Republican Senator Grills Defiant Fauci on Whether Diary Entry Is Self-Delusional: ‘Did You Literally Lie to Your Own Diary?’
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) pressed Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Wednesday hearing on whether he “lied” to his own diary after entries were revealed to the public.
Fauci appeared before the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee following the release of his Covid-era “diary,” which revealed his cozy relationship with media figures during the pandemic and embracing his new celebrity status.
Things started off with fireworks on Wednesday, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accusing Fauci of “aiding and abetting the crime” of Covid lockdowns and ruining his own legacy with dismissals of lab-leak origin theories for the virus.
Fauci stood defiant during the hearing, pleading the Fifth to questions thrown at him and accusing Paul of having an “unhinged obsession” with him. Things got so heated at one point that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases saw his own lawyer tossed from the hearing by Paul.
Johnson faced the same canned Fifth Amendment answer as other lawmakers, and he wrapped up his time by asking Fauci about an alleged contradiction in his diary, asking Fauci if he was “literally” lying to himself when writing about a plan to reopen counties in 2020.
Check out the exchange below:
RON JOHNSON: Let me end on this note because this just came to light. We’ve got 11 million pages of documents. We also have other people who were in the room. But now you actually lied to your own diary. On March 27, 2020, you wrote in your diary, to my surprise yesterday the POTUS sent a letter to governors outlining a plan to reopen county by county while monitoring the spread of virus in low risk counties. This was half baked and never shown to Deb or I before it was sent out. So we have evidence that in fact you were fully aware of it and certainly approved it, if not authored it. So I’ll just simply ask you, is that true? I mean, did you literally lie to your own diary? Did you know of that letter sent out to governors about reopening county by county? And again, Mr. Chairman, I’d ask that you to ask the witness to just answer that one simple question.
ANTHONY FAUCI: On the advice of counsel I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
Watch above via Fox News.
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