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Claim ≠ Proof

Does a video back up its claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci had Nobel laureate Kary Mullis murdered to silence the chemist, who often criticized Fauci? No, that's not true: The claim is made without reference to physical or documentary evidence and with one piece of circumstantial evidence that scarcely deserves that label. Mullis' unchallenged obituaries say he died of pneumonia.

The claim is made in a video (archived here) credited to Gary Null Productions and posted to BitChute on May 24, 2021, titled "FAUCI HAD INVENTOR OF PCR TEST MURDERED TO HIDE THE TRUTH - ANTHONY FAUCI IS A MURDERER." It opened:

The Truth has been out there for a long time but who is really listening. This murderer, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been exposed for a long time and is responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, all to line his pockets with ...

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:

FAUCI HAD INVENTOR OF PCR TEST MURDERED TO HIDE THE TRUTH - ANTHONY FAUCI IS A MURDERER

The Truth has been out there for a long time but who is really listening. This murderer, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been exposed for a long time and is responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, all to line his pockets with ...

Despite the lurid headline, the four-minute 18-second video never makes the murder claim. Instead, the narrator hints at it near the end, saying at three minutes 45 seconds:

On Aug. 7 2019, just about three months before the first utterance of COVID-19, Kary Mullis, age 74, a Nobel Prize winner, inventor of the PCR test, a man who was once willing and eager to expose Anthony Fauci, quietly died of pneumonia. The timing of it all is mysterious to many of us.

Offering the timing of Mullis' death as circumstantial evidence of foul play violates the basic rules of evidence. To be useful, circumstantial evidence, such as a fingerprint at a crime scene, relies on a reasonable inference to make a factual conclusion: Fingerprints are unique, so the person had to have been in the place where the crime was committed at some time. No such inference connects Fauci to Mullis' death, especially since no direct evidence is offered or publicly available.

There is no public record to suggest Mullis was murdered.

The obituary reporters at the Los Angeles Times near Mullis' home in Newport Beach, California, and at the New York Times both noted Mullis died August 7, 2019, of complications of pneumonia.

There is no sign that Mullis' wife or children contradicted that, according to a Lead Stories search of Bing, DuckDuckGo and Google search engines as well as of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times' websites, where any such correction would run.

In a May 27, 2021, email to Lead Stories, the Los Angeles Times reporter who wrote Mullis' obituary, Dorany Pineda, confirmed what the newspaper's website reflects: "I have not been contacted by anyone challenging my reporting on his cause of death." She had interviewed Mullis' wife, Nancy Cosgrove Mullis, for the report on his death.

Lead Stories has contacted the Orange County sheriff and coroner and will update this fact check, if appropriate, when one or both replies.

Leading up to the suggestion Mullis' death is mysterious, the narrator described Mullis' harsh criticisms of Fauci's advocacy for treatment of HIV/AIDS with AZT, using clips taken from various recordings of Mullis, who developed a reputation as a provocative lecturer in his later years.

Tagged with the logo of anti-vaccine activist, nutrition entrepreneur and radio host Gary Null, the video uses narration and video to review Mullis' controversial claim that HIV was an unlikely cause of AIDS. Mullis' invention of the DNA test now known as PCR made him a doughty critic of Fauci's work in the battle against AIDS, which relied in part on DNA testing. Mullis died before the PCR test would become the standard means of testing people for the novel coronavirus infection.