Former Vice President Mike Pence said Monday that he remains troubled by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s repeated assurances during the COVID-19 pandemic that the virus could not have originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, describing those conversations as one of the most difficult aspects of looking back on the government’s pandemic response.
Speaking on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom, Pence reflected on his interactions with Fauci following the recent publication of the former public health official’s pandemic-era diary.
Pence said he repeatedly raised the possibility of a laboratory leak during White House Situation Room meetings, but claimed Fauci consistently dismissed the theory.
“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.
According to the former vice president, Fauci repeatedly assured him that such a scenario was not possible, even when other virologists participating in the discussions expressed differing views.
“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,” Pence said.
Co-host Dana Perino then asked Pence directly whether he believed Fauci had lied to him.
Rather than answer the question directly, Pence said he could not say with certainty what the origin of the virus was, while noting that he had long suspected the lab leak theory deserved consideration.
“I don’t know what the source of it was,” Pence said. “I wrote about it in my book about four years ago — I always suspected that it came from a lab.”
Pence also said he remains concerned that China has not been held accountable for the pandemic.
“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,” he said.
His remarks come after the publication of Fauci’s diary revealed that the longtime infectious disease expert did not believe the virus originated in a Chinese wet market during the early stages of the pandemic.
In a January 2020 diary entry, Fauci wrote that the market was not the source of the outbreak but instead served as an amplifier of the virus.
“Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” Fauci wrote. “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.”
Fauci’s diary was released late last month by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who later led a congressional hearing at which Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times.
According to the article, Fauci declined to answer questions regarding his leadership of the federal government’s COVID-19 response. He also refused to respond to questions concerning whether Bill Gates partnered with China’s communist government on “sensitive research.” The article further states that Fauci declined to answer simpler questions, including one asking what color tie he was wearing.
During Monday’s interview, co-host Bill Hemmer asked Pence whether he believed Fauci had been protecting his own policies in hindsight.
Pence said he was “very disappointed” that Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment so frequently during the hearing.
The former vice president added that he understood why some people have questioned Fauci’s actions, pointing to National Institutes of Health investments in gain-of-function research conducted internationally, including in China.
“I can understand why people would speculate that, with the gain-of-function investments that NIH had made internationally, including in China,” Pence said.
