Anthony Fauci’s lawyer claims the Senate panel decision to hold the former White House chief medical adviser in contempt of Congress is nothing more than a “crude political stunt.”
In a statement following the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s 8-5 vote to hold Fauci in contempt, Fauci’s lawyer David Schertler said, “Today’s partisan committee vote is a crude political stunt intended to punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights.
“The Senate should reject Senator Paul’s meritless and politically motivated contempt resolution,” he added.
Paul, chairman of the committee, explained that it would have been very simple for Fauci to simply answer questions during the hearing rather than plead the Fifth more than 100 times. All Fauci had to do, the senator emphasized, was tell the truth.
“A million Americans died, and I think they deserved to know truth. Anthony Fauci has advocated for dangerous gain of function research for two decades now. The question ‘why’ is not a question that he can have liability for,” Paul told reporters. “He was given a pardon. Interestingly, the pardon starts in 2014. That’s when the funding of the lab in Wuhan started.”
“So I think he should answer questions. As far as pleading the Fifth when you have a pardon, all you have do is tell the truth – just not commit a new crime,” the Kentucky senator said. “But if we were to grant him immunity from telling the truth, of what value, you know, would his testimony would be?”
During the debate ahead of the vote, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) pointed out that Fauci’s decision to refuse to answer a single question was predetermined and not tailored to one specific topic, posing a major issue.
“Dr. Fauci has full immunity. He has a full and unconditional pardon for a period of some 11 years,” Hawley pointed out. “In that context, the assertion of Fifth Amendment privilege only adheres to those instances where the witness has a reasonable fear of future prosecution, and it must be tailored to any such fear.”
“And the fact that he wouldn’t answer questions about the tie he was wearing or the color of the carpet or the day of the week — Senator Paul asked him about did he have a folder in front of him. He wouldn’t answer that,” he said, explaining that this “betrays the fact that his invocation of the Fifth Amendment wasn’t tailored to anything.”
“It was a predetermined, premeditated design to evade this, this committee’s questions on any subject, including emphatically those for which he has a pardon,” he added.
The vote comes on the heels of a Senate committee led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) obtaining a forensic copy of Fauci’s cellphone and the state of Florida subpoenaing the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) chief.
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