---
type: Conversation
title: Transcribed interview — baric_ti
description: "interview conversation, 1156 messages, 2026-04-10."
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  - interview
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message_count: 1156
started_at: "2026-04-10T09:00:00"
ended_at: "2026-04-10T09:00:00"
duration_seconds: 0
sources:
  - { id: baric_ti, resource: /sources/baric-ti.md, title: Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted), author: "process:senate-hsgac-release", last_modified: 2026-07-23 }
generated: { by: randpaul-corpus-pipeline/1.0, at: "2026-08-06T03:22:13Z" }
status: stable
---

A interview conversation of 1156 messages spanning n/a.

# Metadata

- **Started:** 2026-04-10T09:00:00
- **Ended:** 2026-04-10T09:00:00
- **Duration:** n/a
- **Participants:** 0
- **Source:** [baric_ti](/sources/baric-ti.md)
- **Pages:** 6-155

# Participants

* [Christina Salazar](/people/christina-salazar.md)
* [Clark Ervin](/people/clark-ervin.md)
* [David T. Lambeth III](/people/david-t-lambeth-iii.md)
* [Harry Kazenoff](/people/harry-kazenoff.md)
* [Jake Greenberg](/people/jake-greenberg.md)
* [Ralph S. Baric](/people/ralph-s-baric.md)
* [William Henderson](/people/william-henderson.md)

# Transcript

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** Good morning. This is a voluntary, closed-door transcribed interview of Dr. Ralph Baric, being conducted by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. This interview was requested by Committee Chairman Rand Paul as part of the committee's oversight investigation on government funding of risky research and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 18, 2026, the witness agreed to appear before the committee on April 10, 2026. For the record, during the transcribed interview the committee will be bound solely by Senate and Committee rules. We will adhere to them. Do you understand?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I agree, but I don't know what the Senate rules are.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Clark Ervin:** We've reviewed them.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I figured you all know, right.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** You are here voluntarily. Nevertheless, under Title 18 Section 1001 you are required to answer questions from Congress truthfully, including questions posed by congressional staff during this interview. Do you understand?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I do.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** Is there any reason that you would be unable to provide us today with truthful answers to our DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com questions?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Not that I know of, assuming that I remember.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** We will proceed to make introductions of the office conducting this interview today. Then we will explain how we intend to proceed. My name is Harry Kazenoff. I am the Assistant Counsel. And to my far right is Christina Salazar, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel for the Majority Staff of the Committee. Additionally, we have Mr. William Henderson, Staff Director of the Majority Staff of the Committee. Additional majority staff are present, but we do not currently intend for them to speak during the duration of this interview, though we reserve the right to amend, as needed. Any new majority staff who ask a question will introduce themselves for the record. And with that, will the…

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** My name is Ralph Steven Baric. The spelling is R-A-L-P-H S-T-E-V-E-N B-A-R-I-C.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** Do you have any attorneys representing you, either in a personal capacity or under a limited capacity present with you today?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I do.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** For each counsel, please state and DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com spell your full name and identify the client you're representing.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Clark Ervin:** I'm Clark Kent Ervin with Squire Patton Boggs, and I'm Counsel to the University for purposes of this interview with Dr. Baric.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] David T. Lambeth III:** David Lambeth, Counsel for UNC Chapel Hill and Dr. Baric as an employee.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Jake Greenberg:** Jake Greenberg with DLA Piper. I represent the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dr. Baric.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** This interview will be conducted in two parts. The first portion of the interview will be conducted in an unclassified setting. Only unclassified information will be discussed during the first portion. We will not intentionally ask a question during the first portion of the interview that we believe could implicate classified information. However, if a question is asked that would require you to disclose classified information in your answer, or if you are genuinely unsure, please state that for the record and we will re-ask the question in the second portion of the interview. At noon, we will recess and the witness and properly cleared majority staff and witness counsel will relocate to…

