations.
“The BSEG scientists influenced national laboratory WMD research, policy decisions, finished analysis, and other intelligence matters, creating misaligned incentives and conflicts of interest, as well as counterintelligence issues,” he disclosed.
Since 2006, the BSEG has provided part-time consulting on biodefense matters for the Intelligence Community, while also engaging in government-funded research, holding academic positions, working in public health institutions, and serving as members of the National Academy of Sciences.
“They received funding from NIAID And other agencies for vaccine research, USAID’s PREDICT project, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program,” Erdman shared. “It even worked with Chinese scientists on coronavirus and other pathogen studies pursuing vaccines.”
For more than 20 years, there was no comprehensive oversight to monitor how this network of relationships affected research, policy, and public health.
“In fact,” Erdman revealed, “several of the BSEG scientists helped Dr. Fauci rewrite definitions of gain-of-function in 2015 to lift a funding pause on dangerous research.
Additionally, some were involved in the organization of Event 201 in 2019, a 3.5-hour tabletop exercise focused on pandemics, which was hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Erdman described the event as “curiously similar to the events that played out during the COVID-19 pandemic.” He also noted, “It was attended by Dr. Fauci and individuals with IC ties like former DNI Director Avril Haines.”
According to the CIA Operations Officer, Fauci’s impact on the intelligence community’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, along with the intentional and unintentional involvement of certain BSEG scientists and intelligence personnel in the cover-up, highlights why this matter is of significant concern.
According to the CIA Operations Officer, Fauci’s impact on the intelligence community’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, along with the intentional and unintentional involvement of certain BSEG scientists and intelligence personnel in the cover-up, highlights why this matter is of significant concern.
“Failure to address the United States government’s inability to differentiate between public health and biodefense and the oversight-resistant ecosystem of life science actors has been fertile ground for increasingly dangerous continental United States gain-of-function research, as well as similar research conducted in US government-supported labs abroad,” Erdman continued.
The changes in public health and biodefense roles and responsibilities following 9/11 have muddied the distinctions among scientists, the military, and the intelligence community. This has led to “a deliberately opaque and excessively redundant biodefense research policy and financial infrastructure seemingly intended to escalate bureaucratic bloat.” And according to his testimony, “This is a national security crisis caused by the inability to provide real oversight.”
And according to a press release by Feds For Freedom, “Even after the transition to the Trump administration, zero substantive reforms have been implemented to dismantle the entrenched cycle of reckless gain-of-function research, chronic lack of government oversight, rampant cover-ups, blatant unconstitutional policies, and the glaring absence of accountability for officials who trampled on Americans’ constitutional rights.”
“Even more alarming,” the press release stated that “numerous federal agencies continue to aggressively defend and perpetuate Biden-era policies steeped in illegal discrimination, signaling the existence of a deep state that remains defiant and unreformed.”
“Even now, under President Trump’s leadership, this weaponization continues,” Feds For Freedom Executive Director Stephanie Weidle warned. “The damage to the American people will not stop until real oversight is imposed and those who broke the law are held accountable. America needs more heroes like Jim Erdman—principled public servants who honor their oath to the Constitution above loyalty to any institution.”
🔥🔥For Immediate Release🔥🔥
May 13, 2026Feds For Freedom Co-Founder James Erdman Testifies Before Senate Committee: Intelligence Community Remains Weaponized Against Americans, COVID Lab Leak Truth Suppressed
Washington, D.C. – Feds For Freedom co-founder and CIA operations…
— Feds For Freedom (@feds4freedomusa) May 13, 2026
