In her final hours as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard released a batch of declassified documents that include an internal Intelligence Community email flagging a publicly available video of government-funded scientist Peter Daszak describing how his colleagues in China had manipulated spike proteins on coronaviruses. The email circulated among IC officials roughly a year after COVID-19 reached the United States, and roughly a month after Anthony Fauci told the Senate that the National Institutes of Health had never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The timeline matters. Fauci was on the record denying what the video appeared to show. The Intelligence Community had the video in hand. And as Just the News reported, the newly released documents also connect to a whistleblower complaint alleging Fauci lied to Congress, a complaint that was quietly routed away from the inspector general's office responsible for investigating it.
The documents raise a straightforward question that Americans have been asking for six years: Who in Washington knew the truth, who hid it, and why did it take this long to see the paperwork?
The unnamed Intelligence Community official who flagged the video did not dress it up. The email opened casually:
"Hey guys, Just saw this video online. It's from a 2016 NY Academy of Medicine meeting where Daszak talks about his colleagues in China manipulating the spike protein on coronavirus to make them more virulent."
The video in question captured Daszak at the 2016 New York Academy of Medicine meeting laying out, in his own words, what his team and their Chinese partners were doing with bat coronaviruses. His description was detailed and clinical:
"We found other coronaviruses in bats... some of them looked very similar to SARS. So, we sequenced the spike protein, the protein that attaches to cells, then we, well I didn't do this work, my colleagues in China did the work, you create pseudoparticles, you insert the spike proteins from those viruses, see if they bind to human cells. And each step of this you move closer and closer to this virus could really become pathogenic in people."
That was 2016, years before a novel coronavirus emerged from Wuhan and shut down the world. The IC official who flagged the video recognized what it showed. The question is what happened next inside the government.
Approximately one month before the IC email circulated, Fauci sat before the Senate and delivered what became one of the most contested statements of the pandemic era. Pressed by Sen. Rand Paul, Fauci was unequivocal:
"The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
Later that same year, NIH admitted to Congress that it had in fact funded a Wuhan Institute of Virology experiment that altered a bat coronavirus through gain-of-function techniques. The admission contradicted Fauci's sworn testimony on its face.
This was not a minor discrepancy over definitions. The Washington Examiner has documented a detailed timeline showing Fauci participated in a February 1, 2020 Zoom call after which the influential "Proximal Origin" paper was written, a paper that steered scientific consensus away from the lab-leak hypothesis. Declassified records further show that on June 4, 2021, Fauci briefed the National Security Council and recommended subject matter experts to the Intelligence Community, including authors of that same paper and EcoHealth Alliance's Peter Daszak.
At a July 2021 Senate hearing, Fauci doubled down: "I have not lied before Congress. I have never lied. Certainly not before Congress. Case closed."
The case, it turns out, was not closed. It was barely opened.
Among the documents Gabbard released is a letter dated August 11, 2021, from Acting Intelligence Community Inspector General Tamara Johnson to then-DNI Avril Haines. The letter acknowledged receipt of a whistleblower complaint filed under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act. Johnson described the complaint plainly:
"The complaint alleges Dr. Fauci provided false testimony to Congress related to the conduct of gain of function research at the National Institutes of Health, thereby 'misleading the American people and Congressional oversight.'"
What Johnson did next is where the trail goes cold. She decided there was no point in sending the complaint to the HHS Office of Inspector General, the body with jurisdiction to investigate misconduct in Fauci's office. Her reasoning:
"The general dispute about 'gain-of-function' research is already in the public domain making it highly probable that the HHS-OIG would already be aware of the allegation that the Dr. Fauci's testimony was inaccurate (albeit from a different source, not our ICWPA submitter). Consequently, we determined there would be no merit in referring the matter to HHS OIG."
In plain English: because the controversy was already public, Johnson concluded the inspector general probably already knew about it, so there was no reason to formally send the complaint. The whistleblower's filing, the kind of complaint the system is designed to protect and act on, effectively dead-ended.
It got worse. Then-DNI Haines referred the complaint not to the HHS Inspector General but to Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Biden political appointee who is now running for governor of California. Routing a complaint about a senior health official to that official's own political boss, rather than to the independent watchdog, is precisely the kind of institutional maneuvering that makes whistleblowers stop trusting the system. As Gabbard's earlier document releases have shown, the pattern of shielding Fauci from formal accountability extended across multiple agencies.
Fauci retired before President Trump returned to the White House. In late 2024, he accepted a pardon from President Joe Biden. The specific terms of that pardon are not detailed in the declassified batch, but the timing speaks for itself: Fauci secured legal protection before a new administration could revisit his conduct.
Sen. Rand Paul has since sent criminal referrals to the Department of Justice against Fauci for alleged perjury and is challenging the validity of Biden's pardon in court, as the New York Post reported.
After Trump took office, HHS moved against the institutional machinery that had funneled taxpayer money to Wuhan. The department banned Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance from receiving federal funding for five years, citing their role in facilitating and passing taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the pandemic began.
The indictment of former Fauci adviser David Morens for allegedly hiding COVID-origin records has added another thread to the broader picture of concealment around the pandemic's beginnings.
Gabbard, releasing the documents in her final hours as DNI, did not hold back about what she believed they showed. Her statement framed the issue in terms of institutional betrayal:
"The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook: politicized self-serving leaders like Dr. Fauci covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected President by restricting his access to vital facts needed to keep the country safe. It's time the American people learn the real story."
Gabbard also alleged that Fauci lied to Congress again in 2024 when he claimed he had not communicated with intelligence agencies about virus research. The declassified timeline documented by the Washington Examiner supports the claim that Fauci's interactions with the IC were far more extensive than he publicly acknowledged, including his June 2021 briefing of the National Security Council and his role in recommending experts to the intelligence community.
The pattern echoes earlier declassified biolab records that validated concerns officials had previously dismissed as misinformation.
The declassified documents fill in gaps, but they also leave significant questions open. The name of the IC official who flagged the Daszak video has not been made public. The full contents of the document batch beyond the excerpted email remain to be examined. Whether Becerra ever acted on the whistleblower complaint after Haines referred it to him is unclear.
Perhaps most importantly, Fauci has not responded specifically to this latest release. He accepted a presidential pardon, which may shield him from criminal prosecution, but it does not answer the factual questions the documents raise.
The broader pattern of declassified records contradicting official narratives has become a recurring feature of this era. In each case, the documents arrive years after the damage is done, and the officials responsible have already moved on to new positions or comfortable retirements.
What these documents describe is not complicated. A scientist funded by U.S. taxpayers stood at a podium in 2016 and explained, on camera, that his colleagues in China were manipulating coronaviruses to see if they could become dangerous to humans. Years later, a novel coronavirus emerged from the same city where that work was conducted. The leading U.S. health official denied his agency funded such research. The Intelligence Community had the video. A whistleblower filed a complaint. The complaint was rerouted away from the watchdog. And the official in question received a presidential pardon before the next administration could take office.
Each step, taken alone, might have an innocent explanation. Taken together, they describe a system that protected its own at the expense of the public's right to know the truth about a pandemic that killed over a million Americans.
When the government works harder to bury the evidence than to follow it, the American people are right to wonder who their institutions are actually serving.
