A committee of the US Senate, controlled by Republicans, declared the former head of the “fight” against the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, in contempt on Thursday for refusing to answer all the questions from the members of the commission last week.
Following the advice of his lawyer, who was expelled from the Senate room where the Committee was operating for his inappropriate conduct, Fauci invoked the constitutional right of the Fifth Amendment that allows him to remain silent when asked by senators. His defiant attitude raised even more suspicions about his responsibility and honesty.
The decision must be examined by the full Senate, where the Republicans have a majority.
The chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Rand Paul, however, wants to transmit the resolution directly to the Department of Justice, so that it can take action in the case.
A conviction for contempt of Congress can land the accused in jail, as happened in recent years with two close advisors to President Donald Trump, Pete Navarro and Steve Bannon.
Republican Rand Paul has made research into the origins and consequences of COVID-19 part of his job as a congressman, and last week he disclosed, after obtaining it as legal evidence, Fauci’s personal diary during the years of the pandemic.
Fauci under Biden pardon
The 85-year-old scientist was for decades the figure in the fight against infectious diseases in the United States, and took on the fight against the pandemic in 2019, in the middle of Trump’s first term.
Paul and Republicans, including Democratic legislators, consider that Fauci’s personal diary proves and holds him responsible for the failed measures he dictated and then hid the real consequences of the pandemic and its origin, in addition to the consequences of the vaccines.
Fauci, with a pardon from Democratic President Joe Biden at the end of his term, defends himself by saying that Paul has a personal obsession and that he intended to use any slip-up against him, which is why he refused to answer questions more than a hundred times at the Committee hearing last week.
Paul also goes after Fauci for the million-dollar funds granted to carry out tests on highly dangerous pandemics in laboratories outside the United Stateslong before COVID-19 broke out.
As is common, Democrats rejected the contempt vote en bloc.
The president of the Committee, for his part, considers that Fauci can be condemned by the Department of Justice, since the presidential pardon covers only his years as responsible for the anti-covid fight, not his subsequent actions.
