Dr. Anthony Fauci Pleads The Fifth In COVID Hearing

On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In a rebuke against what he called Sen. Rand Paul’s “unhinged obsession” with him, Fauci chose to plead the Fifth throughout his hearing. 

NBC News reports that Fauci served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years and was responsible for overseeing the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. During his opening remarks before the committee, Fauci said he’s appeared before the Senate “well over 200 times,” which “proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight.”

Yet Fauci noted that this hearing was different given Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me.” Fauci pointed to Paul’s decision to release his personal journal days before the hearing as an example of the animosity Paul holds against him. 

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words — quote — ‘behind bars,’” Fauci explained.

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he continued. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

The Republican senators on the committee spent most of their time attacking Fauci’s recommendations for mitigating virus transmission. Federal agents wearing masks to brutalize U.S. citizens and undocumented folks is fine, but wearing a mask to prevent the spread of infectious diseases is where they draw the line.

Paul, who serves as chair of the committee, told Fauci that he will face “repercussions” for refusing to answer their questions. “The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so,” Paul said. “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the committee, was critical of the hearing and his Republican colleagues’ line of questioning. “It’s tempting to turn one person into the scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across both the Trump and the Biden administration were responsible for handling,” Peters said, adding that people were facing death threats.

Why we’re still litigating the COVID-19 pandemic in the big ‘26 is beyond me. We know the response wasn’t perfect and that largely boils down to two reasons: we had an incompetent dumbass as our president, and this was an entirely new virus that medical professionals were trying to understand in real time. Trump was the president throughout most of the pandemic. If Paul and Senate Republicans want this farce to be taken seriously, then they should be grilling him for his ineffectual response to the pandemic. 

This hearing isn’t about learning from mistakes to try and better protect the country from future pandemics and biological threats. It’s about continuing to fuel conspiracy theories and further emboldening folks like HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to continue ignoring proven medical science in favor of their feelings. 

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Dr. Anthony Fauci Pleads The Fifth During Hearing Over COVID Response was originally published on newsone.com