Top U.S. health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, scrambled in early 2020 to respond to public reporting of a potential connection between COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

At Tuesday's Senate Health Committee hearing, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci about "Project Veritas" reporting that EcoHealth Alliance "approached DARPA in March 2018 seeking funding to conduct gain of function research of bat-borne coronaviruses."

According to the documents, NIAID (under the direction of Dr. Fauci) later went ahead with the research in Wuhan, China, and at several sites in the U.S.

WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, sparred with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., at a hearing Tuesday after Paul attacked him for appearing to disagree with scientists who said the coronavirus originated in a lab in China.

"What happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there, and I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children, with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me," Fauci said at the Senate hearing.

NIAID director Anthony Fauci, in a fiery exchange with Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday, accused the Kentucky senator of "making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain."

Driving the news: "In usual fashion, senator, you are distorting everything about me," Fauci said, responding to repeated attacks by Paul during a hearing before the Senate's health panel on the federal response to COVID-19 variants.

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul engaged in yet another explosive exchange at a Senate hearing Tuesday.

"I CAN FEEL THE fear — fear of infections,” Tian Junhua said as he gazed wide-eyed at a clump of bats clinging to the wall of a dark cave. “Because when you find the viruses, you are also most easily exposed to the viruses.” Tian, a researcher for the Wuhan Center for Disease Control who was featured in a 2019 video released by the Chinese state-owned media company SMG, described his work tracking down viruses from bats in remote caves as “a true battle, only without the smoke of gunpowder.”

No documents exist explaining why officials decided to remove the definition of “gain-of-function research” from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, the agency told The Epoch Times.

The NIH site used to include a 232-word definition of the research, but it was removed around the same time the agency disclosed that research it funded in China met the definition.

The alteration took place sometime between Oct. 19 and Oct. 21.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a wide-ranging interview that aired Sunday said the political attacks against him are nothing more than "nonsense" and "noise." 

"So anybody spins lies and threatens and all that theater that goes on with some of the investigations and the congressional committees and the Rand Pauls and all that other nonsense, that's noise," Fauci said during an appearance on CBS News' "Face the Nation."

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Sunday called Dr. Anthony Fauci an "unelected technocrat who has distorted science and facts in order to exercise authoritarian control over millions of Americans" after Fauci blasted Cruz for suggesting he be investigated for statements he made about COVID-19.

"He lives in a liberal world where his smug 'I REPRESENT science' attitude is praised," Cruz tweeted.

The lawmaker also called for the Justice Department to investigate Fauci for making false statements to Congress.

Dr. Anthony Fauci got a bit snarky towards one of his loudest Republican critics on Sunday, firing back at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s demand that Attorney General Merrick Garland prosecute the nation’s top infectious disease expert. During a wide-ranging sit-down with CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan, Fauci dismissed the political “theater” coming from GOP lawmakers such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has called for Fauci to be arrested while accusing him of being responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.