Yesterday the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held a hearing on the very controversial and now utterly discredited paper “Proximal Origin of SARS-Cov-2.”

I wrote about the hearing earlier today, and in order to understand this post you should read that one.

To recap: Anthony Fauci pretty much coerced Kristian Anderson and his coauthors to write a paper discrediting the lab leak theory of COVID-19–a theory they believed was “highly likely” true–and get it published in Nature Medicine. Fauci would ensure the latter if they did the former.  Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins of the CDC were both intensely focused on discrediting the lab leak theory for their own reasons, presumably primarily because they funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology from which it likely leaked, and quite possibly funded its development through gain-of-function research.

Anderson did so, and the paper was published. Fauci, the CDC, and the news media then relentlessly pushed the paper as proof that the virus did not originate in the Wuhan lab. It was a propaganda campaign based on a series of lies.

As I discussed earlier today, the Republicans have the goods to prove that all these people are liars. They have the contemporaneous correspondence which shows that the scientists were saying one thing in private–that the lab leak looks likely, and that the virus may be engineered–and another thing in public, that the virus was of natural origin.

At the hearings, the scientists stuck to their story that all this is a big nothing and that Republicans are attacking “science” and spreading a conspiracy theory.

Now, here’s the interesting part: the Republicans never brought out the actual evidence they have that proves the scientists were lying and continue to lie.

Why not? Why the hell not?

We know the Republicans have the evidence because it leaked in a document that was improperly formatted to retain redactions. The electronic version, as opposed to the printed version, shows the complete correspondence. When you put the redactions back in the evidence is crystal clear: the scientists were coerced into lying, and their claims that this isn’t the case hold no water.

House Republicans accidentally released a trove of damning Covid documents https://t.co/IdlTuaZ4Co by @ryangrim https://t.co/IdlTuaZ4Co

— The Intercept (@theintercept) July 12, 2023

The Republicans never used the redacted evidence to prove their case–even though the leaked portion of the document demonstrates that they knew all about it. They didn’t cover up for the scientists–they spent a lot of time criticizing them and made their case that there was something fishy going on–but the hearing became he said/she said mudwrestling match that only confirmed everybody’s priors.

Republicans got to play to their base, and Democrats theirs. A potential bombshell of a story got barely any coverage at all. Go to RealClearPolitics and only one story linked relates to the hearing, and that is from The Nation.

The two stories that matter about the hearing so far are from Left-wing but not Establishment sites–The Nation and The Intercept, who are doing actual reporting. Everybody else? Meh. The mainstream stories are just the he-said/she-said stuff.

It didn’t have to be this way. As I said, the Republicans had the receipts. Proof. The MSM wouldn’t like it, but if deployed properly in a telegenic way the Republicans could have broken through.

It would have been easy enough to do, even. A good lawyer could create a perjury trap–get the scientists to assert things provably false (Anderson did so in his written testimony before he opened his mouth)–and then spring the evidence on them. It would not have convinced everybody, but it sure would have been telegenic and broken through. Follow up with a bunch of talk about perjury and penalties and it would have been tailor-made to make a splash.

Instead, Republicans tried to hide the evidence. It took an internet sleuth to dig it up. He did the hard work, and people like me are using his sleuthing.

Page 4: more on the timeline by Eddie
Page 10: some more remarks by Fauci
Page 13: longer version and remarks by Farrar
Page 16: answer by Nature pic.twitter.com/uqIFyjBp4S

— Francisco de Asis (@franciscodeasis) July 11, 2023

Addendum: OCRed Slack chats (may contain typos)
[#REV0002903 on page 20 of pdf]

February 2nd, 2020

Andrew Rambaut 04:55
Hi Kristian,
I missed this this morning otherwise I would have held off on the reply to Ron. I will take a look and let you know. (edited)

Kristian Andersen…

— Francisco de Asis (@franciscodeasis) July 12, 2023

The evidence is absolutely damning. You have scientists admitting privately that they are working hard to prove something they believe is likely false, and doing so at the behest of Fauci and Collins.

They could have been NAILED TO THE WALL. It is rarely this easy.

Again, why?

Short answer, I don’t know.

Longer answer: somebody somewhere must expect a quid pro quo of some kind. I have no idea what it would be and would be happy to have an alternate explanation, but from my vantage point, it looks like the Republicans took a dive when they got in the ring. They scored a few points but didn’t go for the knockout blow.

I would welcome anybody else’s speculations for why they would do this, or why my speculations are off base. Maybe I am missing something obvious or not-so-obvious, but given what I know it seems that Republicans (at least some of them) chose not to press an issue that absolutely positively needed to be pressed.

One last thing–it is conceivable that the leak wasn’t a mistake. Obviously, the committee as a whole decided to not go in for the kill, but perhaps some member or staffer wanted the leak to occur and the story to get out. That seems very plausible to me. What appears to be incompetence might actually be a sly way to get around a clearly immoral decision.

I hope that is the case, although I would have hoped that the Republicans would have had the moral courage to fight to reveal the truth as a committee. They apparently didn’t for whatever reason.

If there was a quid pro quo, I hope it was for Biden taking a dive. Unfortunately, it probably was something more prosaic like funding for a bridge.