Messages reveal proximal origin authors doubted the science behind their own paper; Fauci takes Fifth

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has released internal Slack messages exchanged among the authors of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”  – Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, Eddie Holmes, and Andrew Rambaut. 

The messages, obtained as part of his ongoing COVID-19 origins investigation, are now available in The Reading Room at paul.senate.gov/readingroom.

The Proximal Origin paper, published in "Nature Medicine" in March 2020, was widely cited by public health officials and the media as the scientific authority for ruling out a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. The newly released messages show that behind closed doors, the paper’s own authors were far less certain than their public conclusions suggested.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was scheduled to testify at 8:30 a.m. today before the committee. However, Fauci declined to answer senators’ questions the hearing Wednesday morning on the origins of CoVid-19 and the government’s handling of the pandemic, and invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid the possibility that Republicans could try to use his testimony to prosecute him for perjury.

Former President Joe Biden issued a preemptive, unconditional pardon to Fauci on Jan. 20, 2025, protecting him from potential federal prosecution related to his COVID-19 pandemic response work.

In the messages, Andersen assigned a 30% probability to a lab origin. Holmes gave an estimate of 20%, later revising it down to 10%. Both numbers stand in direct contrast to the paper’s public assertion that there was no way the virus had been manipulated.

The documents also reveal extensive internal debate over the furin cleavage site, the genetic feature at the heart of the lab-leak question, with Andersen at one point telling colleagues that “some smoking(ish) guns” had emerged that made him “not comfortable,” and that he had “less confidence… at this stage.”

Separately, the messages show the authors coordinating directly with the U.S. intelligence community and NIH leadership during the same period they were publicly defending their conclusions. 

Andersen told his co-authors he expected to “have a handler” beginning that week as the intelligence community’s 90-day review was underway. Holmes repeatedly referenced a source in China he called “my spy.” 

Following the leak of the DARPA DEFUSE proposal, which detailed a plan to insert furin cleavage sites into bat coronaviruses, the group discussed the need to “stay off email” and to “carefully curate” their correspondence “for the FOI records,” while also noting the need to “get something back to Tony [Fauci]’s team at NIH.”

The release is part of Chairman Paul’s broader effort to make the underlying record of the COVID-19 origins investigation publicly available.