Sen. Rand Paul and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are blasting Dr. Anthony Fauci and ABC News following claims by a former network correspondent that Fauci may have been involved in reviewing a 2021 report about the possibility that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory.
The controversy erupted after former ABC correspondent Terry Moran described how a report he prepared examining the lab-leak theory was substantially altered before it reached the air. Moran said his reporting included conversations with molecular virologists and officials from the Trump administration, along with an examination of evidence connected to the Wuhan laboratory.
Moran said that when the segment was returned to him following an internal review on the day it was supposed to air, the version he received bore little resemblance to what he had submitted.
“And it comes back to me and it is incomprehensible,” Moran said.
Asked during an appearance on “The Fifth Column” podcast who had been involved in reviewing his work, Moran responded: “Lawyers, standards, and — I was told — Fauci.”
Moran cautioned that he cannot independently confirm that ABC actually provided Fauci with the script. His assertion, he explained, was based on what he was told at the time about who participated in the review process.
Paul, a Kentucky Republican who repeatedly confronted Fauci during congressional hearings over the federal government’s pandemic response, quickly seized on Moran’s account as evidence of improper influence over the network’s reporting.
“The former Senior National Correspondent of ABC News recently admitted the network’s editorial independence took a back seat to the Anthony Fauci-led cover-up,” Paul wrote Saturday on X.
DeSantis also sharply criticized ABC over the allegation that Fauci was involved in the process.
“What a pathetic indictment of ABC News,” the Florida governor posted on X. “Letting Fauci of all people dictate coverage.”
According to Moran, ABC’s standards department had adopted the position at the time that raising the possibility of a laboratory origin for COVID-19 was potentially dangerous, making it exceedingly difficult to seriously explore the theory in the report.
Moran said the segment was ultimately loaded with so many disclaimers, caveats and legal qualifications that he chose not to watch the final version after it aired.
The possibility that COVID-19 emerged from a laboratory has remained the subject of intense scientific and political debate years after the pandemic began.
Subsequent congressional investigations revealed that Fauci was provided with drafts of a 2020 scientific paper supporting a natural origin for the virus after scientists had privately discussed the possibility that it could have originated in a laboratory.
Moran’s account is now fueling longstanding criticism among conservatives who contend that major news organizations were too willing during the pandemic to accept the conclusions of government public-health officials while dismissing or marginalizing competing theories.
Moran departed ABC in 2025 after publishing a social media post attacking White House adviser Stephen Miller. Since leaving the network, he has also acknowledged what he viewed as political bias in ABC’s coverage.
Writing in an essay, Moran said the network frequently failed to adequately represent pro-Trump viewpoints and acknowledged that ABC was biased, though he characterized that bias as largely inadvertent rather than deliberate.
For Paul and DeSantis, however, the latest allegations go beyond the broader question of ideological bias in the media. Moran’s account raises the question of whether one of the federal government’s most prominent public-health officials was permitted to influence how a major television network presented one of the central controversies surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
{Matzav.com}
