The following is a lightly edited excerpt from Sen. Rand Paul’s new book “Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up.” It can be purchased here.

In late February of 2023, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Department of Energy now acknowledged that COVID likely leaked from a Wuhan lab.

David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist and one of the authors of regulatory reform for gain-of-function research, commented on the DOE’s new conclusions: “Kudos to those who are willing to set aside their preconceptions and objectively re-examine what we know and don’t know about Covid origins…. My plea is that we not accept an incomplete answer or give up because of political expediency.”

The Wall Street Journal story that revealed the DOE’s new conclusion on COVID’s origin reminded readers that “U.S. State Department cables written in 2018 and internal Chinese documents show that there were persistent concerns about China’s biosafety procedures, which have been cited by proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis.” 

The report also reminded skeptics that “the three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough [to be hospitalized] in November 2019,” months before the Chinese admitted any infections had occurred.

A day after the Wall Street Journal revealed the DOE’s new conclusion that COVID “likely” leaked from a Wuhan lab, FBI director Christopher Wray announced that the FBI also concluded that the virus leaked from the lab in Wuhan. For some unintelligible reason, the fact that the FBI had made this conclusion was classified until Wray made this announcement. Though it took nearly two years for the FBI to admit it, the announcement seemed to be an acknowledgment that it was now suddenly acceptable for Democrats to allow an investigation. 

Perhaps it was the Chinese balloon incursion or the fearmongering against all things China that allowed Wray to find his voice. Wray further commented that the Chinese government, at every turn, was attempting to “thwart and obfuscate” investigations into the origins of COVID.

Wray’s public confirmation of the FBI’s COVID origin’s conclusion pried loose a rare comment from Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on the subject: “The bottom line is we’ve got to get to the bottom of this…the Biden administration is committed to it. They have all kinds of people looking at it, and we’ll wait to see their results.”

What a joke! They have done nothing but stonewall, obfuscate, censor, and lie for nearly three years—but now suddenly we’re supposed to believe the Biden administration and Democrats are committed to getting to the bottom of this. 

The Truth Emerges 

After the Wall Street Journal broke the DOE story, Elon Musk tweeted to his 130 million followers that Fauci had indeed funded the Wuhan lab and, yes, they had been doing dangerous gain-of-function research. 

Musk’s tweet was in response to a montage video of my exchanges with Fauci where Fauci repeatedly and pointedly denied funding any “gain-of-function” research. 

The video that Musk linked to was titled “Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, lied to Congress about it, and now both the FBI & the Department of Energy have concluded that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan lab. Does that mean Dr. Anthony Fauci funded the development of COVID-19?” In response, Musk tweeted, “He did it through a pass-through organization (EcoHealth).” 

Musk was confirming that I was correct when I challenged Anthony Fauci in committee and Fauci had angrily and vehemently denied funding any gain-of-function research. When I asked Fauci again at a subsequent hearing, “Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement . . . that the NIH has never funded gain of function research in Wuhan?” Fauci, in a transparent attempt to change the subject, abruptly pivoted to the shrill accusation that I was somehow responsible for death threats against him. 

The Mainstream Media’s Partisan Interference and Denial 

And how did the media respond to these exchanges? How did they respond to Fauci’s dissembling? Consider the headlines from some popular media outlets when I dared to reveal that the NIH had indeed funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab. 

Vanity Fair’s headline in July of 2021 blared, “Anthony Fauci Once Again Forced to Basically Call Rand Paul a Sniveling Moron.” And yet two months later, this headline: “In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan.” The article starts with the obligatory smear: “You didn’t have to be a Democrat to be fed up with all the xenophobic finger-pointing and outright disinformation, coming mainly from the right, up to and including the claim that COVID-19 was a bioweapon cooked up in a lab.” 

The reader must continue until the bottom of the second paragraph, however, to read, “Based on new information disclosed by the National Institutes of Health, however, Paul might have been onto something.” 

Ya think? 

I don’t want an apology for the silly name-calling. I do want our media to stop acting as if everything is a partisan game and stop vilifying and lying about anyone they perceive to be on “the other side.”

Indeed, my entire questioning of Fauci’s funding of gain-of-function research was consistently framed as an “attack” on Dr. Fauci and not a quest for the truth.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.