Rep. Issa Calls for Perjury Charges Against Fauci Following DNI Gabbard's Declassified Document Claims

Since DNI Tulsi Gabbard released declassified documents last week alleging that former NIAID director Anthony Fauci misled Congress about U.S.-linked funding for gain-of-function research at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, Republican lawmakers have escalated their calls for criminal accountability.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) made that explicit Friday evening on Fox Business Network's The Evening Edit, telling host Elizabeth MacDonald that Congress should pursue Fauci on two specific counts: perjury before Congress and obstruction of the broader effort to determine COVID-19's origins.

"I don't think anyone has to debate the damage that the release of this virus caused in trillions of dollars, and countless lives around the world," Issa said, according to Breitbart's report of the segment. "What we do have to do is specifically get to an official investigation and charges on two major counts, the perjury count before Congress, and the cover-up."

Issa also argued that the cover-up compounded the original harm. "Often the cover-up is worse than the original lie, and in this case, it appears as though he willfully impeded Congress and everyone else in getting to the truth, which probably cost even more lives," he said.

What the Documents Actually Allege — and What They Don't

The Gabbard declassification is an allegation document, not a conviction. The materials assert that Fauci had knowledge of or involvement in Wuhan-linked research that he did not accurately characterize to Congress when asked directly. Whether those statements meet the legal threshold for perjury — which requires a willful false statement under oath on a material fact — has not been adjudicated by any court or grand jury.

As of June 20, 2026, no formal federal investigation has been announced, and no charges have been filed against Fauci. The Department of Justice has not publicly confirmed any grand jury proceeding.

Fauci has previously and consistently denied that NIH-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology constituted gain-of-function research as defined under federal guidelines, and he has denied misleading Congress. His public response to the specific Gabbard documents has not been reported as of this writing.

The Strongest Counterargument

Critics of the Republican push argue that the entire framework of the Gabbard document release is politically engineered. A sitting DNI aligned with a partisan administration selectively declassifies materials and hands them to allied members of Congress, who then immediately call for criminal charges. This happens without an independent special counsel, a neutral fact-finder, or cross-examination of the underlying intelligence. The process resembles a political prosecution roadmap more than a neutral law-enforcement referral.

Intelligence assessments are not legal evidence. Declassified summaries can reflect the framing choices of whoever ordered the declassification. Fauci, whatever one thinks of his pandemic-era decisions, is entitled to the same standard of proof anyone else would face before a criminal charge sticks.

The counterargument does not resolve the underlying factual question. Whether Fauci's congressional testimony was accurate is a verifiable matter. Transcripts exist, grant documentation exists, and the EcoHealth Alliance funding trail has been partially reconstructed through congressional oversight. An independent investigation could work through those materials without requiring anyone to take either Gabbard's framing or Fauci's denials at face value.

Issa's Partisan Aside

One portion of Issa's Fox Business remarks is worth flagging separately from his legal argument. He told MacDonald that "President Trump probably would have won overwhelmingly if people had really understood that he was the victim of this group." That claim is a political opinion with no sourced factual support. It does not strengthen or weaken the case for a perjury investigation, but it does illustrate how thoroughly the COVID-origins accountability question has been folded into 2024 and 2026 electoral politics.

Where This Goes Next

For a perjury case to move forward, a referral to the Department of Justice would need to be formalized, a grand jury would need to be convened, and prosecutors would need to establish that Fauci's specific statements to Congress were both false and willfully made. Congressional Republicans have been making public calls along these lines for over a year. The actual institutional step that has not yet happened is a DOJ announcement of a formal investigation.

The unresolved question as of June 20 is whether the Gabbard documents contain anything new enough—specific funding links, dates, communications—to give DOJ prosecutors material they did not previously have, or whether this remains a political pressure campaign aimed at an outcome that career prosecutors have so far declined to pursue.