Declassified documents now confirm what millions of Americans suspected all along — the U.S. Intelligence Community had video evidence of government-funded scientists discussing coronavirus spike protein manipulation in China, and Dr. Anthony Fauci kept right on lying about it. The footage wasn't some grainy conspiracy-theory upload from a random blog. It was a recording from a 2016 New York Academy of Medicine meeting, circulated internally among intelligence officials while Fauci was busy telling Congress the exact opposite.
But sure, we were the crazy ones for asking questions.
According to Just The News, the declassified records show an intelligence official flagging the video in an internal communication, writing: "Hey guys, Just saw this video online. It's from a 2016 NY Academy of Medicine meeting." The video featured Peter Daszak — the EcoHealth Alliance scientist who served as the middleman funneling American tax dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — openly describing the work. Daszak said on camera: "We found other coronaviruses in bats...you create pseudoparticles, you insert the spike proteins from those viruses, see if they bind to human cells."
Read that again. Create pseudoparticles. Insert spike proteins. See if they bind to human cells. That's not bat conservation. That's gain-of-function research with a bow on it.
And what was Fauci doing while this video was making the rounds inside the intelligence community? Sitting in front of the United States Senate on national television and declaring under oath: "The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology." The NIH later admitted that yes, in fact, it did fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. Oops.
The cover-up didn't stop with Fauci's Senate performance. A whistleblower complaint dated August 11, 2021, alleged that Fauci had given false Congressional testimony. Instead of being investigated by the HHS Inspector General — you know, the office that's supposed to handle exactly this kind of thing — the complaint was quietly referred to a political appointee. Buried. Filed away. Nothing to see here, folks.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard didn't mince words about what happened. "The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook," Gabbard said. "It's time the American people learn the real story." She's right, and the fact that it took this long to get the real story tells you everything about how the system protects its own.
Acting Intelligence Community Inspector General Tamara Johnson offered a written statement that was almost comically bureaucratic in its deflection: "The general dispute about 'gain-of-function' research is already in the public domain." Already in the public domain. As if the American people had access to classified intelligence videos this whole time and just forgot to check.
The timeline of institutional failure here is staggering. The intelligence community had the video. Fauci lied to Congress. The whistleblower complaint got buried. Former DNI Avril Haines apparently didn't think any of this warranted public disclosure. Biden's HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra didn't lift a finger. And when the walls started closing in, Fauci conveniently retired before President Trump returned to office — then Joe Biden handed him a pardon in late 2024 like a golden parachute for services rendered.
At least there's been some accountability on the funding side. The Trump administration slapped Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance with a five-year ban from federal funding, and the Department of Defense cut ties as well. That's a start, but banning a guy from the grant trough after he helped fund a pandemic feels a little like revoking someone's driver's license after they've already driven through the farmers' market.
Sen. Rand Paul, who spent years trying to get Fauci to tell the truth in those Senate hearings, has been completely vindicated. Every time Paul pressed Fauci on gain-of-function research, the media called him a conspiracy theorist. Every single time. And every single time, Paul was right.
Here's the bottom line. They had the video. They had the whistleblower complaint. They had the receipts. And they chose to gaslight 330 million Americans instead of telling the truth. The "trust the science" crowd wasn't following the science — they were hiding it in a filing cabinet and hoping we'd never find out.
