Richard Ebright is a scientist at Rutgers University and was one of the earliest critics of the government’s false narratives around COVID. In this interview, Ebright discusses Anthony Fauci’s backdated pardon, the effort to suppress the laboratory-origin hypothesis, and the professional costs of dissent. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Rufo: So take us back and tell us exactly what’s happening here, and what’s the significance of this backdated pardon all the way to 2014?
Ebright: I, of course, do not know the motivation of the Biden administration—or of the autopen operator—in setting the pardon’s start date. I can say that Anthony Fauci approved a research grant that supported high-risk virus-discovery research and very high-risk virus gain-of-function research on SARS coronaviruses in Wuhan, China, starting in 2014. I can also say that Anthony Fauci, in his role as NIAID director, repeatedly and flagrantly—misfeasantly—violated U.S. government policies that were put in effect in 2014 to protect the public from laboratory-generated pandemics: specifically, a pause that was put in place in October 2014 that precluded federal funding of gain-of-function research on influenza viruses, MERS viruses, and SARS viruses—a pause that most definitely covered the research in that grant proposal, but which, nevertheless, Anthony Fauci and his office continued funding in flagrant, open violation of the pause.
