Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who leads the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, has asked the editors of three major science journals to testify about their connection with the federal government.
Wenstrup wrote to the editors-in-chief of The Lancet, Science and Nature requesting their testimony for a hearing on April 16 called “Academic Malpractice: Examining the Relationship Between Scientific Journals, the Government, and Peer Review.”
In his letters, Wenstrup mentioned that the hearing aims to investigate whether the journals allowed the federal government inappropriate access to the scientific review or publishing process.
Wenstrup mentioned that these journals had been in touch with top White House health officials like Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins as per Freedom of Information Act requests, without citing any specific reports or studies in his letters to the editors-in-chief.
A search on the websites of the three science journals for research articles containing the term “COVID-19” yielded nearly 19,000 results.
The Hill has reached out to The Lancet, Science and Nature for comment.
The select subcommittee has continued to bring in officials and experts who were active during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the start of the year, Fauci took part in two days of closed-door interviews with the subcommittee.
When reached for a comment, a spokesperson for Select Subcommittee Democrats said in a statement, “For more than a year, Select Subcommittee Republicans have relied on spurious conjecture to build an extreme, partisan, and conspiratorial narrative against our nation’s public health officials. Their probe—done so under the guise of investigating COVID’s origins—has failed to constructively advance our nation’s pandemic preparedness and public health.
“Nearly half a million pages of documents; more than a dozen transcribed interviews with current and former federal public health officials and researchers; and every COVID-19 origins hearing that we’ve had to date has in no way revealed a cover-up of the pandemic’s origins nor a suppression of the lab leak theory on the parts of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins. While the Majority continues its fishing expedition, Select Subcommittee Democrats will remain focused on forward-looking solutions that protect the American people’s health,” they added.
Updated at 6:26 pm.
