Every. Single. One.
The man who spent four years on television telling America he represented science itself — who dismissed anyone who questioned his pandemic decisions as attacking science — sat before Congress Tuesday and refused to say a single word about any of it on the record. He wouldn’t confirm whether there was a folder sitting in front of him on the table. He pleaded the Fifth on that too.
Let that land. The most powerful unelected official in American life during the pandemic — the man whose word closed schools, destroyed small businesses, mandated vaccines, and shaped four years of American life — won’t answer questions about what he did. Because anything he says might incriminate him.
That’s not an innocent man defending his record. That’s a man who knows what the record shows. It got so bad that Paul had to have one of Fauci’s several attorneys removed from the Senate hearing room:
Meanwhile, Paul’s opening statement laid the case out with the precision of a prosecutor who has been building this argument for five years. Fauci’s NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He told Congress on May 11, 2021 that the NIH had never funded such research at the WIV — a statement his own diary and the declassified documents surrounding COVID’s origins now directly contradict. His diary — released by Paul last week — showed Fauci privately acknowledged the virus probably came from the Wuhan lab while publicly promoting the natural-origin narrative that kept federal research funding out of the conversation.
“The only logical answer,” Paul said, “is that your primary concern was avoiding culpability.” He cited Fauci’s 2011 defense of avian flu transmissibility experiments — research he called critical even if it triggered a pandemic — as evidence of a man whose institutional interests were always more important than the public’s safety.
Former CDC Director Robert Redfield was equally direct on Fox News before the hearing: “I really do think he intentionally misled Congress and the media and the American public.” Redfield — who was silenced by Fauci during the pandemic for questioning the lab leak theory — added that Fauci “hurt science more than anybody” by treating his preferred narrative as the only acceptable conclusion.
Biden gave Fauci a sweeping preemptive pardon in his final days — the same kind he gave Hunter. A pardon that covered conduct going back a decade. For a man who had nothing to hide, that’s an extraordinary amount of legal protection.
Fauci chose not to answer for any of it today. He dressed his silence in constitutional language and attacked Rand Paul for having the nerve to ask. But Paul was resolute and issued this very appropriate warning.
“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. It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”
Yes, yes, and yes.
Three million Americans died during COVID. Someone who knows what happened is sitting in a Senate hearing room refusing to say.
The Fifth Amendment is a right. Using it isn’t a confession. But it isn’t nothing, either.
