After emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci surfaced one of his number one critics, Senator Rand Paul only had two words to say: told you. Emails from Fauci were uncovered by The Washington Post through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which showed the disease expert acknowledging masks did little to stop the virus as well as responses to criticism and praise over his handling messaging regarding the virus.

Fox News reports:

In an April 17 email obtained by the outlet, Fauci said coronavirus mutations that led to COVID-19 are “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human” rather than a lab leak.

Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth, personally thanked Fauci for supporting “evidence” that COVID-19 came from an animal rather than the Wuhan lab in an April 18, 2020, emails obtained by Buzzfeed show.

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In a February response to an emailed query about wearing masks while traveling via plane, Fauci said, “Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.”

Senator Paul has criticized Fauci’s connections to dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute.

“Fauci acknowledged that a gain of function super virus could escape a lab and cause a pandemic, but that it is worth the risk. His naïveté should disqualify him from government service,” Paul wrote in a May 28 tweet responding to Fauci’s comments during the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee hearing

Recently, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment that bans funding for gain-of-function research in Wuhan.