Gabbard names Fauci as ODNI release confirms 120 US funded biolabs and reopens COVID question

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released new evidence of a US taxpayer funded biolab network spanning more than 120 laboratories across over 30 countries. The release reopens the question of whether COVID-19 originated in a lab conducting gain of function research, and names Dr Anthony Fauci by name as one of the officials Gabbard says lied to the American public about the labs' existence.

The ODNI press release, published on dni.gov on 12 June 2026, says many of the labs have handled "hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases to include dangerous Gain-of-Function research, with very little visibility or oversight."

Gain of function research, in plain terms, is the deliberate genetic enhancement of a virus or other organism to make it more transmissible or more deadly. Scientists do it, in theory, to understand how a pathogen might evolve and to develop vaccines ahead of the curve. It's also the kind of research that's been at the centre of the question of whether COVID-19 was made in a laboratory. Four US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the FBI, now lean toward the lab leak hypothesis with low to moderate confidence. China continues to block independent investigation.

US President Donald Trump banned federal funding of gain of function research overseas in Executive Order 14292, signed on 25 May 2025. The labs Gabbard has now named were funded long before that ban.

The release came with declassified intelligence slides showing maps of the labs, the pathogens they handled, and US funding lines. More than 40 of the named facilities are in Ukraine, where Gabbard's statement warned they may be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing war with Russia. One facility singled out in the slides is the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine in Kharkiv. The pathogens listed across the network include anthrax, plague, tularemia, Ebola, Marburg, MERS, SARS, swine fever, Newcastle disease, Lassa, and Rickettsia.

Then came the line that put a name on it. Gabbard's statement read:

"Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration's national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth."

That's the official US Director of National Intelligence, on the dni.gov website, accusing a former US health official by name of lying to the American public. In almost any other situation, that's the start of a criminal case. In this one, it's the end of one. Gabbard's release is also one of her final acts as DNI. She steps down on 30 June.

Here's why no one will face charges, and what's actually in the chain that leads to Fauci's name.

What was called Russian propaganda three years ago

In March 2022, weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, claims started circulating that the US had funded biolabs in the country. Most Western media outlets, governments and "fact-checkers" labelled the claims Russian propaganda, disinformation, or a conspiracy theory.

Two moments cracked that framing open at the time, and both have aged differently than expected.

The first was on 8 March 2022, when then Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Marco Rubio asked her a direct question. He expected a flat denial.

Rubio: "Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?"

Nuland: "Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of. So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces, should they approach."

Nuland didn't deny the labs existed. She confirmed they did, and said the US was worried about Russia getting hold of "research materials." She then pivoted to say that if a biological weapons attack happened inside Ukraine, "there is no doubt in my mind" Russia would be the one behind it.

The State Department later told Newsweek that Nuland had been referring to "diagnostic and biodefense" labs, not bioweapons labs. The distinction matters but it isn't a denial.

The second moment was Russia's formal complaint to the United Nations Security Council on 11 March 2022, when Russia accused the US of running a Pentagon funded military biological program in Ukraine. Russian Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, then chief of Russia's nuclear, biological and chemical defence forces, presented slides at a Moscow news conference naming specific facilities, contractors and funding lines. Western coverage at the time treated this as propaganda.

The Gabbard release four years later contains many of the same lab locations, the same contractor names, and the same funding lines Kirillov named in 2022. The framing is different. The factual content overlaps to a striking degree.

The Hunter Biden link, on the public record

One element of the 2022 Russian claims focused on Hunter Biden, the son of then President Joe Biden, and an investment fund he co-founded called Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners. Russia accused Rosemont Seneca of helping fund Pentagon biolab work in Ukraine. Western fact-checkers called the claim false or misleading.

The underlying paper trail, however, was real. According to emails recovered from Hunter Biden's laptop, later authenticated by the New York Times and Washington Post, Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners invested $500,000 in a San Francisco pathogen research firm called Metabiota. Metabiota held an $18.4 million Pentagon contract and worked in Ukraine alongside Black & Veatch, a US defence contractor that had been commissioned by the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency to build a biolab in Odessa, Ukraine.

Emails from the laptop show Hunter Biden personally introduced Metabiota to executives at Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where he sat on the board, in 2014, for what one Metabiota memo described as a "science project" involving Ukrainian biolabs.

Whether that adds up to "Hunter Biden funded the biolabs" is a question of framing. Whether Rosemont Seneca, a fund Hunter Biden co-founded and managed, invested in a Pentagon contractor that worked on Ukraine biolabs is a question of documents. The documents say yes.

The Fauci accountability chain

Anthony Fauci ran the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, for 38 years, from 1984 to December 2022. NIAID is the US government agency that funds research on infectious diseases. It sits inside the National Institutes of Health, or NIH.

