Tag: rand paul

Rand Paul To Investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Secret ‘Off The Books’ Trips To CIA Before COVID-19: ‘There’s Something Worth Hiding’

Senator Rand Paul says he intends to persist in his investigation into the origins of COVID-19, and that he plans to scrutinize Dr. Anthony Fauci’s secret “off the books” trips to the CIA.

Paul revealed to The Daily Mail that Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), maintained a cordial relationship with the CIA.

“The CIA officially still says [COVID-19 is] probably from animals,” the senator said. “We also have stories, rumors and innuendo that Fauci was a frequent visitor off the books to the CIA.”

Paul highlighted to the outlet how the CIA’s stance contrasts with conclusions from the Department of Energy and the FBI, both of which suggested that the pandemic probably originated from a leak at a lab in Wuhan, China.

He also mentioned that despite an initial assessment by the CIA supporting the lab leak theory, senior officials within the agency dismissed these findings.

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Rand Paul’s Bill Would Require NIH Scientists To Disclose Royalties They Receive From Drug Companies

Over the past decade, scientists working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have earned an estimated $400 million in royalties from third-party companies for medical treatments and innovations they’ve helped produce. The NIH often provides grants to these same companies and produces research on their products. Despite that, the agency has resisted disclosing how much its scientists are getting paid and by whom.

A bill moving its way through Congress would change that.

On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed the Royalty Transparency Act of 2024 by a 12–0 vote.

The legislation would require that royalties received by federal government employees be included in their financial disclosures and that those disclosures be made available online for the general public to view.

“This is just basic 101 of conflict of interest. We’re letting the billions of dollars that change hands over at NIH and between NIH and Big Pharma to be completely unscrutinized,” says Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), the author of the legislation. “This is probably the first reform bill that actually has a chance to correct some of the things that are rotten in the system.”

The NIH’s lack of transparency about the royalties paid to its scientists has been a source of controversy for decades.

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Senate Votes Down Resolution to Withdraw Troops from Syria

The Senate on Thursday voted down a resolution that would have directed President Biden to withdraw all US troops from Syria, where US forces have come under frequent attack in response to President Biden’s support for Israel’s Gaza onslaught.

The bill failed in a vote of 13-84 and received support from seven Democrats, five Republicans, and one Independent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT). The resolution was introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who argued the US occupation of eastern Syria risks a major regional war.

“Keeping 900 US troops in Syria does nothing to advance American security. Rather, our intervention puts those servicemembers at grave risk by providing an enticing target for Iranian-backed militias,” Paul said.

“Our continued presence risks the United States getting dragged into yet another regional war in the Middle East without debate or a vote by the people’s representatives in Congress. Congress must cease abdicating its constitutional war powers to the executive branch,” he added.

Paul’s bill would have given the president 30 days to withdraw from Syria unless he was able to get authorization from Congress. The resolution received support from Robert Ford, who was the US ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014 when the US first threw its weight behind the regime change effort against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“We owe our soldiers serving there in harm’s way a serious debate about whether their mission is, in fact, achievable. Absent a debate and authorization of such a mission, our troops should be removed. Consideration of S.J. Res. 51 is an important opportunity for the Senate to take a step towards that necessary outcome,” Ford said.

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Will Rand Paul get an apology from Dr. Fauci after NIH’s latest admission?

In the summer of 2021 , Americans saw something unusual: Dr. Anthony Fauci on tilt.

“Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially,” said the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. “I totally resent the lie you are now propagating.”

Fauci’s comments were made during one of his testier exchanges with Rand Paul , the Kentucky senator whom he had sparred with in a series of congressional hearings on the National Institutes of Health’s funding of risky “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The truth would emerge slowly over the next two years.

In a pair of letters sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in October 2021, NIH conceded that funding provided to the nonprofit organization EcoHealth Alliance had indeed resulted in an “unexpected result”: An enhanced coronavirus from bats that had been created through a partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Francis Collins, then the director of NIH, which oversees NIAID, claimed the letters were sent “to set the record straight” on the controversial research. In reality, NIH sent the letters a month after the Intercept published documents revealing NIH had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.

The Fauci-Paul feud seems like history today. Fauci is no longer the director of NIAID and no longer on TV every day. Perhaps that’s why new evidence showing that Paul’s instincts were correct has garnered so little attention.

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Rand Paul offers his theories for Dr. Fauci’s alleged secret visit to CIA headquarters: ‘Further the cover-up’

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) floated on Thursday his theories for why Dr. Anthony Fauci allegedly visited the CIA headquarters to advise the intelligence agency on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is the background?

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed this week that it had received “concerning information” about the CIA’s investigation into the origins of the pandemic.

In a letter sent to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, committee Chairman Brad Wenstrup explained:

The information provided suggests that Dr. Fauci was escorted into Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarters—without a record of entry—and participated in the analysis to “influence” the Agency’s review. Our goal is to ensure the scientific investigative process regarding the origins of COVID-19 was fair, impartial, and free of alternative influence.

Importantly, the visit remains an allegation only; Congress has not made public evidence proving the visit took place.

What did Paul say?

The Kentucky Republican, Fauci’s archenemy, posited three theories for the purpose of Fauci’s alleged visit to CIA headquarters.