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** There is a court reporter taking down everything that is said and will make a written record of the interview. Please provide a verbal response. For the record to be clear it is important that only one person speak at a time. Do you understand?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I do.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** Counsel will have an opportunity to review the transcript and provide an errata expeditiously following the interview. We want to make clear that we are only bound by Senate and Committee rules and not any common law privilege, rules of civil procedure, or any equivalent extrinsic doctrines. Do you understand?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I do.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** This interview today is being conducted without prejudice to any future discussions the committee may require, and we reserve the right to request your participation in future interviews or depositions, should we need to. Do you understand?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yes.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** Finally, we would ask that you not speak about what we discuss in today's interview outside of the room, to help us maintain the integrity of our DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com investigation. And we also ask that you not remove or make any copies or photographs of any materials or exhibits. Do you understand?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** My wife is going to insist that she knows what happens in this meeting. I hope that's okay.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** Do you have any questions before we begin?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Harry Kazenoff:** Thank you.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Well, thank you for being here, and we thank you for being here voluntarily. We appreciate it. I've been working with your counsel and thank you. We're going to conduct this in two parts. We have a lot of questions for you, but I intend for this to be conversational. We're happy you're here. We've obviously been looking at this for a long time. It is 2026. But we haven't had a chance to engage directly, but your team has provided us documents, and we appreciate that. So, you know, I wanted to kind of be up front with you, where I'm coming from, where the Chairman is coming from. I think a lot of people are like, "It's 2026. Why are we still talking about COVID, COVID origins?" The reason…

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** It's a pleasure to be here.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Thank you. I wanted to start, obviously, you gave testimony in the House.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I did.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And I wanted to just start -- I know this may be a loaded question, but is there anything from that testimony that you would like to, off the bat, clarify or generally -- and we may talk about that today, but I just wanted to see if there was any portions of that testimony that you wanted to clarify or provide any DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com statements on.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Nothing comes to mind, but if you have questions on that testimony I'll be glad to give you my current thinking.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. Great. Well, let's start early outbreak. So when was the first you heard of the outbreak?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** A notice went up on ProMed about a new respiratory infection in Wuhan on December 31st, and I immediately got phone calls from several collaborators who were letting me know about it. I didn't find out it was a coronavirus until about the 4th of January, when a colleague of mine at the University of Virginia asked me to participate in a phone call with some Chinese researchers to try to get them in contact with Gilead to set up trials with remdisivir.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And you said that was University of Virginia?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** University of Virginia.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And who was that?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I knew you were going to ask that question. At some point the neuron will fire.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So you said that was January 4th?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yeah, yeah. It's in the testimony, I think, in the House. Yeah.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And had you already been working with DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com Gilead?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Oh, we started working with Gilead in 2016 on a work on identifying broad-spectrum, small molecule inhibitors against the coronavirus family.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And I'm going to jump around, based on our conversation, so I'm going to go ahead and ask this now.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Sure.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Did you serve as an expert consultant for Gilead in terms of their patent dispute against AMMS?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Oh, you didn't?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Not that I'm aware of.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Oh, wait, wait. Which patent dispute is this? Is this in Europe?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Are there multiples? Yes.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yes, okay. Sorry.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I didn't know there were multiple --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I had forgotten. They had asked me to make a statement about that, and I had forgotten about that, but make a statement about that, so I guess two or three years ago. And I haven't heard much about what was going on so I kind of left it behind. But yes, I gave them a written statement. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I was just wondering if that was the same, you know, the same type of research that you were engaged in on the 4th, or that you were discussing on the 4th. Is that the same?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yes, that's the same. That's the same phone call, yes. That's absolutely true.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And so on the 4th you had that call, and then I know that you had a call, I think, with Erik Stemmy on the 7th?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Around the 7th. There were a lot of phone calls in the first three weeks of January. But certainly I did talk to him. The exact date, I'd have to look at my notes. I thought it was more around the 11th or 12th, but it could easily be the 7th.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Was that the first NIH employee that you had spoken to, or had you spoken with others?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Somewhere around those dates I also talked to Barney Graham at the VRC, because we'd been working since about 2017 on mRNA-LNP-based vaccines using MERS coronavirus as, in essence, a paradigm model for how to develop an effective vaccine against coronavirus.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Did you already have a vaccine developed with them, or was it still --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** We had an mRNA vaccine for MERS coronavirus that had been tested in mice, both young and DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com old mice, and it was extremely effective. I think that data was immediately incorporated into the discussions, that I was not part of, but discussions at the Federal level, in terms of prioritizing which vaccines might go forward. So the reason, I think, that we were particularly so excited about that data is that most of the vaccines that I have tested against coronaviruses, epidemic or pandemic, not pandemic, epidemic coronaviruses like the original SARS 2003 strain, or the MERS strain, worked effectively in young animals. But when you took them into aged animals, where…