During Fauci's time running NIAID, the agency gave grants to a US non profit called EcoHealth Alliance, run by British zoologist Peter Daszak. EcoHealth then passed roughly $750,000 of that money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China to fund research on bat coronaviruses. Some of that research modified the viruses to make them more transmissible.

That's not a conspiracy theory. It's confirmed by NIH itself, by the US House Oversight Committee, and by documents obtained under freedom of information laws by The Intercept and others.

The reason Fauci's name keeps coming up sits in a contradiction between two sworn statements.

On 11 May 2021, Fauci told the US Senate, under oath, in response to questioning from Senator Rand Paul: "The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

In 2024, NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak testified to Congress that NIH had in fact funded gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the EcoHealth grant. The agency where Fauci spent his career, under questioning, admitted the thing he had said never happened did happen.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic recommended in 2024 that Peter Daszak be debarred from US federal funding and criminally investigated. EcoHealth's grant was terminated. Daszak hasn't been charged with any crime.

NIH removed the longstanding definition of "gain-of-function" from its website on the same day Tabak reported EcoHealth's experiments to Congress.

That's the contradiction Rand Paul has been chasing since 2021. It's the same chain Gabbard pointed at in her statement.

The pardon

On 20 January 2025, in his final hours as US President, Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Anthony Fauci.

A preemptive pardon is unusual. Normally a US president pardons someone after they've been charged with or convicted of a specific crime. Biden pardoned Fauci for any federal offence he may have committed between 1 January 2014 and 20 January 2025, without any charges being filed and without naming a specific offence.

The window covers Fauci's entire COVID response, every Senate appearance, every grant decision, every EcoHealth funding approval, and every email.

Biden issued the pardon as part of a batch that also included retired General Mark Milley, the members of the House January 6 committee, the police who testified to that committee, and members of his own family. He signed them roughly 20 minutes before Trump was sworn in.

Biden's stated reason was that the recipients faced "unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions" from the incoming Trump administration. Trump had publicly threatened to investigate Fauci.

Fauci accepted the pardon. He said in a statement he had committed no crime. There's a US Supreme Court precedent from 1915, Burdick v United States, that says accepting a pardon implies acknowledgment of guilt. Lawyers argue about how much weight that precedent still carries. The pardon itself is binding either way.

The closed window

The second shield is time.

Under US federal law, the statute of limitations for lying to Congress is five years. Fauci's testimony was given on 11 May 2021. The window to indict him for it closed on 11 May 2026.

On 5 May 2026, with six days to go, Senator Rand Paul made one last public push. He wrote on social media:

"6 days from now, on May 11th, the statute of limitations expires on the possibility of indicting Anthony Fauci for denying under oath that he funded gain-of-function research involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, the origin city of the pandemic."

No indictment was filed.

Eight days later, on 14 May 2026, the Washington Times reported that a CIA whistleblower had testified to Congress that Fauci not only knew the origin of COVID was a Chinese lab but actively covered up that fact. The window had already closed.

So the situation now sits like this. The pardon blocks any federal charge for anything Fauci did up to 20 January 2025. The statute of limitations on the only specific perjury charge anyone was building has expired. The window is closed and the door is locked from both sides.

The closest the prosecution got

The closest the prosecution got

On 28 April 2026, the US Department of Justice unsealed a federal grand jury indictment against Dr David Morens, who was Fauci's senior adviser at NIAID from 2006 to 2022. It's the first criminal case ever brought against a senior US federal health official over misconduct during COVID-19.

Morens, 78, faces four federal charges: conspiracy against the United States, destruction or falsification of records in federal investigations, concealment or removal of records, and aiding and abetting. If convicted on every count, he could face up to 51 years in prison.

The case was announced by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche after an investigation by the FBI and the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services. It's being prosecuted out of the US District Court in Maryland.

According to the indictment, Morens used a personal Gmail account to discuss official NIH business so the records wouldn't show up under Freedom of Information Act requests. The DOJ alleges he and two unnamed co-conspirators ran a scheme to conceal communications about COVID research grants. The description of "Co-Conspirator 1" in the indictment matches Peter Daszak, then president of EcoHealth Alliance.

The grant at the centre of it has a name. "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." It's the EcoHealth grant that funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Trump administration terminated it in 2020. Prosecutors allege Morens worked to get it restored and, separately, authored a medical journal submission aimed at countering the lab leak theory and pushing the natural origin explanation. The DOJ called it an effort "to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19."

The alleged kickbacks aren't cash. According to the indictment, Morens received wine and offers of meals at high-end restaurants in exchange for his help. The most senior COVID adviser to the most senior US infectious disease official, allegedly trading federal records concealment for dinners.

