Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on Wednesday on Capitol Hill for questioning, and it did not take long for things to get heated.
Fauci refused to answer questions from members of a Senate committee at a hearing about his actions as the government’s top infectious disease expert during the COVID pandemic.
In his opening statement, Fauci said he would exercise his 5th Amendment right to refuse to answer questions at the hearing and accused Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul of intending to catch him in a perjury trap.
Things got heated when Paul removed one of Fauci’s lawyers from the hearing after the lawyer repeatedly talked over Paul to defend Fauci, even though he had not been invited to speak.
“You will respect these proceedings. You were told not to sit at the table. You insist on sitting at the table. And we told you you would not be recognized. You are not invited here for testimony, sir. You are being disruptive,” Paul declared.
“Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can’t do that today, but I can have you escorted from the premises,” Paul added.
“So I would say, sir, sit quietly and don’t say another word. I said sit quietly. You are not recognized. Another word and you’re gone,” Paul declared.
After another back-and-forth and the attorney’s refusal to listen, Paul then had security remove him from the room.
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Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Ks., predicted that Fauci will refuse to cooperate with lawmakers during his Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Marshall, speaking to Fox News Digital at the Capitol, argued a long-term solution may be to launch a special counsel investigation into the legitimacy of Fauci’s pardon.
“I think he has to explain why his diary says one thing, but he told the American public something else. he destroyed the America’s trust in government, their trust in the CDC, the NIH as well. He needs to take responsibility,” Marshall said. “He’s partially responsible for the death of a million Americans. 20 million Americans still live with long Covid. He helped fund the the development of this virus. He funded gain a function for years.”
“I assume he’ll either take the fifth or he’ll have amnesia. One of the two. But that’s why we have the, his own diary, in his own words. So I think we can continue to point those out. And eventually America is gonna be the judge,” he continued.
“We’ll see if we lay something out. Is it the auto pen? A pardon or not? I think that’s why I called for a special counsel. We need a special counsel to go into the the validity of the auto pen, along with his funding of the virus…The lies that he told the American public, his miscommunications with the president as well,” he added.
President Donald Trump lashed out at Fauci ahead of his testimony before the Senate.
Trump minimized Fauci’s role in the first Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that Fauci’s ideas had been “crazy” and that he had been trying to “protect China.”
“Many more people died of Covid under the Biden Administration than under the Trump Administration. ‘Operation Warp Speed’ was a SPECTACULAR SUCCESS, in fact, many say, one of the most successful things ever done by an American President. I overrode Fauci on this. His ideas were CRAZY,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.
“Also, I said from the beginning that the Virus came from the Wuhan Laboratory in China. Fauci strongly disagreed, always trying to protect China. I Inherited Fauci, who was there since the 1980’s, but with each passing day, relied less and less on him. He made too many bad calls, like on MASKS. Remember at the beginning he was an anti-masker. He then switched to a super-masker. In any event I didn’t let him shut the Country down, although he wanted to,” Trump continued.
“I went the Federalist way, and let the governors decide. The Republican governors did a much better job than the Dumocrats. Fauci was largely taken out of play, and then along came Sleepy Joe Biden, who made Fauci a ‘King!’ I called Biden to tell him Fauci was no good, either didn’t have a clue, or was dishonest. The call was well received, but sadly, not acted on. Biden went on to give Fauci vast destructive power. The rest is history!” he wrote.
