James Erdman III, a CIA whistleblower, provided testimony on May 13, 2026, that the Biden administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, purposefully and intentionally, buried analysis that concluded a lab leak was the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic during a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the chairman of the committee, revealed that Erdman, who worked for the CIA for over two decades, chose to testify concerning the alleged cover-up at “great personal risk” because “government secrecy cannot become government impunity.” Paul’s oversight committee subpoenaed Erdman’s testimony and previously conducted an interview with him in a classified setting.
Erdman then served in a joint role with the Director of National Intelligence’s Director’s Initiative Group (DIG) to launch a probe into the origins of COVID that took place over the last year. “According to his testimony, CIA scientific analysts concluded multiple times between 2021 and 2023 that a lab leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19,” Paul went on to say in his opening statement.
“Yet those conclusions never shaped the official narrative, never made the intelligence report. Congress was never told,” he added. “It was not until after the 2024 election that the outgoing Biden administration directed the CIA to issue an assessment, not because of new intelligence, but so officials could walk out of the door claiming there was nothing left to find,” the Kentucky Republican continued. “That is not analysis. That is a cleanup operation.”
According to a report from Fox News, Erdman then publicly testified before the panel despite aggressive opposition from the CIA, which referred to the COVID origins hearing as nothing more than “political theater.” During the hearing, Erdman was asked by Paul if the CIA purposefully downplayed the likelihood that COVID-19 was released into the public due to a lab leak.
“It was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci, injecting himself into the IC [intelligence community],” Erdman said in response. According to a report from the New York Post, Erdman then said, “Dr. Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional and that he meddled in the COVID origin analysis by providing “a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials and scientists” to the intelligence community.
“The CIA and DNI analytic managers responsible for examining the origin of COVID made decisions inconsistent with the conclusions of subject matter experts and analytical tradecraft, consistently favoring the theory of zoonosis or natural origin,” Erdman continued. In an email exchange dated June 2021, Erdman recalled how the leader of a 90-day IC review of the origins of the virus waved away concerns from a senior analyst about Fauci injecting himself into the process as a “subject matter expert.”
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The officer pointed out that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases denied publicly having any expertise on the subject of coronavirus, while also attempting to privately direct the investigation. Following Erdman’s testimony, several Republican lawmakers called for Fauci to be criminally prosecuted.
“We just heard testimony that he intervened behind the scenes to try and get our own intelligence agency, CIA, FBI to change their assessment of the lab leak,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said in a statement to Fox News. “Why? Because he helped fund the Wuhan lab. He supported and funded gain-of-function research, and then he tried to cover it up, and then he worked to cover it up from the American people.” Hawley then said that he hopes Fauci is indicted.
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