The right wing obsession with punishing Dr. Anthony Fauci just hit a new milestone.
Last week, in his attorneys’ advice, he invoked his Constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.
On Thursday, a Senate committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.
The next step could be to send a criminal referral to the DOJ. Will it happen?
Dr. Fauci was voted in Contempt of Congress
On Thursday, August 6, the Senate Homeland Security Committee voted to hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress.
Last week, members of the Senate grilled Dr. Fauci six years after the fact about the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times.
Despite him showing up to the Senate floor and allowing the GOP to put on this show trial, that still wasn’t good enough.
In an 8-to-5 vote along party lines, Republicans voted to hold him in contempt for allegedly blowing off a congressional subpoena.
The right wing narrative about Dr. Fauci seems to be a little inconsistent.
Some claim that he manufactured this virus (humans do not have the technology to engineer a virus of this sophistication), killing millions and disabling millions more.
On the flip side, other rightists have claimed that this deadly pandemic was actually nothing, and hate Dr. Fauci because they believe that the government response was too restrictive.
Both groups have been known to parrot unhinged narratives about vaccines.
Though Trump was in office in 2020 and supervised the launch of America’s pandemic response, Republican Senators are loathe to criticize him. Therefore, they take aim at Dr. Fauci.
Will he be prosecuted by the DOJ?
Rand Paul is many things. Very few of them are good.
He is also the Committee Chairman.
He says that the Fifth Amendment does not protect Dr. Fauci because President Joe Biden offered him a preemptive pardon before leaving office.
Biden issues multiple pardons for targets, like Dr. Fauci and Hunter Biden, who seemed likely to be subjected to malicious and unjust prosecutions by the Trump regime.
Dr. Fauci’s legal team advised him to invoke the Fifth because answering questions in any way might expose him to legal jeopardy. Among other things, federal pardons are not state pardons.
Now, the potential criminal referral to the DOJ may sound daunting — but it might not be that big of a deal.
An actual referral would require 60 votes in the full Senate.
Even if, let’s be real, the alleged ghost of Mitch McConnell were to join in this vote, that seems pretty unlikely.
Rand Paul, whom some people take seriously for whatever reason, wants Dr. Fauci prosecuted and imprisoned.
In that sense, this is a big deal. Vindictive maniacs who are utterly detached from reality should probably not hold as much political power in our federal government as they do now.