Rand Paul Says Intelligence Agencies Are Doing Gain-of-Function Work on Monkeypox, Denies Him Oversight

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) escalated his long-running fight over gain-of-function research this week, telling CNBC's Squawk Box on Thursday that he believes American intelligence agencies are still conducting gain-of-function experiments, this time on monkeypox, and that he's being stonewalled on oversight.

"I think that our intelligence agencies in our country are still doing this," Paul said. "They won't give me proper oversight of this, but we believe that there are monkeypox experiments going on that are still gain of function."

Paul added a caveat that matters: "Monkeypox is containable at this point, but I don't want them changing monkeypox to be more dangerous or spread in a different way."

Paul isn't claiming an outbreak or an imminent threat. He's claiming a research practice he can't get official confirmation of, and one he says he can't get proper congressional oversight over. As of this reporting, Paul has not released documents, whistleblower testimony, or an intelligence community assessment to substantiate the monkeypox claim. This is an allegation from a sitting senator with subpoena power and committee access, not a proven finding.

What Paul Wants

Paul's ask is specific: legislation creating a commission of scientists to oversee gain-of-function research domestically, paired with a push to bring the same standards to the Biological and Chemical Weapons Convention, the international treaty framework governing bioweapons research among signatory nations.

"My goal is to have legislation here, but then to take our legislation in America and go to the Biological/Chemical Weapons Convention... and try to convince them you can't make people do things, but civilized countries should be concerned about this as well," Paul said on Squawk Box.

He pointed to a specific historical example to explain why he thinks the stakes are high: 2010s-era research on avian flu. "The big one they were experimenting on in 2010 is still something people talk about. It's the avian flu, the bird flu. It can go from birds to humans, not very well, but it doesn't go human to human," Paul said. "But if someone is setting up a lab and taking the avian flu and infecting mice with human cells and running it through over and over again, what you create is a virus that you have forced the evolution of to adapt to humans. That's a terrible idea."

The avian flu gain-of-function research Paul references is well documented in scientific literature going back over a decade and isn't in dispute among virologists. Whether that same kind of work is happening today on monkeypox, run by U.S. intelligence agencies specifically, and whether Paul is being denied legitimate oversight of it, are the parts that remain unverified in public reporting.

The Fauci Hearing Backdrop

Paul's monkeypox comments landed the same week Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, invoked his Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer questions at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that Paul chairs.

Fauci, through his attorneys, said he would "refrain from answering" Paul's questions, and directly accused Paul of running the hearing in bad faith. "Given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, behind bars," Fauci said, according to Breitbart News.

TMZ's Harvey Levin defended Fauci publicly, calling the hearing "heartbreaking" and accusing Congress of running a "witch hunt." Levin drew a comparison to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's 1950s anti-communist hearings, saying, "We are in a Senator Joseph McCarthy climate," while also acknowledging he has "problems" with how the CDC handled COVID.

Levin's framing merits consideration. He's not wrong that Fauci has a genuine public health legacy, including his role expanding access to experimental HIV/AIDS treatments in the 1980s that saved lives. But calling congressional oversight hearings a McCarthyite "witch hunt" sidesteps the actual substance at issue: Fauci's own diary entries, according to Breitbart's reporting on the hearing, reportedly show he privately acknowledged scientists suspected a lab leak origin for COVID-19 even as he publicly dismissed that theory as a conspiracy. Whether that constitutes perjury, negligence, or simply evolving scientific judgment under uncertainty is a question a congressional committee can pursue, even if Paul's personal history of calling for Fauci's imprisonment complicates his credibility as a neutral questioner.

Neither of these threads, the monkeypox allegation or the Fauci Fifth Amendment standoff, has produced a resolution. Paul has not disclosed what evidence, if any, underlies his belief that current monkeypox gain-of-function work is happening, and no intelligence agency has publicly confirmed or denied the claim. Fauci's invocation of the Fifth Amendment means the committee did not get sworn answers to its questions this week, leaving the diary allegations and the oversight dispute both unresolved heading into whatever comes next in Paul's committee.