Rand Paul just escalated the fight to hold Dr. Fauci criminally accountable
Last week, Senator Rand Paul recommended that Anthony Fauci be criminally charged for lying to Congress.
And… nothing happened. So, the senator has decided to help.
The Daily Mail reported on Tuesday, “Republican Sen. Rand Paul is recommending the top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., pursue an investigation and possible criminal charges against Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly lying under oath about COVID-19 origins.”
The outlet continued, “Paul sent a letter to D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves Tuesday, demanding an investigation into Fauci for allegedly committing perjury during a congressional hearing in 2021 when he said that COVID did not come from a Chinese lab.”
Paul said, in a letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Mail, “Dr. Fauci testified that 'the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.' In a subsequent hearing, I warned Dr. Fauci of the criminal implications of lying to Congress and offered him an opportunity to recant his previous statements.”
The senator was referring to a 2021 congressional exchange between he and Fauci in which Paul made sure to emphasize to the doctor that it was “a crime to lie to Congress.”
https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1685370259451109376
Paul shared the story on X (Twitter), saying that if the attorney general was not prepared to ‘do his job,’ the senator would be glad to share the evidence of Fauci’s alleged criminality himself.
So he did. “I’ve today sent evidence for a criminal referral for Anthony Fauci to the US Attorney in DC,” Paul said.
https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1689048862441222144
According to the Mail, Paul’s original request last week was met with silence.
Paul’s “move comes just weeks after he submitted an 'official criminal referral' to the Department of Justice,” the outlet observed. “An aide to Paul confirmed to DailyMail.com that the DOJ never responded.”
Paul appears to have a point, at a minimum, that Fauci may have lied to Congress about US involvement in gain-of-function research, and it is of note that the senator went out of his way to personally point out to Fauci that lying before Congress could bring felony charges.
Doesn’t this appearance of committing a felony deserve to be investigated regardless of the findings? Isn’t part of the attorney general office’s job to follow up on such allegations regardless of who it is or what political party it might affect?
Or is ignoring this request from the senator really more about politics, not mere law, and the Department of Justice truly has become as weaponized as many Republican critics claim?
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