hill he's facing a grilling from republican about the origins of covid-19. >> also today for the first time in history, the son of the sitting president of the united states is on trial. jury hey, selection now underway in hunter biden's federal gun case and history is being made. mexico elected its first female president claudia sheinbaum. we'll have a live report. >> hello, i'm wolf blitzer in washington and urine the cnn newsroom happening. now up, i'm capitol hill republican lawmakers are turning up the heat on the man who led the us government's response to the covid pandemic dr. anthony fauci faces more questions on that response and the origins of the virus that killed nearly 1.2 million americans. dr. fauci will also face questions about email exchanges involving one of his top advisers a subpoena from the republican-led committee turned up emails were dr. david borons appears appears to be trying to avoid public record laws cnn's lauren foxes up on capitol hill for us, see then medical correspondent back tirrell is also joining us along with dr. paul off eddies, the director of the vaccine education center of the children's hospital in philadelphia and a member of the fda vaccine advisory committee, lauren, what will republican lawmakers underscore in today's hearing? >> yeah. i just love to the hearing room. wolf and one thing is very clear. they are trying to lay out in specific detail why they believe dr. fauci has not been entirely on it about the origins of the covid-19 pandemic. now for his part doctor fauci in his opening statement, defendant has actions during the beginning of that a pandemic laying out in details precisely the steps that he took in trying to understand the origins of the pandemic. he also made clear because of questions about some of his subordinates email practices that he to the best of his knowledge, he said this in his opening statement, never used his person it's an old email to conduct official business that obviously is going to be something that republicans are going to continue to press him at in this hearing, we should note that this the first time the doctor fauci is appearing before a public committee hearing since he retired from nih in 2022, he did appear though back in january in 2d subsequent days, private testimony behind closed doors 14 hours in total, where he answered some of the same questions we expect he will get again today for their part, democrats are defending fauci is saying that he is not some villain that republicans are trying to paint him as. here's representative raskin this investigation of dr. fauci shows that he is an honorable public servant, committed the public health and he is not a comic book supervillain. >> he did not fund research to create the covid-19 pen denmark. he did not lie to congress about gain of function research and wu han, and he did not organize a lab leak suppression campaign to cover his tracks and the questioning is just beginning in this hearing, but already you're seeing from democrats that they are saying getting dr. fouchier for his service during the pandemic, for his long tenure at nih. >> they are also laying out the importance of the vaccine that he helped shepherd through the process it says over the course of the pandemic saying that it's saved lives. that is something else. so you can expect republicans are going to be pressing on in the days and hours ahead. >> or excuse me wolff, sorry, lawrence them by i want to get back to you, but i want to bring in meg right now. meg, what are the medical topics likely to be covered in today's hearing well well, i mean, what you heard from lauren is really what the focus is today. >> there isn't a lot of scientific discussion going on, at least good faith efforts, it seems to talk about the origins of this virus necessarily early or scientific questions about actions taken early on in the pandemic, we did here in an exchange between the chairman and dr. fauci about the efficacy of the covid vaccine of the republican's of press, dr. fauci on claims at the beginning of the pandemic that the vaccine bended transmission and things like that. fauci says, you at the beginning, it did look like the vaccine could stop cases of covid, but as time went on, it became clear that that didn't last. but what he did point out is that the vaccine has proven to be quite durable in terms of preventing severe disease and death from covid. he was then asked, is the vaccine 100% effective? and he said but i don't think any vaccine is 100% effective, so we are hearing some scientific and medical questions peppered in here, but primarily the discussion really has been about dr. faltys oversight of questions about the origin of the virus. dr. grouchy really coming in and wanting to address four topics off the top, which really had to do with that as well as people bill on his staff who've come into attention for potentially behavior that was not seen as the right way to be transparent about the early days of the pandemic and grants to a certain group ecohealth alliance. but well, folks, i've talked with on both sides of the aisle and the public health community not expecting a ton of scientific revelations coming out of this hearing today, more sort of political focused on max down, but i want to quickly listen and to at least part of this hearing that's ongoing right now, let's listen with a copy of the christian andersen, but you sent it to professor jeremy for our jeremy, i just got off the phone with christian andersen and he related to me his concern about the purine site mutation in this spike protein of the currently circulating 2019 and cov i told them that as soon as possible, he and eddie home should get a group of evolutionary biologists together to carefully examine the data to determine if his concerns are validated, he should do this very quickly. and if everyone agrees with this concern, they should report it to the appropriate authorities. i would imagine that in the usa, this would be the fbi in the uk, it would be m, m five, it would be important to quickly get confirmation of the cause of his concerned by experts in the field of coronaviruses and evolutionary biology in the meantime, i will alert my us government official colleagues of my conversation with you and christian and determine what further investigation they recommend. let us stay in touch. best regards, tony, was this the email where you were putatively trying to cover up? >> the possibility of a lab league yes. congressman raskin, an ester reason why i mentioned in my opening statement that is it inconceivable that anyone could get out of that that i was covering anything up would you have any reason to cover up? >> any new scientific evidence relating to the origins of the covid-19 virus absolutely not. >> and that's the reason why it was important to get people together that to discuss this in a transparent way. >> have you spent your whole life trying to determine the causes? of infectious diseases and then to stop them to protect the american people? >> yes, i have. >> well dr. fauci i want to join my colleague from florida and apologizing to you that some of our colleagues, the united states house of representatives, seem to want to drag your name through the mud they're treating you, dr. fauci, like a convicted felon actually, you probably wish they were treating you like a convicted felon. they treat convicted felons with love and admiration some of them blindly worship convicted felons is there anything else you would like to say to the american people about