First, Paul suggested that Fauci outright “convinced the CIA to dishonestly obscure the lab origin of COVID.” Second, Paul suggested the inverse, that the “CIA convinced Fauci to obscure the lab origin of COVID.”

Finally, Paul suggested, “An outside entity or person with unlimited monetary resources convinced Fauci to influence the CIA to obscure the lab origin of COVID.”

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Sen. Rand Paul Warns RESTRICT Act Would Allow Feds to Nullify First Amendment

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been a major critic of the RESTRICT Act, which has been sold to Congress and the public as a ban on TikTok.

He warned that it would authorize the federal government to censor any online communications it deems subversive and would nullify the First Amendment.

The popular social media app, which is controlled by a Chinese company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, has more than 150 million monthly users in the United States alone and is used mainly by people under 30.

The app has been controversial for years, as concerns over security have led to several statewide bans of the app on government devices.

Legislation Faces More Opposition

Former President Donald Trump failed in his attempt to ban TikTok in the United States during his presidency, but momentum has been building ever since.

In April, President Joe Biden demanded that TikTok’s owners divest their stakes in the company or face a nationwide ban.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) co-sponsored the RESTRICT Act, which now has the support of over 20 senators, to give the Commerce Department the power to impose restrictions—up to and including outright bans—on TikTok and other technologies that may pose a national security risk.

It would mainly apply to foreign apps and software from countries deemed hostile to the United States, like China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba.

The legislation also empowers the Secretary of Commerce to unilaterally add any other country to the list.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the House would draw up a bill to address the Chinese app, but the timeline is unclear.

On May 5, Paul published a column on conservative news website Townhall, warning that the bill “bestows an astonishing amount of power to the Executive branch in a manner that the Chinese Communist Party would approve of.”

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Rand Paul Warns Overclassification Being Used To Cover Up COVID Lab Leak

Senator Rand Paul warned Wednesday that over classification of information is being used to avoid oversight and institute cover ups, such as regarding the origins of COVID.

Appearing on Newsmax TV’s “Eric Bolling The Balance,” Paul explained “I think there’s an overclassification problem here. Everything’s classified. And in all likelihood, what we’ll find is this is not some sort of organized scheme to have the secrets to the nuclear weapon in [Biden’s] Corvette. I think it’s more likely than not that we’ve classified so many documents that it’s hard to find documents that are not classified.”

He continued, “The one problem with classifying so much is that there is, right now, to my knowledge, pretty good information out there in the intelligence community about the virus originating from the lab in China, and yet they classify it to try to prohibit people [like] me giving you the information that we already know that this came from a lab. And so this is a real problem.”

“We need to allow less classification so the American people can understand more about what’s going on with their government,” Paul urged.

He added, “I go to classified hearings, and I haven’t actually been to a classified hearing where I actually thought I heard a secret, to tell you the truth.”

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Rand Paul’s Annual ‘Festivus’ Report: $482,276,543,907 in Government Waste

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Friday continued the annual tradition of celebrating “Festivus,” airing out his many grievances as it relates to government waste.

Paul’s 2022 Festivus report highlights $482,276,543,907 in government waste and includes $2.3 million used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an experiment involving injecting puppies with cocaine, $202,000 used by the Department of Defense (DOD) on Starbucks espresso machines, and $3 million for the construction of a Gandhi museum.

“This will be the 10th year in a row that I’ve celebrated #Festivus with you. By celebrated I mean have a little fun at the expense of Washington. If we don’t laugh we might cry,” Paul wrote before sharing some of the highlights of the report to his social media page and invoking the infamous Seinfeld quote from Frank Costanza, “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people!”

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Rand Paul: Fauci Caused 7 Million People To Die; “We’ve Caught Him Red Handed, He Won’t Get Away”

Senator Rand Paul asserted Thursday that Anthony Fauci is directly responsible for funding dangerous research that likely killed millions of people, and that he “won’t get away.”

“Likely there is no public health figure who has made a greater error in judgement than Dr Fauci,” Paul declared in a Fox News appearance, adding “the error of judgement was to fund gain of function research in a totalitarian country.”

Fauci funded “research that allowed them to create super viruses, that in all likelihood leaked into the public and caused seven million people to die,” Paul declared.

“This is right up there with decisions, some of them malevolent or military to kill millions of people,” The Senator further urged.

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Congress Is Not Allowed To Know About TOP SECRET Gain Of Function Research Committee

Appearing on Fox News to discuss the first ever Senate hearing on gain of function research, Rand Paul revealed that there is a committee that is supposed to oversee such experimentation with potentially lethal viruses, but that it is above the oversight of Congress.

Paul noted that according to scientists who testified on Capitol Hill yesterday, “the committee that is supposed to review these viruses is secret.”

“We don’t know the names. We don’t know that they ever meet, and we don’t have any records of their meetings,” the Senator reiterated, adding “It’s top-secret. Congress is not allowed to know. So whether the committee actually exists, we’re uncertain.”

“We do know that they’ve met three times and there are thousands of gain-of-function research proposals. They’ve only met three times, they’ve only reviewed three projects,” Paul continued.

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