Celebrating a Super Bowl win at the White House, Tom Brady lobs an apparent jab at Trump.

WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, has chosen a pair of former President Donald J. Trump’s staunchest and most combative allies to be among his five picks to sit on the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, signaling he is approaching the inquiry as a partisan battle.

Mr. McCarthy and Republicans had opposed the creation of the select committee, which is to scrutinize the mob violence that delayed Congress’s formal adoption of President Biden’s victory. The 13-member panel, created on a party-line vote, will have seven Democrats and six Republicans, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and a harsh critic of Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, as one of her eight members.

The committee, which is led by Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, is scheduled to have its first meeting July 27 to hear from members of the Capitol Police and District of Columbia police force who fought off the mob. Among them are Harry Dunn, Aquilino Gonell, a sergeant, Michael Fanone, who has lobbied Republicans to support an investigation, and Daniel Hodges, who was crushed in a door during the rampage.

Some of them have been outspoken about the trauma they experienced that day, but Officer Hodges has called it an honor.

“If it wasn’t my job, I would have done that for free,” he told NBC News shortly after the assault. “It was absolutely my pleasure to crush a white nationalist insurrection.”

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The White House said on Tuesday that it would nominate Jonathan Kanter to be the top antitrust official at the Justice Department, a move that would add another longtime critic of Big Tech and corporate concentration to a powerful regulatory position.

President Biden’s plan to appoint Mr. Kanter, an antitrust lawyer who has made a career out of representing rivals of American tech giants like Google and Facebook, signals how strongly his administration is siding with the growing field of lawmakers, researchers and regulators who say Silicon Valley has obtained outsize power over the way Americans speak with one another, buy products online and consume news.

Mr. Kanter, 47, is the founder of Kanter Law Group, which bills itself online as an “antitrust advocacy boutique.” He previously worked at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. His services have attracted some of the most prominent critics of Big Tech in corporate America, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Microsoft as well as upstarts like Spotify and Yelp.

If he is confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Kanter will lead a division of the Justice Department that filed a lawsuit last year arguing that Google had illegally protected a monopoly over online search services. The antitrust division of the agency has also been asking questions about Apple’s business practices.

Federal scrutiny of acquisitions has expanded beyond headline-grabbing Big Tech deals to industries like consumer goods, agriculture, insurance and health care. The Justice Department has sued to block the proposed merger of Aon and Willis Towers Watson, in its first major antitrust action since Mr. Biden took office. And the F.T.C. announced in March that it was forming a group to “update” its approach to evaluating the impact of pharmaceutical deals.

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Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a close friend of former President Donald J. Trump and one of his top 2016 campaign fund-raisers, was indicted on Tuesday morning on federal charges of violating a federal law requiring lobbyists for foreign interests to disclose their work to the Justice Department.

Federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. have been investigating Mr. Barrack for nearly three years, focusing on whether he tried to sway Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or his administration on behalf of Persian Gulf nations with huge stakes in United States policy.

The inquiry was overseen by prosecutors in the public integrity section of United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. In an interview two years ago, a spokesman for Mr. Barrack said he had acted as an independent intermediary between Persian Gulf leaders and the Trump campaign and administration, not on behalf of foreign officials or entities.

The indictment charged Mr. Barrack and two other men with failing to register as agents of the United Arab Emirates government. The other two men charged were Matthew Grimes, a former top executive at Mr. Barrack’s company, and Rashid al-Malik Alshahhi, an Emirati businessman who is close to the U.A.E. rulers.

The seven-count indictment also accused Mr. Barrack of obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a June 20, 2019, interview with federal agents.

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The United States conducted a drone strike against Shabab militants in Somalia on Tuesday, the first such military action against the Qaeda affiliate in East Africa since the Biden administration took office in January.

The strike was carried out by military aircraft against Shabab fighters who were attacking members of the Danab, an elite American-trained Somali commando force, near the town of Galkayo in the country’s north, said a Pentagon spokeswoman, Cindi King.

The Biden administration placed new limits on drone strikes outside active war zones when it took office on Jan. 20, to give it time to develop a permanent policy.

