Fauci’s contempt of Congress charge? Contemptuous.
We can all agree, I think, that it was a huge embarrassment when Dr. Anthony Fauci refused to answer any questions in a Senate hearing on his role as governmental point man during the COVID-19 crisis.
But it was not an embarrassment only for Fauci, who must have wanted to answer the questions, who under different circumstances would have almost certainly answered the questions.
The real embarrassment belongs to the legal team of Paul, Trump and Kennedy and their MAGA staffers.
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How do we know Fauci wanted to answer the questions? Well, we can make an educated guess based on the fact that in his long and illustrious career, Fauci has testified before Congress literally hundreds of times without ever once invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Here’s another guess: Before last week, I bet Fauci had never cited any constitutional amendment during congressional testimony, although we know he did consistently, and for decades, cite something called science.
Come on, you remember science, as it pertained to, say, vaccines or other public-health issues in the pre-Trump/RFK Jr. regime. As an example, Kennedy is now officially back on the bogus vaccine-link-to-autism trail. And so apparently is the White House, which according to multiple reports, is drafting orders to reduce the number of childhood vaccines — despite scientific evidence that childhood vaccines are safe and, in many cases, life-saving and don’t cause autism.
We know what made this hearing different.
It wasn’t a hearing so much as an inquisition.
It wasn’t an opportunity to discuss the still-debated origins of the virus as much as it was the laying of a perjury trap by Sen. Rand Paul, who, as Fauci said in his opening statement, has an “unhinged obsession” with throwing him behind bars.
Kennedy, meanwhile, wrote a whole book indicting Fauci and also calling for him to go to prison. And now Trump is saying maybe Fauci should be prosecuted because, he explained, the Biden administration prosecuted some of Trump’s guys.
And so, in the committee hearing, we learned absolutely nothing about the pandemic. We did learn, though, some embarrassing tidbits from Fauci’s leaked diary about how much he seemed to have enjoyed the celebrity that came with his role.
There were parts of the diary — “All my friends kept saying I was a national hero” and they “felt safe in my arms” — that the kids would call cringe. He crowed about being invited to a “Super A-List” party and getting a congratulatory email from Barbra Streisand. Super cringe. But, remember, it was a diary, and not for public consumption. And, as far as I know, Fauci never called for a 250-foot arch to celebrate his work.
Oh, and one more thing we learned: Paul will continue to pursue his Inspector Javert-like persecution of Fauci for as long as they both shall live. (Fauci, by the way, is 85. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were screaming that Tina Peters needed to be let out of prison because she was, uh, 70.)
I’d like to have heard the issues debated at the hearing. But Paul didn’t want to debate. He wanted to find a way to get Fauci indicted.
If you’re looking for the reason Paul was setting a trap, the answer is pretty clear. We can blame Joe Biden, who was awake enough and wise enough to issue blanket pardons to many who served in his administration and who were likely objects of Trump’s never-ending Revenge Tour.
So, in order to prosecute Fauci, Paul had to stick Fauci with a post-pardon crime, such as lying under oath. Therefore, the hearing. And therefore, the perjury trap.
Fauci didn’t fall for it, but the panel Paul chaired voted anyway, along party lines, to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for using his Fifth Amendment right, which, as you may recall from high school civics class, is enshrined in the Bill of Rights. And I bet you can guess who pleaded the Fifth 440 times during a four-hour 2022 deposition about his assorted (sordid?) business practices. Bingo.
There is some argument about whether the Fifth is available to someone who has been pardoned, but most experts say that legal angle is a longshot. Still, the contempt charges were sent to Trump’s Department of Justice, and who knows where soon-to-be AG Todd Blanche will take matters. Maybe he’ll hand it off to Jeanine Pirro.
Why are Trump and Paul and the rest of MAGA World out to get Fauci? Again, you already know the answer.
He was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years under presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan. And during the height of the COVID crisis, he was chief medical adviser to the president. The president who appointed him to that position was, um, Donald Trump.
It was Trump who made Fauci the public face of the government’s response to the pandemic. It was Trump, who on the last full day of his first presidency, gave Fauci, along with 50 others, a presidential commendation for his work on Operation Warp Speed. Later, Trump would say he didn’t know who gave Fauci the, uh, presidential commendation. How would that stand up under oath?
But Trump wants to erase his COVID-era performance — who can forget Trump’s conclusion that we had so many cases because we had done so much testing or, even better, his idea to inject us with household disinfectants? Paul may be obsessed with Fauci, but Trump, as we know, is obsessed with his legacy.
So, Fauci is blamed for forcing people to wear masks, for shutting down businesses and churches and schools, and, of course, for funding the Chinese lab where the virus was allegedly created and then covering up his involvement. Fauci did offer advisories, sometimes contradictory, during the panic of pandemic, but state and local governments were responsible for following through on the recommendations. Fauci never had that power.
He did have the power, though, to help bring calm to the crisis. And, for many of us, he did.
I won’t get into detail about the virus creation — NPR has a good overview on the science behind whether the virus jumped from animal to human or was created in a Wuhan lab. I will say that the argument today is far more about partisan politics than it is about science.
But I do know a cure for Trump’s and Paul’s contemptuous behavior. It will come in the November midterms when politics is all we’ll have on our mind. Why do you think Trump is trying to rig the election even as he accuses, as he always does, Democrats?
You don’t need science to grasp this concept. You do need to be able to count.
If Democrats take back the House, they will, as the majority party, launch hearings into Trump’s abuse of office — and the Fifth Amendment will be heard throughout the land from subpoenaed Trump officials, if they even show up.
And if Democrats take back the Senate, Paul, being in the minority, won’t chair any more committees, and Trump won’t be able to get hacks like Blanche approved to carry out his path of vengeance.
If Democrats fail in the midterms, though, you know what will happen. The Fauci beatings will continue until morale improves.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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