Fauci isn't charged. He's referred to in the indictment only as "Senior NIAID Official 1." Morens's lawyer has declined to comment publicly. Morens hasn't entered a plea on the record and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

The Independent Institute, writing in May 2026, said what most observers had already concluded. Fauci was the real prosecutorial target. But Fauci is pardoned, and Morens isn't.

Where Fauci is now

He's a Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC, where he's worked since July 2023. His appointments sit across three Georgetown institutions:

• The School of Medicine, in the Division of Infectious Diseases
• The McCourt School of Public Policy
• The O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, as a Distinguished Senior Scholar

He's still publicly active. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology named him 2026 Distinguished Scientist earlier this year. In May 2026, he delivered the keynote at Macalester College's commencement and received an honorary degree, alongside his wife Dr Christine Grady, who was for years the chief of bioethics at the NIH Clinical Center.

A few other details haven't had as much coverage. President Trump cancelled Fauci's federal security detail in early 2025. Fauci was hospitalised at one point with West Nile virus and recovered at home.

NIAID, the agency Fauci ran for almost four decades, is currently leaderless during the active African Ebola outbreak. NBC News reported on 1 June 2026 that it isn't clear who's running the institute.

The man now running the National Institutes of Health is Stanford economist and physician Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya co authored the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020 opposing COVID lockdowns. Internal emails released to Congress show Fauci and former NIH Director Francis Collins privately described Bhattacharya at the time as a "fringe epidemiologist" they wanted publicly discredited. Bhattacharya now runs Fauci's old building.

The bigger picture

The Gabbard release isn't an isolated event. A peer reviewed study published in the Journal of Public Health in May 2025 identified 3,625 high containment biological laboratories worldwide. That includes 3,515 BSL-3 labs across 149 countries and 110 BSL-4 labs across 34 countries. BSL-3 and BSL-4 are the top two safety classifications for labs handling the world's most dangerous pathogens.

The study found that detailed location and pathogen information was publicly available for only 955 of the 3,515 BSL-3 labs. That's 27%. The other 73% either don't disclose or aren't required to. The study also found that 91.6% of countries with at least one BSL-3 lab have no formal national guidelines for dual use research of concern.

So the global infrastructure handling the worst pathogens humanity has discovered is bigger than most people knew, less transparent than any other dangerous industry, and largely unregulated. That's the context Gabbard's 120 lab disclosure sits inside.

Why this matters for Australia

The story isn't just American. In 2013, a team led by Professor Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and CSIRO scientist Professor Linfa Wang isolated a SARS-like coronavirus directly from Chinese horseshoe bats. They named it SL-CoV WIV1. The isolation methodology used was developed by scientists at CSIRO's Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong. The work was published in the journal Science.

So when Gabbard's release names the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a site of dangerous gain of function research, the institute named is the same one that worked with an Australian government science agency, using Australian methodology, on the bat coronavirus research that sits at the centre of the COVID origin question.

In May 2020, after News Limited reporting and a statement by Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson, CSIRO issued a statement saying it had "no current joint research programs with the Wuhan Institute for Virology." The word "current" carries weight. CSIRO confirmed in the same statement that two scientists who had previously worked at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness had also worked at WIV. One for three years between 2011 and 2014, and another as a visiting scientist for three months in 2006.

A November 2021 Freedom of Information request to CSIRO asked for the risk assessments, due diligence and bioethics documents that approved CSIRO collaboration in gain of function research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The matter hasn't received serious follow-up from Australian mainstream media.

If the US Director of National Intelligence is now formally on the record saying US funded labs handled dangerous pathogens, including gain of function research, with very little visibility or oversight, and one of the named labs is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's a question for CSIRO too. Whether anyone in Canberra wants to ask it is another matter.

What's verified and what isn't

Verified and on the public record: The ODNI release exists and names Fauci. NIH funded EcoHealth, which funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including for gain of function research. Fauci's 2021 Senate testimony is on the record. Tabak's 2024 contradicting testimony is on the record. The Biden pardon is on the record, with its scope (1 January 2014 to 20 January 2025) publicly documented. The Morens charges are on the public docket. The Hunter Biden Metabiota investments are documented in laptop emails authenticated by the New York Times and Washington Post.

Attributed but not independently confirmed: The CIA whistleblower's claim that Fauci actively covered up the lab origin.

Still unresolved: Whether COVID itself originated in the Wuhan lab. Four US intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, DOE, DOD) now lean toward the lab leak hypothesis with low to moderate confidence. China continues to block independent investigation, which says enough on it's own.

What's settled either way is that the people most accused of lying about US funded biolabs aren't going to face any consequences for it. The system that was supposed to find out has been switched off. The official intelligence release naming Fauci changes the historical record. It doesn't change anything else.