The strike came as the Biden administration was considering whether to reverse the U.S. military withdrawal from Somalia that took place under Mr. Trump.

An interagency review, underway for several months, has not yet been completed, a U.S. official said. But under one option being considered, a smaller number of American troops would be redeployed to military bases in southern Somalia, near the border with Kenya, where Al Shabab’s influence is strongest.

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Biden Celebrates Super Bowl Champions at the White House

President Biden hosted a ceremony honoring the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 2021 Super Bowl win, where quarterback Tom Brady stole the show with apparent jabs at former President Donald J. Trump.

“We’re here today to congratulate and welcome to the White house, the Super Bowl champion, Tampa Bay Buccaneers. [applause] To the players, the coaches and the Glazer family, my good friends, it’s an honor to have you here. This Buccaneer team is a testament to the fact that it’s never too late to come together and achieve extraordinary things. Three-quarters of the way through the season, they found themselves in the middle of the pack, seven wins and five losses. But this is a team that didn’t fold and always got up, dug deep and won their last four games of the season and then stormed through the playoffs, winning on the road in Washington, New Orleans and Green Bay, and capping it all off back home in Tampa to become the first team to win the Super Bowl on their home turf.” “It was actually a very challenging season for a lot of reasons. But we bonded together. We worked really hard. We put all our individual agendas aside, and we came together as a team. It didn’t look great there. At one point, we were 7-5, struggling a little bit, as the president alluded to. But we found our rhythm. We got on a roll. Not a lot of people, you know, think that we could have won. And in fact, I think about 40 percent of the people still don’t think we won.” Biden: “I understand.” “You understand that, Mr. President.” Biden: “I understand that.” “Yeah and personally, you know, it’s nice for me to be back here. We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing and they started calling me ‘Sleepy Tom.’ Why would they do that to me?” “I don’t know.” “So it’s great to be, you know, we’re on the eve of football season. We start tomorrow, practice. And we’re going to do everything we can to work to achieve another one of those Lombardi trophies.”

President Biden hosted a celebration with the 2021 Super Bowl champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, on Tuesday morning at the White House, continuing a recent run of celebrations with title-winning athletes.

Once again, Tom Brady stole the show.

Mr. Biden opened the festivities, praising the Bucs for their persistence in reeling off an unbeaten run to the championship after starting the season with seven wins and five losses: “This is a team that didn’t fold, got up, dug deep,” the president said, relishing his role as a sort of cheerleader in chief. “It’s an incredible run.”

But it was Mr. Brady, the final speaker and a seven-time Super Bowl winner, who snagged the headlines with political jokes that appeared to be jabs at former President Donald J. Trump, with whom Mr. Brady has shared a long friendship.

Mr. Brady needled Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that he actually won the 2020 presidential election, which many Trump supporters still believe. The quarterback said many people did not believe the Buccaneers could win the championship last year.

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The Biden administration disclosed on Tuesday previously classified details about the breadth of state-sponsored cyberattacks on American oil and gas pipelines over the past decade, as part of a warning to pipeline owners to increase the security of their systems.

From 2011 to 2013, Chinese-backed hackers targeted, and in many cases breached, nearly two dozen companies that own such pipelines, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security said in an alert. Of 23 operators of natural gas pipelines that were subjected to a form of email fraud known as spear phishing, the agencies said 13 were successfully compromised, while three were “near misses.” The extent of intrusions into seven operators was unknown because of an absence of data.

For years, nation-backed hackers and, more recently, cybercriminals have targeted oil and gas pipelines, holding their operators hostage with ransomware, a form of malware that encrypts data until the victim pays. The ransomware attack in May on Colonial Pipeline, the operator of one of the country’s largest pipelines, was a warning sign, but officials say it was only the most visible consequence of a digital threat that has been consuming critical infrastructure for a decade.

The alert was prompted by new concerns brought to the fore by the attack on Colonial Pipeline, whose pipeline carries refined gasoline and jet fuel from Texas and up the East Coast to New York. That breach grounded nonstop flights and led to gas shortages, setting off alarms at the White House and the Energy Department, which found that the nation could have afforded only three more days of downtime before mass transit and chemical refineries came to a halt.