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And so the VRC Moderna vaccine.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yeah. Moderna certainly was engaged. Whether they actually manufactured the vaccine that was put in the animals or not, or whether NIH made that vaccine and put it in, I don't know.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And your vaccine, what was it called?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Oh, the Moderna vaccine?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** No, no, no. Yours, the one that you had DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com worked with.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Oh, we compared it to a killed vaccine. We'd also tested alpha virus-based vaccines, Venezuelan equine encephalitis replicon particles. It was basically an RNA virus where the structural genes have been removed, so it's single hit. It can only infect one set of cells. It delivers the payload gene, in this case the coronavirus antigen. That induces an immune response that is either protective or not, depending on the model system. The other was killed vaccines. In 2003, the NIH had purchased two, or the Federal Government had purchased two $20 million killed vaccines to test against SARS coronavirus.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** What's a killed vaccine?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** They took the SARS coronavirus and then they inactivated it with a chemical inactivation, a UV light. So they killed the virus so that all that was left was the antigenic preparation, and that's put in the animal. So killed vaccines are pretty commonly used in humans.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And the vaccine, the MERS vaccine, is that the CisVax [sic] vaccine that I saw in one of your grant proposals, was called CisVax?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** CisVax?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I think. If you don't know. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I've read a lot of proposals. You're going to have to show me the proposal and then I can tell you.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** If not, I was just trying to tie it back to something. Okay. So I have some notes, and I think your call was around the 7th.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I believe you, but I just don't recall the exact date.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Do you recall what you all discussed?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Not in any detail. I can probably give you an estimate of what we talked about, was that there was a new coronavirus that was being identified, and it would be logical for the NIH to contact me and talk to me about what it was. Although the 7th would've been a little early. I guess it was around the 7th or 8th that I actually got the sequence of the virus. Before that I'd been verbally told by the Chinese that it was 78 percent identical to the original SARS coronavirus 2003 strain.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And who told you that?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Ben Cao was on the line. It was Fred Hayden. I knew I'd eventually remember Fred's name from University of Virginia. That's going to happen a lot, by the way. And the other person on the call was Peter Horby from England.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Clark Ervin:** Do you mean Georgia? DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No, not the Georgia guy, no. The reason they called me was that they had worked as sort of an international team to set up clinical trials for respiratory viruses, mostly focused on flu, and China -- flu or small molecule inhibitors. Sorry, I forgot the second part. And so they were very interested in initially talking about using remdisivir in their clinical trials, which they eventually did in January.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Which you were also involved in.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No. My role was to call up Gilead collaborators and say, "The Chinese want to talk to you," and that's what I did.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Did any of your research lead to --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** We had a paper that was coming out in Nature Communications on January 10th, and so I called the journal and asked them if it was okay if I could share it with the Chinese and the other people on the call, so we did.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And so I have a little bit of information that might refresh your recollection. You just tell me if this sounds familiar. So Peter Daszak was also on the call. Does that refresh your --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Not with the Chinese.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Not with the Chinese. With Eric Stemmy.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Oh, he may have been. Yes, he may have DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com been.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And it sounds like, the notes that I have -- and again, if you don't recall this, just let me know -- it appears that you may have mentioned that you had some confidentiality issue with remdesivir, within Nature Communications.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yeah.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And that you were willing to share what you knew with leadership at NIH, but that you couldn't share it. You had to have some kind of assurance that it wouldn't be shared more broadly.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I don't recall this, but he may have been wanting a copy of the paper that I just mentioned. I may have sent it to them. I don't see why I wouldn't. The big question would be whether Gilead would have a problem, not that I would have a problem with it.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So what's the confidentiality agreement when you're --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** So when the journal tells you the paper is in press, they say you're not allowed to report it until it's published. So to send the paper around to other individuals in the final form could be breaking that confidentiality agreement.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And so what information did you have from the paper? DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** So the paper did a comparison of the effectiveness of remdisivir against two HIV drugs, lopinavir and another drug, which I'm blanking on. There had been several reports by Chinese researchers that the second drug was effective in treating SARS coronavirus. Personally, again, I'd have to reread the papers. I haven't read them in years. But my recollection is that the papers compared the treatment of this HIV therapy to historic controls. And so they didn't have as many males in the study, in the two comparisons. Males have more severe disease, so it looked like this HIV therapy was effective. It was ritonavir, the other drug. And so the Chinese were planning on using massive treatment…

