During his recent seven-hour deposition in a major Big Tech collusion case, Dr. Anthony Fauci failed to remember pertinent information about his role in the government’s Covid response, answering questions with “I don’t recall” 174 times, the transcript shows.
On Monday, Louisiana and Missouri released the entirety of the November 23, 2022, deposition of Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Democrat President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.
The depositions with Fauci and other high-profile members of the Biden administration are part of a lawsuit from Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.
The case seeks to expose the collusion that fueled Big Tech’s censorship spree against dissenters of the COVID-19 groupthink.
The attorneys general specifically subpoenaed Fauci for becoming “directly involved with multiple social media censorship campaigns against COVID-19 misinformation.”
Among the key allegations is that he leverage his influence over Big Tech to “discredit any theory” that the virus resulted from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
For his role during the Covid pandemic, Fauci raked in more than $1.7 million in 2020 alone.
When questioned further about his role, Fauci failed to recall key conversations and documents related to the federal government’s handling of the virus.
Fauci said he couldn’t recall when he first became familiar with “The Great Barrington Declaration,” a document written by scientific experts challenging the government’s heavy-handed lockdowns.
He claimed ignorance even though he colluded with former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins to issue a “quick and devastating published takedown” of it in October 2020.
He said he couldn’t recall whether he authorized exceptions for certain parties to do gain-of-function research.
Fauci also couldn’t explain why he emailed his deputy director Hugh Auchincloss literature about gain-of-function research in February of 2020, nor could he remember when he had met several scientists involved in researching coronaviruses.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) said the deposition of Fauci confirms that “federal bureaucrats in collusion with social media companies want to control not only what you think, but especially what you say.”
The lawsuit focused on allegations of federal officials colluding with social media companies to censor speech.
Fauci’s deposition, Landry explained, shows that “social engineering tactics were used against the American public, not to limit your exposure to a virus, but to limit your exposure to information that did not fit within a government-sanctioned narrative.”
The deposition shows Fauci, again, attempting to sidestep the reality of gain of function research being conducted at the Wuhan lab, deeming gain of function a “misleading terminology” and pointing to “outside groups” — but not the National Institutes of Health (NIH)— that decided to “strictly define the guardrails of experiments that would require additional oversight and did away with the terminology ‘gain of function’ because it can often be very confusing and misleading.”
However, throughout the deposition, Fauci feigned ignorance, stating, “I don’t recall” 174 times when facing questions about various emails, interviews, or “other important documents,” as described by Landry’s press release.
At one point, for instance, Fauci claimed he was not aware of an EcoHealth Alliance grant, awarded by the NIH which was then sub-awarded to the Wuhan lab.
“Did you, at any time later, become aware that NIAID was funding this project understanding the risk of bat Coronavirus emergence?” Fauci was asked.
“I became aware of this after all of the attention was put on it, following the early part of January, February, mid-March of 2020, but I certainly was not aware — well, I wouldn’t say certainly because who knows what came across my desk,” Fauci said, asserting that “thousands of pieces of paper come across my desk.”
“But I do not recall at all being aware of the existence of this grant at the time that it was initially funded of the dates shown on page 2,” he added.
He was then asked overtly if he held concerns about “what people might be saying on social media about the virus’s origin.”
Fauci brazenly claimed that he is “so disassociated from social media.”
“You know, I’m so dissociated from social media,” he claimed.
“I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t do Facebook.
“I don’t do any of that, so I’m not familiar with that,” Fauci alleged.
“I’ve never gotten involved in any of that.”
However, he then continued by boasting that he personally spoke with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
🚨 BREAKING NOW 🚨
Louisiana, Missouri Release Full #Fauci Deposition Transcript – https://t.co/25NzkpR5uu pic.twitter.com/QqTG0HnGHC— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) December 5, 2022
During COVID-19 crisis: social engineering tactics were used against the American public – not to limit your exposure to a virus, but to limit your exposure to information that did not fit within a government sanctioned narrative. #FauciDeposition
— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) December 5, 2022
“Missouri and Louisiana are leading the way in exposing how the federal government and the Biden Administration worked with social media to censor speech,” Missouri Attorney General and U.S. Senator-Elect Eric Schmitt (R) said in a statement.
“In our deposition with Dr. Fauci, it became clear that when Dr. Fauci speaks, social media censors,” he continued.
“I invite everyone to read the deposition transcript and see exactly how Dr. Fauci operates, and exactly how the COVID tyranny that ruined lives and destroyed businesses was born.”
🚨BREAKING: Here is the full transcript of the Anthony Fauci deposition: https://t.co/IN3pjYcK2m
A few takeaways… pic.twitter.com/oQUjO8Fp5w
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) December 5, 2022
Read the full deposition here.