your service to america during the course of the covid-19 pandemic my main job during the covid pandemic was to play a role with my team at the vaccine research center to develop a safe and effective vaccine. >> and we did that in an unprecedented short period of time, never seen before in the annals of x allergy. as we all know, that vaccine. and those vaccines have resulted in saving of hundreds of thousands of lives in the united states, and millions of lives throughout the world. >> well you have fought aids and hiv. you have fought covid-19 and. you are fearless in doing so. do you have any reason to be afraid of scientific evidence or data or the truth out at all. >> thank you. i will get back to you, mr. chairman. >> now recognize mr. griffiths from virginia for five minutes of questions thank you, ms >> chairman. >> good to see you, dr. fauci so, take a deep breath. >> are we're going to continue to monitor this important hearing with dr. fouchier just heard him defend himself congressman jamie raskin, asking those questions. >> so we're going to continue to monitor this will get back to it as needed. but right now i want to bring in dr. offset khuza'a real expert in this whole area doctor office first of all, give me your reaction to what we just heard from dr. fauci well, i think it is really important to understand the origin this virus you have three pandemic viruses that have all occurred in the last 20 years. >> you can assume there's gonna be another one. so it's important to understand this, but really scientifically, this is isn't a controversy. this one was an animal to human spillover event that occurred in the western section of the hunan wholesale seafood market at the end of 2019. all the original cases were there and then spread out concentrically from there. there were animals that were sold in that part of the market, sold illegally, like red foxes and kuhn dogs, they clearly were susceptible to coronavirus and they were sold to legally under non-hydrogen iq and unsterile conditions. the chinese scientists, and now we know that investigated that area, found evidence of source cov-2 virus on cages on machines years to kill the animals and we now know that even some of the animals had source cov-2 virus so this is not a scientific or medical controversy, but it's become a cultural controversy because we want a person to blame. but i think if you want anybody to blame, blame the chinese government because first of all, they were unwilling to let international teams of scientists come in and see what was going on. we had to depend on a whistleblower in wu han to tell us that there was a it was causing people to be hospitalized and die. i think they were. and we know that in 2002, stores, one was an animal to human spillover events. so i think china is culpable here and mother nature is culpable here. so let's bring those up in front of these congressional subcommittees. >> important point, dr. offered. thank you very much. stick around. we're going to continue to monitor this hearing throughout the hour. we'll get back to you. there's other breaking news coming into cnn right now. dozens of stocks have been put on a pause because of a technical glitch over the new york stock exchange. cnn reporter matt egan is joining us right now. matt, what more of you learned? tell us about this well, this is a developing situation. >> here's what we know. the new york stock exchange says that it is investigating what they're calling a technical issue involves what's known as limit op, limit down, which is really a safeguard put in place to prevent stock prices from moving to wildly. now, in just the last few moments, the new york stock exchange sent out an update saying that these stocks that have been impacted, they are reopening or are in the process of the opening and they say that the issue at the heart of this has been resolved. now we're going to keep an eye to see how these stocks open up trading because there was a bizarre situation where you mentioned dozens of stocks were halted for no apparent reason. some of them were showing really unusual moves up, most notably berkshire hathaway as the big holding company run by legendary investor warren buffett class a shares for berkshire hathaway were listed down trading at $185.10. >> that would be a 99.97% drop because normally this stock is trading above 600,000 was in dollars. so clearly something weird going on. i talked to one market structure structure expert who told me that something is wacky is happening. hopefully this is going to be resolved and cleared up. we showed the big board before showing the dow down about 200 points not a major move. it does not appear to be directly related to these individual stock issues. the broader market does appear to be holding up. and we'll keep an eye as these stocks start to trade. again, hopefully at normal prices, wolf will stay in close touch with your math. thanks very much for staying on top of this potentially very a significant story we're going to continue to monitor all the developments unfolding right now from the testimony of dr. anthony fauci, and we'll bring you any major headlines? 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>> well, one thing i'm going to be interested in is what is the defense's narrative here it's very challenging to convince the jury in this circumstance. he didn't purchase a gun or that you weren't abusing drugs at that time? >> i i think that they're going to try to have a strategy potentially putting the prosecution on trial arguing for something like nullification. >> so i'm very interested in what the defense opening statement looks like in the hours to come nick guy, as you know, the biden family clearly has an extensive history in the state of delaware. could this impact potentially jury selection? there oh sure, but again, i think that's gonna be all vetted during jury selection to the extent that people have a prejudice one way or the other. i think that will come out for sure. >> but you're right at the end of the day. i think the bidens have a lot of connections to delaware. delaware is the small one of the smallest states in the union and everybody probably knows somebody that knows the bidens so it could have an impact. i mean, i really think that the only defense that hunter biden has is is at the time at the time he signed the atf form at the time he owned the gun for about ten days was he addicted to drugs? was he taking drugs to me? >> that is the only possible defense he's got. and i agree with renato i'm curious to see if that comes up in the opening statement. >> that's a good point. we're not oh, the judge overseeing this trial, delta defense, two setbacks yesterday blocking an expert witness and excluding a key piece of evidence. so what do you make of those rulings? >> i have to say i think the judge has been very pro prosecution in this one. there's also some prior rulings in which the judge really didn't i would say seriously consider the arguments by the defense that the essentially already completed a deal with the government on that the government essentially went back on its deal. so i actually think that defense is going through at this trial because they think they have some grounds for appeal. they also of course, have potentially second amendment argument to try to invalidate the statute. so they've got a bunch of different appellate argument, so i think they're going through the motions in this trial trial, and they're really trying to get an appellate victory nick, as you know, at