Mandiant, a division of the security firm FireEye, said the advisory was consistent with the Chinese-backed intrusions it had tracked on natural gas pipeline companies and other critical operators from 2011 to 2013. But the firm added one unnerving detail, noting that it “strongly” believed that in one case, Chinese hackers had gained access to the controls, which could have enabled a pipeline shutdown or potentially set off an explosion.

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A bipartisan group of senators unveiled legislation on Tuesday that would significantly curtail presidential war-making powers, a long-shot effort that nonetheless reflected a growing interest among lawmakers to reassert congressional prerogatives on matters of war and peace.

The bill, introduced by Senators Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, and Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, seeks to claw back congressional authority by placing greater restrictions on the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a landmark law which says that presidents must win congressional approval after introducing armed forces into hostilities, or terminate them after 60 days. The proposed bill would add a provision that would automatically cut off funding for military operations that were not authorized by Congress and shorten the window of time in which presidents must end the unauthorized military operations.

In a major shift, it would also retire existing authorizations of military force — including the measures Congress approved for the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2002 — and define what amounts to “hostilities,” under the War Powers Resolution. Past administrations have narrowly construed the term to wage military operations without congressional approval.

“Let us never forget those times in history when our country was tragically led into wars that never should have been fought,” Mr. Sanders said. Many of those wars, he said, were “based on the fact that the United States Congress did not ask the important questions the American people wanted to have asked. And that process must end.”

The bill has little chance of passing, given that senators have balked at approving measures that were far narrower. But it comes as lawmakers in both parties have expressed renewed interest in moderating presidential war authorities, as voters tire of the nation’s intractable military conflicts abroad.

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Democrats are preparing to muscle through the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to head the Bureau of Land Management, despite united opposition from Republicans who have branded her an “eco-terrorist” because of her involvement in a tree-spiking episode as a graduate student in the 1980s.

The vote over her nomination, scheduled for Thursday in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, sets up a battle between Republicans and Democrats over an agency at the center of climate policy.

The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the Interior Department that oversees grazing, logging and drilling on 245 million acres of public land and manages 700 million acres of mineral rights. It is responsible for balancing oil, gas and coal extraction with recreation and the protection of natural resources. It is also key to President Biden’s goal to phase out oil and gas drilling on federal lands — a plan that is being challenged by 15 states led by Republican attorneys general.

Ms. Stone-Manning, 55, has built a career in environmental policy, working as an aide to Senator Jon Tester of Montana and as chief of staff to former Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, both Democrats. She was also the head of Montana’s environment agency, where she gained a reputation as a bridge builder among environmentalists, ranchers and fossil fuel interests. She is currently the senior adviser for conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation, a nonprofit conservation group.

But Republicans argue that her actions in 1989, and her account of that episode in the intervening years, make her unfit for the post. They wrote to Mr. Biden asking him to withdraw her nomination, and they plan to vote against her as a bloc in the committee.

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A former special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration was arrested on Tuesday and charged with trespassing at the Capitol on Jan. 6 while carrying his service weapon and later lying to investigators about his actions during the riot.

Prosecutors did not accuse the former agent, Mark S. Ibrahim, of Orange County, Calif., of breaching the Capitol itself. But they said he had illegally entered restricted areas on the Capitol grounds and taken several photos of himself showing off his sidearm and D.E.A. badge. They also said that when a Justice Department investigator questioned Mr. Ibrahim two months after the riot, he lied, saying that he had gone to the Capitol to help a friend in the F.B.I.

According to court papers, Mr. Ibrahim had given notice to his bosses weeks before Jan. 6 that he intended to leave the D.E.A. Prosecutors said he was not on duty when he went to the Capitol, and Mr. Ibrahim has said he was suspended and then fired by the agency after Jan. 6.

Mr. Ibrahim arrived at the Capitol around 1 p.m. Eastern, court papers said, and took several photos of himself — some of which showed him displaying his gun and badge — in a restricted area inside police barricades. Another law enforcement officer whom Mr. Ibrahim was chatting with on a WhatsApp channel asked him if he was truly carrying his badge and service weapon in the crowd, prosecutors said.

In March, court papers said, Mr. Ibrahim gave a voluntary interview to an investigator from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, saying he had gone to the Capitol on the day of the riot to help a friend in the F.B.I. who was documenting the protest for the bureau. But prosecutors said that the friend later contradicted Mr. Ibrahim, saying he had made up the story and had in fact gone to the Capitol to promote a political podcast and cigar brand he planned to launch after leaving government service.

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Democratic state lawmakers from Texas arrived in Washington last week with plans to apply unending pressure on the Senate to pass voting rights protections that would help counteract a Republican election overhaul back home. Then a Covid-19 outbreak stalled their progress.

The entire delegation from Texas is now stuck at a Washington hotel after six members tested positive for the coronavirus, and officials from the White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office who met with them have also tested positive. All are fully vaccinated, but nobody in the capital is now particularly eager to meet in person with the group, which has resorted to virtual meetings.

In the meantime, Senate Democratic leaders remain focused on passing an infrastructure package, President Biden is in a standoff with social media companies, and there is no public sign that the Texas Democrats have won over any senators who weren’t already on board with their push to pass new federal voting legislation without clearing a 60-vote Senate threshold. They have not secured meetings with any Republicans or with Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a key Democratic opponent of eliminating that threshold.

And they cannot go home to Texas for another two and a half weeks, or they will risk being arrested for leaving the state.

By staying away from the State Capitol in Austin, the representatives have denied Republicans a quorum necessary for the State House to conduct business, delaying the passage of new restrictions on voting. Those measures, along with other conservative priorities, were put forward in a special session that was called only because the Democrats walked out of the Capitol in the final hours of the regular session in May, preventing Republicans from passing a voting bill then.

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Congressional negotiators and the Biden administration tried on Monday to salvage a nearly $600 billion bipartisan agreement to invest in roads, water pipes and other physical infrastructure, after Republicans rejected a key component to pay for the plan and resisted Democratic plans for an initial procedural vote on Wednesday.

Senators and administration officials are still working to hammer out the details of the deal, including how to ensure that a plan to finance it will secure 60 votes for Senate passage. White House officials expressed confidence on Monday that the agreement could be finalized. But its fate was uncertain.

Mr. Biden is pushing his economic agenda in parts. The bipartisan agreement is meant to be step one — with a much larger, Democratic bill to follow. But weeks after their announcement of a deal, the bipartisan group has not released legislative text or received external confirmation that it is fully financed. A top negotiator said over the weekend that the group jettisoned a key plan included in the deal that would have raised revenue by giving the I.R.S. more power to catch tax cheats.

Republicans have come under pressure to oppose that funding method from conservative anti-tax groups, who say it would empower auditors to harass business owners and political targets. Democrats say the increased enforcement would target large corporations and people who earn more than $400,000 — and note that improved tax enforcement has been a bipartisan goal of administrations dating back decades.

Still, on Monday evening Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, set up a procedural vote to begin moving toward debate on the bipartisan deal, even without the final text of the plan, on Wednesday. Mr. Schumer said that if senators agreed to consider infrastructure legislation, he would either bring up the bipartisan deal, should one materialize this week, or move to bring up a series of individual infrastructure bills that have already been approved on a bipartisan basis by Senate committees.

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The former Guantánamo detainee Abdul Latif Nasser was reunited with his family in Casablanca after U.S. troops turned him over to Moroccan state custody, his lawyers said Tuesday.

U.S. troops airlifted Mr. Nasser, 56, from Guantánamo Bay on Sunday in the first release of a detainee from the prison by the Biden administration. American and Moroccan officials had agreed to security arrangements for his return in the last days of the Obama administration, but the deal was put on hold when President Donald J. Trump halted all transfers upon taking office.

“He is ecstatic,” said Bernard E. Harcourt, a New York-based lawyer and law professor, who represented Mr. Nasser in federal court. He and his co-counsel, Thomas Anthony Durkin, spoke to Mr. Nasser by phone at his family home in Casablanca, and declared the former prisoner of more than 19 years in good spirits. He was particularly buoyed by being reunited with extended family members who had gathered for Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holy day known as the Feast of Sacrifice, Mr. Harcourt added.

“He did say it was amazing for him to go home when all his family was there,” Mr. Harcourt said.

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Prompted by growing public outrage over Britney Spears’s conservatorship, two members of the House of Representatives have proposed a bill that, if passed, would create a pathway for Ms. Spears and other individuals to ask a judge to replace their private guardian or conservator.

The legislation, known as the Freedom and Right to Emancipate from Exploitation Act, or the FREE Act, was introduced on Tuesday by co-sponsors Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, and Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina.

Under the bill, individuals would have the right to ask that their private guardian or conservator, who is appointed by the judge, be replaced with a public guardian employed by the state, a family member or a private agent, which the bill argues would provide more accountability. Currently, individuals typically must prove in court that abuse or fraud has occurred in order for a guardian to be replaced. The legislation could also help remedy the dearth of data on guardianships and conservatorships in the United States.

“We want to make sure that we bring transparency and accountability to the conservatorship process,” Ms. Mace said in an interview with Mr. Crist ahead of the announcement. “The Britney Spears conservatorship, it’s a nightmare. If this can happen to her, it can happen to anybody.”

The legislation, which refers to Ms. Spears as a pop icon, was proposed as the “Free Britney” movement has gained impressive traction, including among lawmakers, after a New York Times documentary this year revealed Ms. Spears’s yearslong struggle under her conservatorship, which began in 2008 and gave her father broad control over her life and finances. In 2019, Ms. Spears told a Los Angeles judge that under the conservatorship, she felt forced to a stay at a mental health facility and to perform against her will.

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A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out a Republican lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi that had sought to take down the proxy voting system adopted by the House of Representatives to allow for remote legislating during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a 12-page opinion, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously that courts did not have jurisdiction under the Constitution to wade into the House’s rules and procedures, and that the case should be dismissed. The action upheld an earlier decision by a Federal District Court and did not examine the merits of Republicans’ claims that the proxy voting system set up in May 2020 ran afoul of the Constitution.

“The district court dismissed the suit for lack of jurisdiction,” Sri Srinivasan, the court’s chief judge, wrote on behalf of the panel. “The court concluded that the resolution and its implementation lie within the immunity for legislative acts conferred by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. We agree, and we thus affirm the district court’s dismissal of the case.”

The decision was a setback for Republicans, who must now decide whether to appeal the ruling to the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia or the Supreme Court, or simply drop their challenge. In a bad sign for Republicans’ chances of success, Judge Srinivasan was joined in the decision by Judges Judith W. Rogers, a nominee of President Bill Clinton, and Justin R. Walker, a nominee of President Donald J. Trump.

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, did not immediately comment.

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From China’s perspective, the blows from the United States just keep coming. Sanctions and export controls over the crackdown in Xinjiang. A warning to international businesses about the deteriorating climate in Hong Kong. The rejection of visas for students and researchers suspected of having links to the People’s Liberation Army.

Now the United States has rallied a broad array of nations to accuse the Chinese Ministry of State Security not only of cyberespionage but also of hacking for profit and political intrigue.

The torrent of attacks has infuriated Beijing, but six months into the tenure of President Biden, the Communist Party leadership has yet to find an effective strategy to counter the American moves.

In Beijing’s view, Mr. Biden has taken a more strategic approach than his predecessor, enlisting allies to join his campaign against Chinese behavior in ways that appear to have frustrated officials. China has resorted to its usual instinct for tit-for-tat measures, while lashing out with a heavy dose of vitriol and sarcasm.

Although both sides have said that they want to avoid a new Cold War, they are plunging into an increasingly ideological conflict that shows little sign of easing. The result has been a deterioration of relations that, to the surprise of many in Beijing, has surpassed even the tumultuous years of dealing with President Donald J. Trump.

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Delta Variant Accounts for 83% of Virus Cases

Health officials testified before the Senate that the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus was spreading rapidly across the country, particularly in areas with low levels of vaccinations.