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** They were going to use it on what?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Humans.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** But for all coronaviruses? For flu?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Their cases of SAR-2, of COVID-19, in January of 2020.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So they were already publishing a paper.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. I just want to make sure I understand. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Let me step back. So historically they published a paper showing that this drug combination might be effective against emerging coronavirus infections, using SARS as their model. We did a head-to-head comparison of remdesivir versus this drug, and had submitted it to Nature Communications for publication. And that was in 2019, and the paper was going to be published on January 10, 2020. On the 7th or so, or on the first call, they wanted me to share that paper with them so that they could evaluate what they were going to do for treating their COVID-19 patients.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** At NIH.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No. China. We didn't have any cases on January 7th, 2020, in the U.S.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I just want to make sure I understand. You received information from the Chinese about the SARS16 COVID-2 outbreak.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I told you that. I think it was around the 4th, that told me it was a coronavirus related to SARS, that was 78 percent identical.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** That means basically it has 6,000 nucleotides. So if you think about a tree, SARS coronavirus is on one branch of that tree, and SARS-2 is on a totally different branch of that tree.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And so your conversations with DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com Peter Daszak during that time, when did you start working with Peter Daszak? You had a relationship with him.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I got to meet him around 2004. I can't tell you exactly when. I mean, scientific meetings, you run into people all the time. But I would guess it would start around 2014 we ran into a meeting, I think at the NEIDL together, and had some discussions. And I visited his place afterwards. We had common interests, but we didn't effectively start working together until later in 2014, on some of the work on the 2015 paper, that was published in Nature Medicine.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. Why don't we skip to that.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I mean, from my perspective, and just looking at it from a scientific perspective, he made major contributions into identifying emerging infectious disease hotspots around the world. He worked extensively with China on SARS coronavirus in 2003. He's sort of a microbial ecologist, very different field than I do. But we would have mutual interests to talk about emerging viruses.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And did he have people on the ground over in Wuhan in early 2020?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** So I was not part of his RO1 grant that went from like 2014 to 2019. So on that grant, as you know, part of that money went to the Wuhan Institute of DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com Virology. So I guess you could say he had a collaborative group in China, and I would imagine that he had people moving back and forth between the two, the U.S. and China.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** To your knowledge, he didn't an EcoHealth employee or anything like that?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** You'd have to ask him those questions. I wouldn't know.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And then what about Ian Lipkin?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yeah, another good friend from Columbia University. But what's the question?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So my understanding is that he also worked out of the Wuhan CDC at times.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Ian Lipkin, you'd have to look at his CV, but I believe he received a medal from China for his efforts in the original 2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak, helping them bring it under control. So he is also, not really a viral ecologist. He really does virus discovery, very interested in post-responses to viral infections. He's a global leader in really, I guess, the last 15 years, developing new technologies for rapid detection of unknown pathogens in the environment.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Are you aware of him working out of the Wuhan CDC?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** He told me he'd worked extensively with people in China during the 20- -- I didn't ask him details DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com about whether it was with Wuhan Institute of Virology or not. Again, he would be the person you'd need to ask that of.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And then going back real quick to the RO1 grant. You weren't an official collaborator, or PI, co-PI, until later on. But you did provide a letter of support --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yes.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** -- for the initial grant in 2014. Is that right?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Well, I may have. It wouldn't surprise me if I did. If he asked me, I would've, yes.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And then did you provide any mouse models or anything like that prior to your involvement formally later on?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** To Peter?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** To Peter or to, with --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Okay. Around 2013 or 2014, Zhengli Shi identified two new sarbecoviruses called SHC014 and WIV1. She was able to culture WIV1 in cell culture, and they published a paper in Nature on that. And we met at a meeting and we had some discussions. Ultimately, she provided me with the sequences, and we used that, of the spike, going at the spike like a protein. And so we build chimeric viruses. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com They also, when the paper was finally being written, they had developed what are called pseudotype viruses. These are, in essence, single-hit replicon viruses that are pseudotyped with the spike like a protein, of different coronaviruses. And they showed that WIV1 could…

