Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday. But the Chairman of the committee, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he planned to bring contempt charges against Fauci next week.

But the hearing quickly became a letdown for Paul and Republicans on Wednesday. The former NIAID head repeatedly took the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions from both Republicans and Democrats.

While Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Fauci at the end of his presidency, citing concerns about “unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions” by the incoming Trump administration, that pardon would not shield Fauci from any alleged crimes committed after it was issued — including perjury before Congress.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 hours ago

    “Given Sen. Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said Wednesday. “Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.”