“C.D.C. has released estimates of variants across the country, and predicted the Delta variant now represents 83 percent of sequenced cases. This is a dramatic increase from, up from 50 percent for the week of July 3. In some parts of the country, the percentage is even higher, particularly in areas of low vaccination rates. The best way to prevent the spread of Covid-19 variants is to prevent the spread of disease, and vaccination is the most powerful tool we have.” “It has now been detected in at least 90-plus countries throughout the world. The reason it’s so formidable is the fact that it has the capability of transmitting efficiently from human to human in an extraordinary manner, well beyond any of the other variants that we’ve experienced up to now, which has led to its becoming the dominant variant in this country.” “We are at a point of great promise and peril in the fight against Covid-19. While I am encouraged by the fact that two-thirds of adults in our country have received their first dose of vaccine, I am alarmed by how the rate of vaccination has been slowing, and how driven by the Delta variant, rates of Covid-19 cases and deaths are once again on the rise.” “Covid won’t just go away. We need all Americans who can get the vaccine to get the vaccine. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your friends, your families, for your neighbors and your local community. Do it for your grandchildren, so they can go back to school. Do it for your grandparents, so they can finally go out and eat.”

The highly infectious Delta variant now accounts for an estimated 83 percent of new coronavirus cases in the United States — a “dramatic increase” from early July, when it crossed the 50 percent threshold to become the dominant variant in this country, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

In some regions, the percentage is even higher — particularly where vaccination rates are low, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said during a Senate health committee hearing. Two-dose vaccines have been shown to be effective against the Delta variant but questions have been raised about Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose regimen against Delta. While almost 60 percent of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated, less than half of the total U.S. population is.

She said the C.D.C. would update its website later Tuesday to reflect the new estimate of Delta cases, which the agency derives from gene sequencing of new coronavirus cases.

The new figure comes as new cases have been rising across the United States, though cases, hospitalizations and deaths remain a fraction of their peaks. Still, public health experts are watching the increases with deep concern and Dr. Walensky warned last week that “this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” The seven-day average now shows more than 35,000 new daily cases, up from about 11,000 a day not long ago, according to a New York Times database.

Tuesday’s hearing was contentious at times. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, pressed Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, on when the F.D.A. would authorize booster shots — and was not happy when she could not provide a specific answer. Federal health officials have said booster shots are not necessary now and have pressed Pfizer for more evidence.

Other Republicans clashed with witnesses over matters including mask mandates, booster shots for Covid-19 vaccines and “gain of function” research designed to identify genetic mutations that could make a virus more powerful.

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‘If Anybody Is Lying Here Senator, It Is You,’ Fauci Says to Rand Paul

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci responded angrily to Republican Senator Rand Paul during a committee hearing after Mr. Paul accused him of lying to Congress about the National Institutes of Health funding the “gain of function” research in Wuhan, China.

Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11th where you claim that the N.I.H. never funded “gain of function” research in Wuhan? I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you were referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being “gain of function.” What was. Let me finish. You’re saying that’s not “gain of function?” Yeah, that is correct. And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. You’re trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic. If the point that you were making is that the grant that was funded as a sub-award from EcoHealth to Wuhan created SARS-CoV-2, that’s where you are getting. Let me finish. We don’t know. Well, wait a minute. We don’t know if it did come from the lab but all the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab and there will be the responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself. I totally. This committee will allow the witness to respond. I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating. You’re saying they are “gain of function” viruses because they’re animal viruses that became more more transmissible in human and you funded it. And you. Admit the truth. Senator Paul your time has expired. And I will allow witnesses who come before this committee to respond. You are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individual. I totally resent that. If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, escalated his long-running attacks on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, and accused Dr. Fauci of committing a crime by lying to Congress in May when he told senators that the National Institutes of Health did not fund “gain of function” research at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the pandemic’s early days.

Dr. Fauci, in turn, accused the senator of falsely implying that the N.I.H. is somehow responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths from the pandemic — an extraordinary exchange for the Senate, where witnesses almost always defer to lawmakers.

“I have never lied before Congress and I do not retract that statement,” Dr. Fauci declared, adding, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially.”

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