evidence: Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, initially resisted a White House directive to cancel the NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance — a nonprofit conducting research on coronaviruses that had previously worked with the Wuhan lab some experts fingered as the origin of COVID-19 . He later "reluctantly agreed" after learning then-President Trump was directly behind the order, according to an upcoming book by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta.