FIRST ON FOX: Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul will release a book later this year that focuses on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, and argues that former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' director Dr. Anthony Fauci deceived the world about the disease.
The book is called "Deception: The Great Covid Coverup" and will be released in October by Regnery Publishing, a Salem Media Group company and the publisher of numerous conservative books.
"Covid-19 was deadly, but the real killer was the cover-up, led by Anthony Fauci — America’s most durable medical bureaucrat — who knew from the beginning the virus was likely genetically engineered and possibly leaked from a lab," Paul said in a statement in the publisher's news release. "He knew because he’d skirted regulations and funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan and elsewhere. We can’t allow Fauci and his yes-men to walk away from what they’ve done, or the next pandemic may be far worse."
"Wielding previously unimaginable power, Anthony Fauci misled the country about the origins of the Covid pandemic and shut down scientific dissent. One of the few leaders who dared to challenge 'America’s Doctor' was Senator Rand Paul, himself a physician. Deception is his indictment of the catastrophic failures of the public health bureaucracy during the pandemic," Regnery said of the book in a press release.
Paul has consistently taken aim at Fauci for his role in the COVID-19 pandemic response, and has criticized the health official for the NIAID's involvement with the Wuhan, China, lab that studied coronaviruses.
Last month, Paul accused Fauci of being culpable of "one of the worst judgment errors" in his handling of COVID by pushing for the funding "gain of function" research in China.
"I think Fauci deserves culpability and history is going to judge him very poorly because he made the judgment to fund this research. It's dangerous research. He doesn't want to call it gain of function, but most other scientists do call it gain of function in Wuhan in an opaque totalitarian country. And in the end, there was a leak from the lab and millions of people died worldwide. And this didn't happen sort of accidentally. The leak may have been accident, but the funding wasn't accidental," Paul said during an appearance on Fox and Friends in April.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"Tony Fauci actually went around the system. We had set up a system where there's a committee, they're supposed to go before a committee to judge whether this was dangerous and whether it should be funded. Tony Fauci exempted Wuhan from the committee. They never went before the committee. And this is extraordinary. The committee that was supposed to provide safety and review this, never looked at the research in Wuhan because Tony Fauci gave them exception. So the thing is, yes, he does bear responsibility for maybe one of the worst judgment errors in the history of modern medicine or modern public health to fund this dangerous research," he added.
Paul's book, which is now available for pre-order on Amazon, is slated to be released on October 10.
