Iowa Senator Joni Ernst is among those publicly raising objections to pandemic-related decisions Dr. Anthony Fauci made when he was a top U.S. public health official.
Ernst questioned Fauci yesterday during a hearing on Capitol Hill. “Dr. Fauci, yes or no: Do you think that human aborted parts should be put into mice for coronavirus research?” Ernst said. Fauci cited his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, as he did with all senators yesterday to avoid answering questions.
Ernst said lawmakers have learned mice from a University of North Carolina lab were sent to a lab in China in 2017 that was researching viruses and the mice had been implanted with livers and other body parts from aborted human fetuses before they were shipped. “And wrote they had created a ‘sandwich’ of aborted body parts in the mice,” Ernst said. “…Taxpayers paid for them to do that.”
During her questioning of Fauci, Ernst also brought up a National Institutes of Health lab in Montana that used body parts from aborted fetuses in its research. “They even included those disgusting photos in their research paper that you funded,” Ernst said. “Not all of those were research on coronaviruses, but some were. Thankfully the current NIH director has said: ‘No more of this.'”
Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s other U.S. Senator, has also questioned why Fauci allowed U.S. taxpayer money to go to a Chinese laboratory doing coronavirus research. Here’s Grassley, speaking on the Senate floor in 2021. “Dr. Fauci is all over television and radio. You name it, he’s on it,” Grassley said five years ago, “but apparently Dr. Fauci and his counterparts can’t find time to answer this very simple question.”
As for yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, the committee’s chairman has scheduled a vote for next Wednesday to hold Fauci in contempt of congress for failing to answer questions.