WASHINGTON (NewsNation Now) — After NewsNation’s interview with Dr. Fauci on The Donlon Report, he’s been responding to what was in his published emails and defending himself against assertions that he downplayed or hid information about COVID-19, specifically on the origins of the virus.

There weren’t a whole lot of emails about the Wuhan lab leak theory, but a few emails show his thoughts in the early days.

In April of 2020, there’s an email from National Institutes of Health Head Dr. Francis Collins to Dr. Fauci with the subject line “Conspiracy gains momentum.” In that email, there is a link to a news story about the coronavirus starting in a lab. What the two doctors said is unclear because the rest of the email is redacted.

A few days later, an email from a man named Peter Daszak. He runs an nonprofit that provided millions of dollars in funding to the Wuhan lab. Daszak thanks Dr. Fauci for saying publicly that he believed the virus started with animal to human transfer not from a lab leak in Wuhan.

Some of Fauci’s critics on the right point to these exchanges as evidence that Fauci was dismissing the theory.

More recently, some of the nation’s top health experts have been more open to the lab leak theory as a possibility.

Dr. Fauci’s response to criticism is that his position never changed and is based on science. He says he still believes it’s more likely the virus came from animals but he’s not ruling out the Wuhan lab theory.

He stated many are mixing up the lab leak theory with another claim that China engineered COVID-19.

“When you look at what was done, there is nothing in there that indicates anything close to creating a virus that has great transmissibility…what is getting conflated is the broader issue of what the communist party will or will not do, and what Wuhan, and I think that’s an inappropriate conflating,” said Fauci.

Fauci was pressed last night on whether he thought the communist government in China was allowing researchers, funded by American Dollars, to work independently or whether the government was being heavy handed.

Fauci responded saying the CDC and NIH have had productive partnerships with respected Chinese scientists for years working on virus research.

He added it’s impossible to know everything that went on in the Wuhan lab, but as a general rule, he defended the virus research being done in China.