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And is that the 2015 paper?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** That's the 2015 paper, yeah. Did you all read that? I'm just wondering, if you read my grants you must be almost numb.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I'm not a scientist. But I am familiar with it. So let's turn to that paper. So that was a topic of, and I'm sure you've read the FOIAs about you since, a topic of great discussion. Early in 2020, February 2020, it seemed like all of a sudden that paper was sent around among several people. I think Fauci sent it out on February 1st to a number of people within the NIH.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I wouldn't know when he did that, but I DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com believe you.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Were you ever asked about that paper by anyone?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yes. On the 13th of February, I believe, 13th or 14th -- again, exact day is going to be difficult for me to recollect without notes in front of me -- but on the 13th or 14th I was up in D.C. for a progress report meeting on a grant and also giving a talk at some meeting. So we scheduled a meeting for about an hour with his leadership team, and I met him either at his office or at one of the NIH buildings for the extramural program.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. So that meeting was the 13th or 14th?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** 13th or 14th, yes.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** It's not the 11th?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** It might be the 11th. I don't think it's the 11th.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Yeah. That's another topic that we wanted to discuss, because I think there's been some confusion just in our documents of when the meeting actually occurred. I think it's been on some calendars for the 11th.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I know those emails have been FOIA'd multiple times, and it says exactly when I was supposed to meet them and where. So I would guess that they're in the DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com packet that we sent.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] David T. Lambeth III:** I'd be surprised if you didn't have them. If you don't, we can certainly get them for you.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So you were here, physically, in the country on the 11th.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yeah. As far as I know.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I feel like you would probably remember that. In early 2020, I guess from January to February to that meeting, were you in the United States the entire time?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yes, to the best of my recollection.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** If you weren't, I feel like you would've remembered, right?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I would think so. But you have to realize what January and February were like for me. I had constant calls going on. And so it was a blur. It really was a blur.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** One of the calendar invites that we have says that the purpose of the discussion, for you coming in, was to discuss basic research that is gain-of-function, that will further understanding of coronaviruses and corona vaccine development, and two, to address the slowness of the U.S. government P3CO process. Does that sound like the conversation that you had?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** The first part, absolutely. I don't DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com recall much in the discussion of the slowness of the P3CO process. But if it says it in the email then at some point they may have wanted to discuss that. I don't know. Was that something that I said?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** No, it wasn't. But in the agenda items that we've seen from other officials, that's the agenda that was on there. But from your House testimony it sounded like that wasn't necessarily what was discussed.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I don't recall that part being in the House, so I think the House testimony is actually accurate.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So can you let us know what you all talked about and who was present?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Well, Fauci was present for about 5 to 10 minutes max. He got called away for a phone call in a SCIF, and so he left pretty early in the meeting. There was some basic discussion about the new virus. Ultimately, they got to, I think, what they really wanted to talk about was gain-of-function related experiments, or I think it should be potential gain-of-function related experiments, that were associated with this 2015 and 2016 paper. I was a little surprised that they didn't seem to have the paperwork that was involved in my presentation on why I thought this might be more of a loss-of-function than a gain-of-function phenotype. And so then I think a day or so later I sent them all those…

