Rand Paul Calls for Dr. Fauci to Face ‘5 Years in Jail’ For Lying to Congress
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Wednesday he believed Dr. Anthony Fauci should receive up to “five years in jail” for allegedly lying in his testimony to Congress.
“It’s a felony punishable by five years in jail,” Paul said in an evening interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I don’t think Biden Department of Justice will do anything with it, but … it is very dangerous to have public officials who we need to have trust in coming and lying to us. But he has lied dozens of times. Usually he tells us it’s for our own good.”
Paul has maintained for months that Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), lied to Congress about whether his agency funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is intended to enhance the transmissibility of pathogens like Covid-19. He sent a criminal referral on the matter to Attorney General Merrick Garland in July, asking him to investigate.
More than 900 pages of documents from the National Institutes of Health — NIAID’s parent agency — obtained and published by The Intercept this week indicated the NIH did provide $3.1 million in funding to the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance to study bat coronaviruses similar to Covid-19. The group spent $599,000 contracting the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses likely to infect humans. The findings have prompted fresh outcry from critics — and flashbacks to some fiery congressional exchanges between Paul and Fauci.
“We don’t know that it did come from the lab, but all the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab, and there will be responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself,” Paul told Fauci during one tense Senate hearing in July, referring to Covid-19.
“I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, senator, because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments that were given in the annual reports that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible,” Fauci replied at the time.
“He has dissembled,” Paul added in Wednesday’s interview. “He has obfuscated. There are other, nicer words, but he has definitely lied to the American public, and he should be held responsible. But not just that — the judgment that we should continue to fund this lab and the virus that in all likelihood came from the lab, I think it is such incredibly poor judgment that he should be immediately removed.”
Watch above via Fox News.
