US Senate panel votes to hold former official Fauci in contempt of Congress
The move comes after the infectious diseases chief during the COVID-19 pandemic refused to answer questions during a hearing before the committee. A United States
The move comes after the infectious diseases chief during the COVID-19 pandemic refused to answer questions during a hearing before the committee. A United States Senate panel has voted to hold former health official Anthony Fauci, a key figure in the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in contempt of Congress. The move on Thursday came after Fauci last week invoked the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which includes the right to remain silent, during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Fauci, the former Director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), charged that the Republican-led hearing was designed to entrap him. He had previously been pre-emptively pardoned by former President Joe Biden after a politically divisive government response to the pandemic, which included school closures and vaccine promotion. Fauci accused the committee chairman, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, of having an “unhinged obsession” with him, arguing he had previously cooperated in several congressional hearings and investigations following the pandemic. “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 said.
After the vote on Thursday, the panel could refer Fauci to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution. Speaking before the vote, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said there was “virtually no chance that a court would actually approve any contempt because [Fauci] had a well-founded fear of self-incrimination, which entitled him to invoke the Fifth Amendment”. Rand, meanwhile, argued that Fauci’s decision to deliver an opening statement decrying the hearing before invoking his Fifth Amendment right during questioning, showed he was “trying to have it both ways”. Democrats and critics have charged that last week’s hearing, which comes six years after the pandemic spread across the US, was a purely political exercise that shed no new light on the issue. Several Republicans have for years accused Fauci of leading an intentional effort to mislead the public on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, charging he downplayed the possibility the virus may have emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, and not from a nearby wet market via natural animal-to-human transmission. Fauci has denied he ever outright dismissed the “lab leak” theory. The origin of the virus remains unknown, but surveys have found a majority of experts in the field believe available evidence indicates natural transmission over a lab leak.
The BriefWire