This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a longtime critic of Joe Biden's COVID adviser, Anthony Fauci, says the ex-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is on record saying that the "risk" from the extremely dangerous bat virus gain-of-function research at the Chinese government lab in Wuhan was worth it, even if a pandemic ensued.

And that, Paul charged, makes Fauci likely "responsible for probably more deaths" than anyone else in the medical world.

The comments were documented in a report at Real Clear Politics and came during an interview with Fox's Maria Bartiromo.

The senator's comments:

Well, the problem is, is that the Chinese have destroyed any kind of reputation they had. I mean, we can no longer believe any kind of pronouncements from them, which makes us suspicious. Right now, there's a host of disease affecting young people, respiratory disease and pneumonia, in China, and they tell us, well, there's nothing to see here.

And maybe that's true, but they have destroyed any kind of foundation we had in trusting them, and they still haven't come clean. In early 2020, when COVID came out, they said, oh, we're not having human-to-human transmission, and we don't seem to be having an extraordinary amount of flooding in the hospitals or deaths.

All of that was untrue, and they knew for at least three or four weeks. They also knew the sequence of the virus, and they kept that secret as well. I think they also knew that three of their workers got sick at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November 2019. I think they knew all of this.

He said the COVID-19 pandemic, which likely came out of the Wuhan lab before it killed millions around the globe, probably was an accident.

But, he said, "Cover-up is not an accident. If they were to come clean and say, we're punishing the scientists who did what they weren't supposed to, I think then that we could restore some trust."

He pointed out that even now, "There are American investors continuing to underwrite the CCP by buying those companies that are tied to the Chinese military. It seems this administration is not willing to pull the economic lever, and that is shut off the capital markets to Chinese communist companies that may have been involved in that cover-up or tied to the military."

And he pointed out the Joe Biden administration is resisting efforts in Congress to get information "at every turn."

And for that, he pointed out, "There's also a certain amount of culpability in the Biden administration throughout several different departments, USAID, NIH, HHS. They're withholding documents because they funded the lab in Wuhan, not just once, not just twice, but for a decade they were funding."

Then, of source, there's Fauci, with whom the senator had several loudly vocal disagreements when Fauci was appearing before Congress.

"And we have Anthony Fauci on record as saying that, even if a pandemic occurs, even if a gain-of-function research infects a scientist and a pandemic occurs, that the knowledge would be worth the risk. And I think most people who had a loved one die from COVID either here or around the world would disagree and think Anthony Fauci made a disastrous judgment call," the senator said.

"But he also took the research, and it didn't go before the normal scrutiny. There's a safety committee that was supposed to review this, and Anthony Fauci allowed this research to be done at his signature, at his conclusion, at his approval without the approval of the safety committee."

For that reason, the senator said, "He really should go down in history perhaps as one of the worst people in public office ever and responsible for probably more deaths than other -- any other individual in the medical world."

He noted that while experts were concluding that COVID-19 did come out of a lab, and was a manipulated virus, Fauci, "commissioned and edited a paper that said that absolutely this did not come from a lab, while, privately, all of these same scientists were saying, in all likelihood, it did come from a lab."

He called that an "orchestrated cover-up."

He also said his research revealed Fauci "was visiting the CIA in early 2020. We know that the CIA scientists, seven of them, voted six to one to say it came from the lab, and then they were reversed by superiors. We need to know whether Anthony Fauci influenced the superiors, or perhaps the opposite. Did the CIA influence Anthony Fauci?"

He said there were weekly meetings on dangerous dual-use research, and "not one item of any of those meetings has been released to us."

He said it's likely COVID-19 was developed for a vaccine, and then it "got out."