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So they just didn't have them?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I don't know. They seemed surprised to me.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Surprised about --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** They seemed uncertain, not surprised. "Uncertain" would be the better word, about the status of these documents, which surprised me.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So that paper was in 2015. It was NIHfunded research.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** If I were to guess, institutional memory, retired, and they didn't know where the documents were, would be my guess.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Is that frequent at NIH?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** It's frequent everywhere in the world. Institutional memory is key.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I would expect, as a government entity that funds a lot of IT modernization efforts and systems for agencies, I'm a little shocked that they don't have a way to pull up taxpayer-funded applications.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Well, it wouldn't be the application. It would be a specialized series of documents associated with P3CO review. Again, this would have been very early on, too, so the formalized structure for that review wasn't, I think, finalized until '16 or '17, I think, with the NSABB stuff. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** But there was a structure.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** There certainly was a structure. They reviewed it, responded, and then asked for responses from me, and then I gave those responses.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And could you tell us a little bit about, at the time, what that process was like, in terms of the P3CO process?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** So in, was it, October 2014, the Obama administration put out the pause. The pause effectively was set up two ways. One way was that if a grant was submitted that had the potential for gain-of-function research it would be reviewed before they funded it. And the second class was if you were already doing P3, or research that might fall under the category, you had the option to either pause it voluntarily or continue it. And in the case of SHC014-WIV work, we paused it voluntarily. The third category was waivers. And so the NIH approved three groups, to my knowledge, to continue to develop a MERS coronavirus mouse model for countermeasured studies.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And you were one of them?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** And we were one of them.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Do you know who the others were?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I think one group was out of the University of Utah. I can't remember the fellow's name.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Were they individual exemptions, or was DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com it across the board?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I don't know about their exemptions. Mine was an individualized exemption. I don't know what theirs were. I didn't receive their paperwork.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And what was the process for seeking an exemption at that time?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I don't remember that, as well. I can't remember the details of that, as well. All I can tell you is that the exemption was approved right before Christmas of 2014.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And so back to the mid-February meeting, were they just like, did we review it and we were okay with it?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No. They knew that they had approved it. Again, I would've expected them to have the documents in the meeting, right. That would have made sense. They didn't have the documents, and I don't know why.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And they didn't seem to be aware of documents?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No. They were aware that there were documents that existed. They didn't seem to have a copy of them, and that surprised me. So I immediately said, "I'll be glad to send you the copies," and the university did, so we did.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Good thing you guys had a copy. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Well, yeah, really.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I mean, was the conversation, were they worried? What was the tone of it? I mean, we see -- and again, these have been FOIA'd -- there's a spur of sending out that paper, within hours, to multiple different people. Now, you know, a lot of the emails don't have commentary, but it's on February 1st. We know what else happened on February 1st.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Well, I think you need to put it in context. So in China there was a massive social media barrage of speculation that the 2015 virus was the cause of the pandemic. NIH had to become aware of that at some point, and they would immediately then be worried whether everything was done properly. They had to be. And it's five years back, so again, these are things that are not going to be at the top of anyone's mind. But at the same time, they're going to want to know was everything done properly. So yeah, I think naturally that they would be concerned, naturally they'd want to know, is that virus the cause of the pandemic or not? I mean, if they didn't ask those kinds of question, they would be…

