Tulsi Gabbard Spends Her Final Hours as Spy Chief Accusing Fauci of Funding the Leak That Started Covid

Tulsi Gabbard used her last act as America's intelligence chief to accuse Dr Anthony Fauci of bankrolling the Wuhan research she says triggered the Covid-19 pandemic.

The outgoing Director of National Intelligence released a cache of declassified communications on 18 June 2026, presenting the disclosure as a parting blow on what she called her final day in the post.

Her office alleged that Fauci steered millions in taxpayer money toward gain-of-function work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, manipulated intelligence assessments on the virus's origin and lied to Congress under oath. The accusations are sweeping, the documents are real, and the underlying science remains far less settled than the headline implies.

A Parting Salvo From the Outgoing Intelligence Chief

Gabbard announced in May 2026 that she would leave on 30 June to support her husband, Abraham, through treatment for a rare bone cancer, closing an often turbulent tenure under President Donald Trump.

On 18 June, her office publishedODNI News Release No. 11-26, under the blunt title 'Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID'. She amplified it on her official account on X, telling the public, 'It's time you know the truth.'

The release rests on what the agency describes as a yearlong declassification review and on accounts from intelligence whistleblowers who reported retaliation for challenging the official handling of the origins question.

Her office casts Fauci in three overlapping roles during the pandemic: funder of risky coronavirus research, behind-the-scenes adviser nudging assessments toward a natural origin, and the dominant public voice on pandemic policy. The supporting documents and communications include emails, an August 2021 whistleblower complaint, and a May 2020 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory assessment.

The Fauci disclosure followed a separate declassification on 12 June, in which her office said it had identified long-standing US funding for more than 120 biological laboratories across over 30 countries, including sites in Ukraine. That earlier release set the tone for a final stretch defined by aggressive transparency claims aimed at the previous administration. The Fauci material pushed that campaign into its most personal territory yet.

The Gain-of-Function Funding Dispute, Revisited

At the centre of the funding claim sits a five-year grant worth roughly £2.7m ($3.7m) that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded to the New York nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which subcontracted part of the work to the Wuhan Institute. Fauci led that agency throughout the period in question.

Whether the bat coronavirus experiments funded under the grant qualify as gain-of-function research has been argued over for years. The grant dates to 2014 and was renewed before the pandemic, and in May 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services suspended EcoHealth's federal funding, citing the group's failure to adequately monitor the Wuhan work.

Fauci has repeatedly rejected the charge. Testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in June 2024, he maintained that, under the federal regulatory standard known as P3CO, the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.

The panel's Democratic members found no evidence that the NIH-funded work created SARS-CoV-2. Republican investigators read the record differently, arguing in their own staff memorandum that he leaned on a narrow definition to dodge a fuller answer.

Gabbard's release recasts that running argument as a deliberate cover-up rather than a quarrel over terminology. It alleges that his 2024 testimony, in which he said he had no knowledge of discussing viral research with intelligence officials, is contradicted by the newly released correspondence. Her office has referred several of the whistleblower allegations to the Intelligence Community Inspector General for review.

What the Intelligence Community Has Concluded

The documents stop well short of proving the headline. The May 2020 Livermore assessment that Gabbard cites placed equal weight on laboratory and natural-origin scenarios rather than endorsing a leak outright, according to the material her office published alongside the release.

American spy agencies have never agreed on how the pandemic began. The FBI and the Department of Energy have leaned toward a laboratory-related incident, while the National Intelligence Council and four other agencies judged a natural origin more likely. In January 2025, the CIA moved to a low-confidence assessment favouring a research-related origin, while stressing that both scenarios stayed plausible and that no fresh evidence drove the shift.

A 2023 declassified intelligence report had already noted that, between 2017 and 2019, the Wuhan lab collaborated with the Chinese military on pathogen research, though it identified no known virus there that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.

Almost every agency has agreed on one point that the new release glides past: the virus was not genetically engineered, and none assessed that it was built as a bioweapon. That distinction matters because it separates the contested question of an accidental lab leak from the far more incendiary suggestion of a manufactured pathogen. The accusation against Fauci, therefore, lands as a forceful interpretation of disputed material, not a closed case.

Gabbard leaves office having reopened the most politically charged question of the pandemic, even as the evidence she points to falls short of the certainty her parting words project.