Fauci is very good at playing semantic games. He says they did not fund the DARPA grant, but he knows damned well that they funded one exactly like it, by the same authors, but under a different name. He plays the same game when he says they did not fund "gain of function" research on corona bat viruses. He knows damned well that they funded research that would enhance the transmutability of corona viruses at Wuhan, but he relies on a definition of "gain of function" that allows him to slip under the question. He is very slippery, that one.
What irks me the most about Fauci is that he is supposed to be a man of science, but he has become some kind of bureaucratic monster out of an Ayn Rand novel.