The utter fraudulence of Tony Fauci is obvious now, and it’s widely acknowledged. But it was not always obvious. In March of last year, we interviewed Fauci on this show. We treated him with respect. We took his answers seriously. We’re Americans, so we assumed the man in charge of protecting the United States from COVID must be impressive and rational. We also assumed he was honest. 

But we were wrong. It soon became clear that Tony Fauci was just another sleazy federal bureaucrat — deeply political and often dishonest. More shocking, we then learned that Fauci himself was implicated in the very pandemic he’d been charged with fighting. Fauci supported the grotesque and dangerous experiments that appear to have made COVID possible.  

We came to these conclusions incrementally, spurred by evidence that accumulated over the course of a year. Tonight, we have the mother lode. Thanks to a freedom of information request from Buzzfeed, we have thousands of emails to and from Tony Fauci, going back to the early winter of 2020. Collectively, they show that from the beginning, Fauci was worried the public might conclude that COVID originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Why was Fauci be concerned that Americans would conclude that? Possibly because Tony Fauci knew perfectly well he’d funded gain-of-function experiments at that same laboratory. 

The emails prove Fauci lied about this under oath. 

FAUCI EMAILS SPARK FLOOD OF BACKLASH: ‘NEEDS TO STOP PLAYING GAMES’

Consider this exchange, which began the evening of January 31, 2020. It was a Friday, just before midnight. 

The first email came from an immunologist called Kristian Andersen, who works at the Scripps Research Institute in California. Andersen warned Fauci that COVID appeared to have been manipulated in a laboratory.  

"The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (less than point one percent), so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered." 

The next day, on February 1, Tony Fauci wrote back, "Thanks, Kristian. Talk soon on the call."  

Fauci then sent an urgent email to his top deputy, Hugh Auchincloss. The subject of his email, in all-caps, was "IMPORTANT."  

"Hugh: It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on. Read this paper as well as the email that I will forward you know. You will have tasks today that must be done." 

MACCALLUM PUSHES BACK ON NIH CHIEF DENYING HE REJECTED LAB-LEAK THEORY: ‘YOU AND FAUCI JUMPED TO CONCLUSIONS’

Attached to the email was a document entitled, "Baric, Shi, et al -- Nature Medicine -- SARS Gain of Function.pdf." 

The "Baric" in that attachment refers to Ralph Baric, a virologist based in the United States who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  

Baric worked with a woman called Dr. Shi Zhengli -- known as the "Bat Lady," because she manipulates coronaviruses that infect bats. 

Keep in mind that during questioning from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Tony Fauci denied that this same Ralph Baric had conducted gain-of-function research. Again, this is the Ralph Baric in Fauci’s attachment entitled, "Baric, Shi et al - SARS Gain of Function." Yet, under oath, Fauci denied it: 

DR FAUCI:  Dr. Baric does not do gain function research. And if it is, it's according to the guidelines and it is being conducted in North Carolina…And if you look at the grant and you look at the progress reports, it is not gain function despite the fact that people tweet that.

Oh, it wasn’t just on Twitter. It was in Fauci’s own emails. 

In retrospect, that looks a lot like perjury. We do know that starting early last year, a lot of people at NIH were worried that COVID had not occurred naturally — that it had instead been manipulated in a lab in China – and yet they seemed determined to hide that fact from the public. Why?

On the afternoon of February first last year, Fauci held a conference call with several top virologists. Most of the details of that call remain hidden from public view. They’ve been redacted. We know the call was related to a document entitled, "coronavirus sequence comparison."  

Jeremy Farrar, a British physician who runs a major research nonprofit, reminded everyone on the call that what they said was top-secret.  

"Information and discussion is shared in total confidence and not to be shared until agreement on next steps," he wrote. 

In other emails, Jeremy Farrar passed along an article from the website ZeroHedge, suggesting that the coronavirus might have been created as a bioweapon.  

We now know that’s a more plausible explanation than the one we believed at first and were told by the media which is that coronavirus came from a pangolin.  

TUCKER CARLSON: WHY DID THE WHITE HOUSE SHUT DOWN AN INVESTIGATION INTO COVID ORIGINS?

But for the crime of saying it out loud, a more plausible explanation, ZeroHedge was banned from social media platforms. Until recently, you weren’t allowed to suggest that COVID might be manmade.  

Why? The fact-checkers wouldn’t allow it. Why wouldn’t they? Because Tony Fauci assured the tech monopolies that the coronavirus could not have been manmade. So the tech giants shut down the topic. Fauci lied. 

FAUCI: A group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve, and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.

That was April 17, 2020. Very shortly into the course of this pandemic. At that point, what Tony Fauci just asserted as known could not have conclusively been known. That was a lie. Tony Fauci suggested that he knew because top researchers had decided conclusively, that this must have jumped naturally from an animal to a human being. That was dishonest. 

