Fauci Deposition Transcript Released: ‘I Don’t Recall’ 174 Times

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 14: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of A
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Hannah Knudsen

Louisiana and Missouri on Monday released the entirety of the November 23, 2022, deposition of Dr. Anthony Fauci as part of the lawsuit against the Biden administration and federal government, which Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) said confirms that “federal bureaucrats in collusion with social media companies want to control not only what you think, but especially what you say.”

The lawsuit focused on allegations of federal officials colluding with social media companies to censor speech, and Fauci’s deposition, Landry explained, shows that “social engineering tactics were used against the American public, not to limit your exposure to a virus, but to limit your exposure to information that did not fit within a government sanctioned narrative.”

The deposition shows Fauci, again, attempting to sidestep the reality of gain of function research being conducted at the Wuhan lab, deeming gain of function a “misleading terminology” and pointing to “outside groups” — but not the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—  that decided to “strictly define the guardrails of experiments that would require additional oversight and did away with the terminology ‘gain of function’ because it can often be very confusing and misleading.”

However, throughout the deposition, Fauci feigned ignorance, stating, “I don’t recall” 174 times when facing questions about various emails, interviews, or “other important documents,” as described by Landry’s press release. 

At one point, for instance, Fauci claimed he was not aware of an EcoHealth Alliance grant, awarded by the NIH which was then sub-awarded to the Wuhan lab. 

“Did you, at any time later, become aware that NIAID was funding this project understanding the risk of bat Coronavirus emergence?” he was asked. 

“I became aware of this after all of the attention was put on it, following the early part of January, February, mid-March of 2020, but I certainly was not aware — well, I wouldn’t say certainly because who knows what came across my desk,” Fauci said, asserting that “thousands of pieces of paper come across my desk.”

“But I do not recall at all being aware of the existence of this grant at the time that it was initially funded of the dates shown on page 2,” he added. 

Further, when asked overtly if he held concerns about “what people might be saying on social media about the virus’s origin,” the public figure brazenly claimed that he is “so disassociated from social media.”

“You know, I’m so dissociated from social media. I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t do any of that, so I’m not familiar with that. I’ve never gotten involved in any of that,” Fauci claimed before admitting that he personally spoke with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg:

“Missouri and Louisiana are leading the way in exposing how the federal government and the Biden Administration worked with social media to censor speech,” Missouri Attorney General and U.S. Senator-Elect Eric Schmitt (R) said in a statement.

“In our deposition with Dr. Fauci, it became clear that when Dr. Fauci speaks, social media censors,” he continued. “I invite everyone to read the deposition transcript and see exactly how Dr. Fauci operates, and exactly how the COVID tyranny that ruined lives and destroyed businesses was born”:

Read the full deposition here.

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