The Trump administration’s National Institutes of Health is still funneling millions in taxpayer money to researchers accused of helping suppress debate over whether COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory — a theory early emails show they privately considered.

Following the outbreak, then–NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and then–NIH Director Francis Collins dismissed lab-leak suggestions, leaning heavily on a March 2020 Nature Medicine article titled The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2. The paper concluded the virus was not lab-made — but newly released correspondence paints a different picture of the authors’ early thinking.

Kristian Andersen, the paper’s lead author, emailed Fauci on January 31, 2020, acknowledging that certain unusual features of the virus “potentially look engineered.” He noted he and fellow scientists Edward Holmes, Robert Garry, and Michael Farzan all found the genome “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”

Days later, Farzan told Fauci and Collins he was uncertain whether the virus was adapted, evolved naturally, or engineered, putting his odds at “70:30 or 60:40” in favor of a lab-linked scenario before later reversing those numbers.

A House subcommittee investigation revealed the paper’s drafting followed a February conference call involving Fauci, Collins, and about a dozen scientists. Within days, four participants had drafted the report, which was then sent to Fauci and Collins “for editing and approval” before publication.

The final version flatly stated the virus was “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” a conclusion that bolstered Fauci and Collins’s public stance and helped cement the lab-leak theory as fringe in the media.

Critics say that shift — from private skepticism to public certainty — wasn’t just a scientific evolution but an intentional cover-up. Dr. Richard Ebright of Rutgers University accused the authors of “science fraud,” asserting they published conclusions they knew to be invalid and then reinforced them with “patently unsound” follow-up work. He is calling for federal investigations, grant clawbacks, and a ban on the researchers receiving future funding.

Yet grant records show the money hasn’t stopped flowing. Andersen alone is listed as the principal investigator on multiple active NIH grants, including:

• Over $2.5 million for the Center for Viral Systems Biology (CViSB)
• $319,000 for CViSB’s Administrative Core
• $602,000 for a project studying virus genetics and immunity in diseases including COVID-19

Andersen’s co-director at CViSB, Robert Garry, leads a separate $515,000 project analyzing disease severity and vaccine responses for viruses such as Ebola, Lassa, and SARS-CoV-2.

Another co-author, Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, is heading a $1.9 million federally funded project on gene-environment interactions in infectious disease. Lipkin told Blaze News he’s no longer pursuing COVID-19 research and warned about the risks posed by both wild animal markets and unregulated high-risk pathogen experiments.

Meanwhile, Holmes and another Proximal Origin co-author, Andrew Rambaut, do not currently have active NIH-funded projects.

Despite mounting calls for accountability, an NIH spokesperson would not confirm whether any compliance reviews were underway, citing policy against discussing specific investigations. Andersen and Garry did not respond to requests for comment.

For critics, the continued funding of scientists tied to what they see as a politically motivated suppression of legitimate inquiry is proof the system hasn’t reckoned with one of the most consequential public health scandals in modern history. And unless action is taken, they warn, the same players could shape the narrative the next time a pandemic emerges.