Two days later, one of the virologists Tony Fauci was funding to conduct dangerous coronavirus experiments in Wuhan wrote to thank him for the help. That man, Peter Daszak, complained to Fauci that the American tax dollars he’d taken for these experiments were being "publicly targeted by Fox News reporters." Yet he remained grateful for Tony Fauci’s support.  

HANNITY: WAS FAUCI ENGAGED IN A ‘SCIENTIFIC’ COVERUP?

"I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators," he wrote. 

Strangely, most of this specific email from Daszak to Fauci has been redacted under FOIA section (b)(7)(A). That specific exemption to disclosure applies to: "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that production could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings." 

Are Dazak and Fauci under criminal investigation? We can only hope they are. They certainly deserve it. At this point, we can’t say for sure. We do know that Fauci hasn't just lied about the origins of COVID, pretending to know things he could not know. He’s also lied about vaccines in key ways. 

In March of last year, former Obama official Zeke Emanuel wrote to Fauci to ask a simple question, one that we’ve asked countless times: Are people who’ve recovered from COVID generally immune from re-infection?  That applies to about 100 million Americans, so it’s not a small question.

Fauci’s response: "No evidence in this regard, but you would assume that there would be substantial immunity post-infection."  

Yes, you would assume that. We always have. And in fact, studies now show it’s true. People who’ve had COVID and recovered almost never get sick again from COVID. They don’t need to be vaccinated. Yet to this day, Fauci has never admitted that in public. In his email to Zeke Emmanuel, he admitted something else that’s also now obvious: surgical mask, the paper kind all of us wear, don’t really work. They offer very little protection from COVID. In fact, at least one study shows they may accelerate the transmission of viruses. They’re a form of make-believe. Yet, once again, while under oath in public, Fauci claimed precisely the opposite.

RAND PAUL GIVES 2-WORD RESPONSE TO FAUCI'S UNEARTHED EMAILS

SEN. RAND PAUL: You’re telling everybody to wear a mask, whether they’ve had an infection or a vaccine. What I’m saying is they have immunity and everybody agrees they have immunity. What studies do you have that people that have had the vaccine or have had the infection are spreading the infection? If we’re not spreading the infection, isn’t it just theater? 

DR. FAUCI: No, it’s not- 

SEN. PAUL: If you’ve had a vaccine and you’re wearing two masks, isn’t that theater? 

DR. FAUCI: No, that’s not. Here we go again with the theater. 

DR. FAUCI: Let me just state for the record that masks are not theater. Masks are protective and we ask- Sen. Paul: If they have immunity, they are theater. If you already have immunity, you’re wearing a mask to give comfort to others. You’re not wearing a mask because of because of any science.

DR. FAUCI: I totally disagree with you.

Rand Paul is a physician. He’s smart. What he just said was true, and the science shows that it’s true. There’s not much debate about it, actually, among honest people. 

But Tony Fauci claimed it wasn’t true. He lied. Why would he do that? Well, here’s one reason: the emails show that Tony Fauci speaks regularly to Bill Gates

Bill Gates isn’t a doctor. Bill Gates isn’t a scientist. Bill Gates is a very rich man who made billions making mediocre software for office computers. So why would Tony Fauci be in such regular contact with Bill Gates? 

Yet the term "Bill Gates" comes up more than two dozen times in the Fauci emails. Has Bill Gates profited in any way from Tony Fauci’s COVID guidance? That would definitely be worth knowing. Immediately. And yet we don’t know. Our media don’t seem interested in finding out. Here's how CNN covered the emails today.  

MSNBC'S NICOLLE WALLACE DOESN'T PRESS FAUCI ON EMAILS, GUSHES DURING SOFTBALL INTERVIEW

"Thousands of emails from and to Dr. Fauci reveal the weight that came with his role as a rare source of frank honesty within the Trump administration's COVID-19 task force."  

Can you imagine a more dishonest characterization of anything than that? It’s hard to. 

By the way, it wasn’t just CNN. No reporters asked about these emails at today's White House briefing. Not one question. But you shouldn’t be surprised. Of course, they didn’t ask. Fauci’s too big to question that at this point.  

"Oh my god," one Biden voter wrote to him back in March. "Is there anything I can do for you, besides being grateful?"  

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"Wash my feet with your tears," Fauci may have responded. We can’t say that he did respond that way for certain. We don’t have his reply. We do know that in affluent neighborhoods throughout Washington D.C., you can still see signs that say "Thank you, Dr. Fauci." What does that tell you? 

It tells you that Tony Fauci is no longer a scientist, assuming he ever was. He’s a figure of religious veneration — Jesus for people who don’t believe in God.  

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the June 2, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."