Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) expressed his intention Thursday to subpoena Dr. Anthony Fauci over allegations that he covered up his role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Will we finally see justice served?
Paul spoke to a small gathering hosted by Young America’s Foundation about his push to expose the extent to which Fauci lied to the public and Congress during and after the onset of the pandemic.
“I’ve been working with [Fauci] to bring him in [to testify] voluntarily,” Paul said. “He agreed to come in, and now when it finally gets to the date, he’s saying he’s not coming in, but we will, in all likelihood, issue a subpoena Monday.”
Paul’s promise to continue pressing for Fauci’s prosecution, who was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years, comes after years of hearings, investigations, and bombshell reports about his involvement in gain-of-function research.
Paul first referred Fauci to President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for allegedly lying under oath during a May 2021 Senate hearing about his knowledge of U.S. funding of a biological laboratory in Wuhan, China, where COVID-19 originated.
Even though Paul has tried to get both Biden and President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to indict or continue to investigate Fauci, none of his referrals have borne any fruit.
Now that Fauci has a blanket 10-year pardon by the Biden administration, it may be more difficult to pin him down.
“I don’t think he’s going to get off scot-free. Legally, it’s more difficult to get him,” Paul said.
This time around, though, Paul plans on using recent DOJ indictments to finally put Fauci into a corner.
Paul pointed to Vincent Munster, a researcher with the National Institutes of Health in Colorado, who was charged with smuggling vials of an infectious monkeypox virus and other biological samples into the United States this January, The Washington Examiner reported.
In his position as the director of the NIAID, Fauci funded Munster’s research over the years, which Paul noted linked the two doctors in a possible conspiracy.
Paul also pointed to Fauci’s former senior adviser at the NIAID, David Morens, who held his position from 2006 to 2022. Morens was indicted in April of this year on charges relating to intentionally evading federally mandated oversight of his work and destroying relevant documents.
Paul expressed his hopes that, with the testimony from Munster and Morens, his case against Fauci would be in a more advantageous position.
“I think a plea deal would be worthwhile to get information that they have on Anthony Fauci,” Paul said.
Although Munster and Morens’s testimony would provide necessary and useful context to Fauci’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still the issue of Biden’s blanket pardon.
Paul said that he wants to challenge the pardon and argued that because the pardon is in place, the DOJ might not want to attempt to prosecute Fauci.
“[The DOJ] may just argue it’s impractical, and you can’t really overcome a pardon. I don’t know. We’ve never had a real challenge to his pardon, which was not for a specific crime,” Paul said. “And then there’s a question of whether Biden is cognizant of what he was doing and whether he even knows who Anthony Fauci is, because [the pardons were] signed by an autopen.”
Paul’s game plan is to challenge the legitimacy of Biden’s signature on documents related to Fauci’s pardon, press for potentially crucial testimony from Morens and Munster, and let Trump’s DOJ do the rest.
This plan might just have the strength to finally let the courts decide whether to prosecute Fauci. Fauci’s role in funding research connected to the Wuhan lab, his possible gain-of-function research, and his misleading or borderline-false testimony to Congress.
What throws a wrench in Paul’s plans — more than the fact that there has never been a legal precedent to challenging pardons, even if they were signed by autopen — is that the Trump administration seems unwilling to keep fighting to prosecute Fauci.
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Trump’s focus has long since shifted away from prosecuting bad actors from Biden’s administration. He’s far too worried about Iran, the economy, and UFC fights to revisit an issue that does not have a good enough chance of offering a return on investment. Trump can either spend his time gaining international clout, brokering a peace deal in the Middle East, or he can fight to jail a former government employee at the risk of being criticized for weaponizing justice.
Although one of the first things Trump did when he entered his second term was to revoke Fauci’s security detail, it does not seem like the president has given him a second thought since then. If Fauci is to be prosecuted, Trump needs to remember that draining the swamp requires airing out the muck that has been festering there for years, including the muck surrounding Dr. Fauci.