Anthony Fauci's fingerprints are on every pandemic nightmare of the last twenty years.
His lab just got two scientists arrested for smuggling viral samples into the country on a commercial flight.
What customs agents found in that black plastic case is something the federal government hoped would stay buried.
NIH Rocky Mountain Laboratories Admitted a Pathogen Went Missing. Then Came the Monkey Bite.
Rocky Mountain Laboratories operates at Biosafety Level 4 – the highest classification the federal government assigns – in Hamilton, Montana, population roughly 4,600.
In November 2025, NIH quietly filed paperwork admitting a deadly "select agent" pathogen had been "released, lost, or stolen" from the facility. They disclosed it only after White Coat Waste Project forced the documents into the open.
A lab worker was then bitten by a macaque monkey deliberately infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever – a virus with a fatality rate as high as 40 percent. According to a whistleblower letter obtained by White Coat Waste, NIH management didn't alert the broader campus. They quietly flew the exposed staffer out of state for treatment and told nobody.
When the whistleblower surfaced, the letter described what followed as NIH going into "full coverup mode."
Then came the arrests.
NIH Cover-Up: 113 Mpox Vials on a Commercial Airplane
On January 25, 2026, Vincent Munster and his research fellow Claude Kwe touched down at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after nine days in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo – in the middle of an active monkeypox outbreak.
Munster, 53, a Dutch national, was the chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Kwe, 38, a Cameroonian national, worked directly under him.
Federal agents flagged Kwe for secondary screening after observing what prosecutors described as "nervous behavior." He steered a large black plastic case – flagged by investigators as "atypical of business travel" – toward Munster before both men were detained.
When asked what the case contained, Munster said it held diagnostics and testing equipment. He told agents his documentation was in his laptop – then said: "But you don't need them."
Inside: 113 vials in Styrofoam coolers. Of the first 20 tested, 17 contained deactivated monkeypox virus.
The Department of Justice charged both men with conspiracy to smuggle and making false statements to federal law enforcement. The whistleblower alleged NIH had known about the smuggling for months before the DOJ investigation launched – and covered it up.
RFK Jr. confirmed HHS sent the referral to the FBI immediately. His assessment of Munster's future: "I assume he is going to prison."
The Wuhan Lab Connection NIH Never Wanted You to Find
In 2018, EcoHealth Alliance submitted a federal grant proposal – known as DEFUSE – to develop bat coronaviruses capable of human infection.
Rocky Mountain Laboratories was listed as a named partner. DARPA reviewed it and walked away, calling the research too dangerous. Fauci's NIAID kept the broader network funded anyway.
Sen. Rand Paul released those documents in April 2024. They showed Munster's lab embedded in the same research pipeline that produced COVID-era gain-of-function controversy – and that Fauci had testified under oath he knew nothing about a project his own agency had joined.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) sent a formal letter this week to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya demanding an "immediate safety stand-down" and permanent closure of Rocky Mountain Laboratories.
"Americans have had enough of Fauci-era secrecy and reckless animal experiments with deadly pathogens," Gosar wrote in a statement first obtained by Breitbart News. "If the federal government cannot safely handle some of the world's deadliest viruses, it has no business conducting this research."
Gosar had warned about this lab since January – writing with Sen. Joni Ernst about RML's bat research involving Ebola and its Wuhan connections. NIH Director Bhattacharya defended the lab at the time. By June, two of its scientists were in federal court.
His verdict: "Fauci-connected individuals' malfeasance proves a dangerous pattern of rogue scientists abusing taxpayer dollars for heinous animal experimentation."
White Coat Waste Project Vice President Justin Goodman backed the call directly, referring to the facility as "Wuhan West" and calling RML "a ticking time bomb."
Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT), whose constituents live within miles of this lab, has already asked the HHS Inspector General to investigate safety and personnel practices at RML. His read on the situation: "We don't want Montana to be the next Wuhan."
None of this – the missing pathogen, the monkey bite, the smuggled vials, the criminal charges – stopped the lab from operating for another six months. That is the Fauci legacy: not the peer-reviewed papers or the congressional testimony, but the cover-up infrastructure that kept a compromised biolab running while insiders buried the evidence.
Gosar is right. Kennedy should shut it down.
- Hannah Knudsen, "Exclusive – Rep. Paul Gosar Requests HHS and NIH Close Down Fauci's Rocky Mountain Lab," Breitbart News, July 13, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Justice, "Feds Charge Foreign Nationals Working at the National Institutes of Health with Smuggling Monkeypox into the United States and Lying About It," Eastern District of Michigan, June 2, 2026.
- Amanda Head, "It's Still Happening: U.S. Lab Exposed to African Virus After Monkey Bites Staff, Lab Remains Open," Just the News, May 15, 2026.
- "Full Coverup Mode: Lawmakers Want Answers on Virus Smuggling to Federal Lab, Alleged Monkey Bite," Just the News, May 28, 2026.
- Rand Paul, "The Great COVID Cover-up: Shocking Truth About Wuhan and 15 Federal Agencies," Fox News, April 2024.
- White Coat Waste Project, "Exclusive: Whistleblower Alleges NIH in Full Coverup Mode Over Monkey Bite, Virus Smuggling Scandals," May 7, 2026.
