LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — U.S. Senator Rand Paul is now the leading Republican on the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee.

The Libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky says he hopes to use that role to examine government spending and the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the Democrats in the majority in the Senate, the chair of the committee remains a Democrat, but Paul says as the committee’s ranking member, he’s expecting to reach bipartisan agreements.

“I’ve met with the Democrat chair of that committee, and we’re hoping to work forward, and I’ve requested a forward on an investigation of COVID to try to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We’ve had good conversations, and we’ll see where that leads to. “

For the past two years, Paul has publicly sparred with with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, over the government’s COVID-19 policies and the origins of the virus that caused the global pandemic.

The senator, an eye surgeon, continued to offer his theory about the origins of the virus.

“If you look at the evidence, overwhelmingly — not 100% — but overwhelmingly the evidence points to this virus being a leak from a lab,” Paul said.

In the U.S., many conservatives have accused Chinese scientists of developing COVID-19 in a lab and allowing it to leak.

U.S. intelligence agencies remain divided on the origins of the coronavirus but believe China’s leaders did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic, according to a Biden-ordered review that was released last summer.

The scientific consensus remains that the virus most likely migrated from animals in what’s known as a zoonotic transmission. So-called “spillover events” occur in nature, and there are at least two coronaviruses that evolved in bats and caused human epidemics, SARS1 and MERS.

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