Former Vice President Mike Pence is raising new questions about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying he repeatedly challenged the nation’s top infectious disease expert on the possibility that the virus originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, only to be told the theory was not credible.
Pence discussed those conversations during an appearance on Fox News Monday, where he reflected on his time leading the White House Coronavirus Task Force during President Trump’s first administration. His comments come as renewed attention has focused on Fauci following the release of his pandemic-era diary entries by Sen. Rand Paul.
According to Pence, the issue of COVID-19’s origins came up numerous times during high-level meetings in the White House Situation Room.
“What’s most troubling to me was, I lost count of the number of times in the situation room where I asked Dr. Fauci that it might be possible that it came from a lab leak in Wuhan,” Pence said. “And he assured me over and over again, even with other virologists at the table taking a different view, that it couldn’t have come from a lab.”
Fox News co-host Dana Perino followed up by asking Pence whether he believed Fauci had lied to him.
Pence declined to answer directly.
“I don’t know what the source of it was,” Pence replied. “I wrote about it in my book about four years ago, I always suspected that it came from a lab. I’m troubled by the fact that we haven’t to this day held China accountable for a virus that cost the lives of millions of people around the world.”
Pence’s remarks come just days after more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s personal COVID-era journals were released by Sen. Rand Paul. The diary entries have become a focal point of renewed congressional scrutiny surrounding the government’s pandemic response and Fauci’s public statements during the early months of the outbreak.
Among the most closely examined entries is one dated Jan. 26, 2020, in which Fauci wrote that the Huanan Seafood Market was not the source of the outbreak but rather an “amplifier.”
According to the diary, Fauci wrote, “Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier.”
That observation has generated significant discussion because Fauci later publicly defended the animal spillover theory while downplaying the possibility of a laboratory accident.
Additional diary entries reportedly describe a Feb. 1, 2020, discussion involving Fauci and a group of scientists examining possible origins of the virus. According to accounts of the journal, Fauci noted that only two of the twelve participating scientists believed animal spillover was the most likely explanation, while most of the others believed a deliberate laboratory origin remained possible.
Critics argue those private discussions differ from the public messaging that followed, including the publication of the influential paper “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which argued that a natural origin was the most likely explanation for the pandemic.
The diary entries have intensified questions from Republican lawmakers, particularly Sen. Rand Paul, who has spent years investigating the federal government’s response to COVID-19 and Fauci’s role in shaping public messaging.
Supporters of Fauci have argued that scientific understanding of the virus evolved rapidly during the early stages of the pandemic and that researchers considered multiple hypotheses before reaching their public conclusions.
The debate over COVID-19’s origins remains one of the most contentious issues surrounding the pandemic. While intelligence agencies and scientists continue to disagree over whether the virus emerged naturally or through a laboratory incident, Pence’s comments and the newly released diary entries have added fresh attention to decisions made inside the White House during one of the most consequential public health crises in modern history.
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