Anthony Fauci spent four years telling America the Wuhan lab leak was a dangerous conspiracy theory.
Now a federal watchdog says the CIA has refused to hand over the records from its own COVID origins investigation.
What the inspector general found when he asked for those records is what the CIA doesn't want Congress to see.
How Fauci's Hand-Picked Scientists Buried the Wuhan Lab Leak
In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Intelligence Community Inspector General Christopher Fox accused CIA Director John Ratcliffe of failing to produce records critical to the investigation.
Fox's office is examining whether former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's team of analysts – sent to expose Biden-era failures on COVID – was blocked from doing its job.
CIA special operations officer James Erdman III testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on May 13 that Anthony Fauci inserted himself into intelligence community deliberations on COVID origins on February 3, 2020 – and again on June 4, 2021.
Both times, Fauci steered investigators toward a hand-picked list of scientists he controlled.
Those scientists had financial ties to NIAID – Fauci's agency – and several went on to co-author "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," the now-discredited paper that dismissed the lab leak theory and shaped intelligence assessments for years.
"Dr. Fauci's role in the cover-up was intentional," Erdman testified under oath.
The CIA's analysts knew the truth.
By May 2020, the Department of Energy had already documented that the Wuhan Institute of Virology carried every hallmark of a lab-origin event.
Six of seven CIA technical experts reviewing the evidence favored the lab leak conclusion.
Management overruled them.
"CIA managers retaliated against them for their refusal to agree with management's middle-of-the-night anonymous rewrite of the analysis," Erdman told lawmakers, "which changed the assessment to a non-call judgment."
That gutless non-call – refusing to pick a side – became the official CIA position for years while Fauci collected accolades and Americans buried their dead.
CIA Whistleblower Testified the Agency Spied on Its Own COVID Investigators
When Tulsi Gabbard's Director's Initiatives Group arrived to investigate what went wrong, the CIA's response wasn't cooperation.
It was surveillance.
Erdman testified the agency tracked phones and computers belonging to DIG personnel, including their contact with whistleblowers.
At least one CIA contractor was fired the day after meeting with DIG investigators.
When the DIG closed down, the CIA reclaimed 40 boxes of JFK and MK Ultra records that Gabbard's team had been working to declassify.
Inspector General Fox told Grassley that Ratcliffe's claim – that there was no evidence of illegal monitoring – failed to satisfy federal law.
Grassley told The New York Post the CIA must answer for it.
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant; the IC must come clean to the American people," he said.
Every Senate Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee boycotted Erdman's May testimony.
Not one showed up.
Senator Ron Johnson said he was shocked not a single Democrat appeared, and he was right.
The same Democrats who spent years demanding Russia probe hearings couldn't spare an afternoon to hear sworn testimony about a cover-up that shaped health policy for 330 million Americans.
The COVID Cover-Up Still Running Inside the CIA
John Ratcliffe publicly believes the lab leak theory.
He spent years demanding the CIA say so, and now he's running the place.
The CIA is still refusing to hand records over to its own watchdog.
Innocent agencies don't act this way.
A former IC analyst told The New York Post that Chinese influence runs deep through the intelligence community – and that Fauci and others got "played like a Stradivarius" by Beijing.
That phrase should haunt every American who lost someone to COVID.
If the CIA's own analysts concluded this was a lab leak – if Fauci stacked the jury with conflicted scientists and management burned the findings at midnight – then every American who followed the rules and suffered for it was owed the truth from the beginning.
The inspector general wants the records.
The CIA won't produce them.
Someone is still protecting something.
Sources:
- Josh Christenson, "CIA Not Fully Cooperating on Probe Into COVID Origins 'Cover-Up'," New York Post, July 2, 2026.
- "Top 4 Explosive Moments From CIA Whistleblower's Testimony on Alleged COVID-19 Lab Leak Cover-Up," Fox News, May 14, 2026.
- James Erdman III, Written Testimony, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, May 13, 2026.
- "COVID Origins, Part 2 Hearing Wrap Up," House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, October 2, 2023.
- "CIA Whistleblower Accuses Current CIA of Continuing COVID Coverup," American Greatness, May 14, 2026.
