Do recently published grant documents prove that Anthony Fauci misrepresented the purpose of US funding for virus research in China?

The Intercept recently published grant documents detailing the National Institutes of Health’s funding of bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The publication stated that the documents do not implicate NIH official Anthony Fauci in lying about the research. Nor do they show that the research might have led to the origin of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The Intercept noted that the documents “do not make clear whether Fauci read them,” although the staff at the NIH agency he runs “did know about the research.”

Scientists interviewed by The Intercept disagreed about whether the grant, made to the Wuhan Lab through an intermediary nonprofit in 2014, actually enabled so-called “gain of function” research. A White House spokesperson reiterated that the “NIH has never approved any research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans.”