Republicans are one step closer to fulfilling their obsession with seeing Anthony Fauci behind bars, the man who led the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic during Donald Trump’s first term. The Senate Homeland Security Committee adopted a resolution this Thursday declaring the doctor in contempt of Congress for refusing last week to answer the panel’s questions about the origin of the coronavirus and his actions as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
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The vote, which was divided along party lines, now paves the way for the committee to recommend the Department of Justice prosecute Fauci for failing to comply with the Congressional subpoena, a misdemeanor that could lead to imprisonment. The panel could also decide to bring the contempt to a vote in the full Senate, although that alternative is unlikely to succeed, as Republicans hold only 53 of the 60 seats needed for such a resolution.
Republicans have been accusing Fauci for six years over his handling of the coronavirus and allegedly hiding that it escaped from a laboratory in China
Republican Senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee and has led the effort to pursue Fauci, stated at the start of the session that they were not condemning the doctor for his “opinions, policies, or anything he said from the podium six years ago,” but were voting to determine if a witness “who has received the benefit of a federal pardon can be compelled by this committee to answer questions and then challenge that order without consequences.”
At the end of his term, President Joe Biden granted Fauci a preventive pardon, aware that he would become the target of Republicans when they regained power. However, the pardon only covered events up to that point, so it does not protect the doctor from this contempt declaration.
If the Department of Justice ultimately initiates prosecution and secures a conviction, he would not be the first to go to prison for a similar reason. Two Trump advisors in his first administration, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, spent four months in prison in 2024 for failing to comply with Congressional subpoenas. However, unlike Fauci, who invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying, they simply did not appear to testify.
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The hearing in question took place last week and was marked by aggressive questioning by Republicans about the origin of the coronavirus and Fauci’s alleged misconduct. Senator Paul, on behalf of the MAGA movement, accused the doctor of implementing lockdown policies in 2020 that harmed the economy, public health, and children’s education, as well as misleading Congress about federally funded research in Wuhan (China) which, according to Republicans, concluded that the pandemic originated from a lab leak.
Fauci, who accused the committee of designing the hearing to legally incriminate him and fulfill Trump’s desire to imprison him, invoked the Fifth Amendment up to a hundred times to avoid answering. Republicans considered this a failure to comply with his subpoena and declared him in contempt today, despite the legal implications still being uncertain.
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Six years after the start of a pandemic that impacted the economy and public health worldwide, and led governments to make rushed decisions while unaware of the virus’s scope as a vaccine was being developed, the coronavirus has returned to the forefront of U.S. politics. During the last year of his first term, Trump and Fauci had a series of clashes over coronavirus management and measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, and caution in reopening the economy, measures recommended by the World Health Organization.
The legal consequences of the contempt declaration are uncertain, as Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment to refuse to answer
Trump was aware that these policies would harm the economy and, consequently, his reelection hopes. So he found in Fauci the target to shoot at during his 2020 election campaign. After losing that election, the president further hardened his rhetoric and went from being an official Trump disagreed with to directly an enemy of the U.S., a man of the “deep state” who hid the truth about the coronavirus from the people.
Trump’s Health Secretary, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, then gained significant media presence and was a frequent guest on Fox News. On Sunday, he insisted on accusing Fauci of “mismanaging the pandemic” and said that “Trump wanted to end the lockdowns.” However, although the federal government issued guidelines, it never imposed that social distancing, as decisions were left to the states. Thus, states like South Dakota, Iowa, Utah, or Nebraska never imposed that controversial order. Others, like Florida, imposed restrictions later and lifted them before the federal government recommended doing so.
During nearly four decades at the helm of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci, now 85 years old, was a well-regarded health official by both Republicans and Democrats and was considered a global public health reference. However, in their effort to discredit science, Trumpism ended up turning him into a scapegoat and an enemy to blame for Trump’s handling of the coronavirus.
After he refused to testify last week, this Wednesday Senator Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, announced he had received a copy of Fauci’s official mobile phone. “I hope this device answers many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing,” he wrote on his social media.
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