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** That's kind of irresponsible that they didn't have the paperwork too.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Well -- DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** That's just my commentary.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I would guess that most large organizations will take a while to find the paperwork.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So they asked you to provide the paperwork. I mean, did you alert them that this was an accusation that it could have been the 2015 virus? You know, where did that come from?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Initially it came from the Chinese, social media speculation about what was the cause of the pandemic. The question certainly came up, and I can tell you the same thing that I told them, as far as this virus differs from the SARS coronavirus-2 strain by over 6,000 nucleotides, which means that it's incredibly different. So there's no way it could ever be associated with the emergence of this virus. It's just not possible. Same thing with the WIV1 virus. That's been validated by I don't know how many independent investigators around the globe. When they compare the sequence they say it is not the cause of the pandemic.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. So what else was discussed in the meeting?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** We discussed the P3CO documents. I sort of told them why we felt that the data didn't demonstrate a gain-of-function phenotype, and that was because there was no change or increased replication of the virus in human DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com cells. There was no increased pathogenesis in mice. Alternatively, there was a loss of disease severity in mice, and so that's a loss-of-function phenotype.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And who made those decisions from NIH?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Well, again, my job is to send the document to the NIH. It goes into a black box.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Who did you send it to?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Oh, that will also be on my email chain. I don't remember her name. But you should have that also in the email documents.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So you sent all of these documents to NIH after your meeting.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yeah. I don't think the university did. I thought it was through me. Do you remember?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] David T. Lambeth III:** In February 2020, yes, I believe you sent them to NIH. That's my recollection.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** That would be my recollection.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Do you recall who you sent it to, because I don't think I've seen that.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] David T. Lambeth III:** I will try to find it.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I have no problem telling you the name. I just can't remember it off the top of my head.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So who else was there in the meeting? Fauci left after a couple of minutes.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** He left after a few minutes. I think it DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com was his second in command that was doing most of the questioning, and I can't remember his name. Again, the email should have a list of all the people that were going to be there.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Was it Hugh Auchincloss?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yes. Thank you. Yes. Yes.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And so was Dr. Fauci there when -- I mean, did he ask you anything specific? Was he part of the conversation at that time? Or did he just say hello and leave?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No, no. I think he participated in terms of introducing, asking the question about the new virus and my thoughts about it, I guess, in terms of what I knew at the time, which wasn't a whole lot. But I knew some things.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. Do you know who Matt Freeman is?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yeah, I trained him, yeah.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** I'm going to read you -- again, this has been FOIA'd -- he sent, in a Slack message, and I'm just going to read it out loud. "I talked to Ralph for a long time last night. He sounds beat. His ACE2 mice are breeding up but not ready for anyone to have. He said he sat in Fauci's office talking about the outbreak," and I'm going to ask you, is it chimeras?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Chimeras. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Chimeras. I figured it out. "Clearly he is in other kinds of meetings than we are invited to. I joked about his link to WIV but he wasn't very amused. He said that Shi's paper was not approved by the Chinese government and that she may be arrested for it. That's not a good look for anyone. So we just go ahead and keep our head down and get this virus working." So does this reflect what the conversation was?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** It's a Slack message that people write. It's not to me. Yeah. Certainly the first part, for sure. Ask specific parts of the question.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So why would --

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Sorry. I can't remember.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** -- Dr. Shi be arrested, because she didn't have the paper approved by the Chinese government?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Again, I don't know for the fact why he said that. However, I'm not 100 percent sure that she ever got approval from the Chinese government to send me the sequences. That would be my guess. That would be my guess.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So is that something that they have to formally approve?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I believe so, yes. And any other attempts to get things out of China. So, for example, a guy named Hongkui Deng made an ACE2 mouse model back in 2005, and I DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com met him. He was at Peking University, and said he'd be glad to share his mice with us. And so we started to do the paperwork, but the Chinese government never allowed it to go through, so the whole thing crashed. So from what I hear from other researchers, it's not an uncommon problem.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** But that paper had been published.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** That's correct.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** For years. Five years.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** Yes. Well, no. Yes. Well, I'm talking in the range of around 2006 or 2007. I'm giving you an example of what sort of barriers exist to get samples out of China.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** But the paper that we're discussing, it was 2015?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** It's 2015. That's correct.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** And so I guess it's just the Chinese government, I hear they monitor people a lot. They wouldn't have seen that Shi, I mean, Shi was published. It was public.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** How would I know? How would I know the answer to that question?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Did you have discussions with her in that time frame about the paper?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** We certainly shared the preprint of the paper for her to comment on. And it said clearly in the DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com paper that she sent us the sequences.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** No. So when there were these allegations in 2020, early 2020, that that virus could have started the pandemic, did she reach out to you, or did you reach out to her about those accusations?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** I have not reviewed my emails from her back in 2020 or so, in a year or so.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** So you communicate with her often, or did you?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** No. Not really. I mean, in reality, oftentimes my relationship with her is described as a long12 term collaborative effort. In fact, we've only published three papers together. One was the 2015 paper, one was 2017 or '18 or so, when we were both working with another collaborator, and I didn't realize she was collaborating with him as well until I saw a draft of the paper.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Who was it?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** That was Fang Li.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Fang Li. Okay.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** And then there was a 2020 or so paper that we published together using the mice that we sent her.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. You sent her those mice when?

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Ralph S. Baric:** It took a couple of years to get all that paperwork through. It was around 2017 or '18.

**[2026-04-10T09:00:00] Christina Salazar:** Okay. And did she pay you for them? DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com Was it a contract?

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