Ex-CDC chief Redfield’s claim he was sidelined has ‘no basis in reality’

Dr. Anthony Fauci accused former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield of lying in front of Congress when he alleged that he was “sidelined” by Fauci from internal debates about the origin of COVID-19 for pushing the lab leak theory. 

“He is totally and unequivocally incorrect in what he’s saying, that I excluded him,” Fauci told Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Thursday. 

“It’s really unfortunate that in a public setting, like the hearing, that Dr. Redfield made that absolutely incorrect statement,” added President Biden’s former chief medical adviser. 

Redfield, appointed by former President Donald Trump to lead the CDC in March 2018, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Wednesday that in the early days of the pandemic, there was an “a priori decision that ‘there’s one point of view that we’re going to put out there, and anyone who doesn’t agree with it is going to be sidelined.’”

Redfield specifically cited a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call that he claimed was convened by Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins to discuss the origins of COVID-19.

The former CDC director said that not only was he cut out of the call, he didn’t even find out about it until June 2021. 

“I was quite upset, as the CDC director, that I was excluded from those discussions,” Redfield said Wednesday, claiming he was frozen out because he had “a different point of view.”

Fauci argued Thursday that “I had nothing to do with who would be on that call.”

“That call was organized by a group of evolutionary biologist in order to discuss the possibility that this might actually be a virus that was actually engineered,” he said. “So I didn’t put anybody on the list of that call nor did I take anybody out.” 

Fauci, who spent 38 years as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases before retiring at the end of last year, added that it would have been “OK” to have Redfield join the discussion, since by his recollection “half the people on the call were of the opinion that it might be a lab leak. So his rationale of why he thought he was excluded is an invalid rationale.”

“It’s really unfortunate that he made those statements,” Fauci said of Redfield. “He’s a good guy. I’ve known him for years. I’m just really a little bit disturbed about why he said that, which was completely untrue.”

The former top doc, who has repeatedly said that evidence points to the virus jumping to humans from animals, also reiterated that he’d “be more than happy to testify” before the House select panel on the coronavirus pandemic.