Kristian Andersen

Dr. Andersen's testimony contradicts Nature's stated reason for rejection; he attributes rejection to conclusions being too weak, while Nature's editor cited concerns about feeding conspiracy theories.

“I think the reviewers felt that probably -- I mean, reviewer two was pretty critical about our conclusions of the paper and felt that they should have been stronger”

Dr. Andersen admits that when he described the genome as 'inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,' he meant he believed COVID-19could have been engineered, a significant admission about early lab-leak concerns.

“I think this could be engineered.”

Dr. Andersen admits the original Proximal Origin manuscript was 'open-ended, agnostic' about lab origin, contradicting the published paper's strong natural-origin conclusion.

“we kept the possibilities of -- remember the submitted version to that was open-ended, agnostic as to whether it could have been a lab passage”

Dr. Andersen provides substantive testimony identifying specific genomic features — furin cleavage site, receptor binding domain, and BamH1 restriction site — that raised engineering concerns he presented on the February 1 call.

“the furin cleavage site, the receptor binding domain, and a few things associated with that, the BamH1 restriction site”

Testimony establishes that Dr. Fauci personally reached out to Dr. Andersen on January 31, 2020, initiating direct contact just before the critical February 1 conference call on COVID-19 origins.

“reaches out to Dr. Fauci, asks him to call me.”