Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday declined a request to appear voluntarily before a second Senate panel after majority Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee voted along partisan lines last week to hold the longtime infectious disease expert in contempt.
In a pointed letter to Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, a lawyer for the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said any effort to compel him to appear before a Senate subcommittee, after a contentious July 29 hearing, would be to "impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes.”
If I were him (which I’m not), I wouldn’t appear before any political panels after what they did to him the first thing. All the panellists want is sound bites to make him look bad.
If only it were just sound bites.
They want to put him in prison because that’s what the nutjobs in their base want. They can (and have before) combed through testimony to find any discrepancies to charge people with perjury. They would do the same with Fauci, except Biden granted a pardon to Fauci. But that pardon wouldn’t cover any new testimony Fauci gives.
So their plan was to bring in Fauci, ask him a bunch of questions, if even a single word can be interpreted to mean anything that could be considered false, then they charge him for perjury.
Which is why Fauci took the 5th on every question last time. It’s not that he’s done anything incriminating (he was pardoned anyway) it’s that he knows the point of the whole exercise is to incriminate him with perjury.
This is why we need to abandon this mentality that pleading the 5th is the same thing as admitting guilt. Not only is it fundamentally not the same thing, and explicitly distinct from it, but it’s also our first line of defense against abuses of power and politically targeted libel/smear campaigns such as this.
Well the main problem is using the justice system to prosecute political enemies. This led to abusing perjury laws, so now pleading the 5th is the prudent thing to do when you’re a political enemy of those in power.
🌎👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Always has been.
They want him executed. They’re horny for their enemies to be put to death by the state.
This assumption is too strong. Imagine making this same statement about Jan 6th rioters.
Are you seriously comparing Fauci to the Jan 6 rioters?
Yes. The rioters certainly did something incriminating before they were pardoned.
Claiming Fauci didn’t do anything incriminating, but was pardoned anyway, is pure speculation.
Except that we have live footage of the J6 rioters committing federal crimes up to and including sedition, insurrection, and treason; which was broadcast on national television and replayed extensively for weeks. And not one but two investigations by a special counsel who successfully brought the case before a grand jury which concluded that a crime did likely occur. And multiple FBI investigations resulting in hundreds of convictions, to boot.
Versus Anthony Fauci, where the only even suggestion that he was involved in any wrongdoing comes directly from the same propagandists and conspiracy theorists who were responsible for the J6 riot and have brazenly weaponized the justice department on sham trials in retaliation against perceived political opponents.
Yeah, you’ve got no paddle in this argument. He was pardoned preemptively because it was already obvious that these freaks would try to persecute him.
Claiming Fauci committed any crimes is what’s pure speculation here. And besides, the burden of proof is on the accuser. They couldn’t come up with anything to incriminate him before, so harassing him again about it is akin to double jeopardy.
Or he did something that needed pardoning. Which is more likely.
Funding research abroad is not a crime. Covering up a paper trail leading to gain of function bat virus experimentation is.
We don’t know that he didn’t do anything indictable. We do know he can’t be indicted.
Agreed. Pleading the 5th is the only sane response.
…you claim without evidence while accusing me of speculating about his innocence…
Is there any reason to believe he did this other than right-wing conspiracy nutjobs say he did? Just cause Cousin Earl talks about it at holidays is no reason to indict.
We don’t know that you didn’t do anything indictable either. Fortunately for you that’s not enough to bring you to court. That’s not how our justice system works.
Which is what he did. And now he’s refusing to play their games because he knows they have no cards.
The claim above was that “It’s not that he’s done anything incriminating”. We do not know this. The preemptive pardon makes this even less likely.
It depends how linked he is to his aide
I have made no claim either way.
A whole bunch of people believe in conspiracy theories over science, so they want to put a prominent scientist into prison.
Do you think it’s an assumption that conspiracy theories have made people stupid?
Is the possibility that Covid-19 leaked from a lab a conspiracy theory?
Was there a DARPA research group planning to insert a "proteolytic cleavage site” into bat coronaviruses?
Did Niaid award a research grant to a company, who then issued a sub-award to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China (and intentionally hide communications from public view)?
Not questioning government sources is the stupid part (particularly with this administration, but also with others).
Yes Fauci was pardoned, but we can’t assume him to be innocent.
Stay off Facebook.
The only speculation here is that these three bullet points are related.
How the problem originated isn’t relevant to the people whose job is to deal with the problem.
I think you may have gone too deep into covid conspiracies. No idea what you’re even talking about here.
Yes, there were grants to a research lab. Not sure what that indicates other than they wanted access to the results of the research. It’s not at all disputed that there are research grants and the research lab in Wuhan received a research grant.
The problem with conspiracy theories is the generally fall apart when as soon as you ask “why would they want to do this?” So why would China want to intentionally release a virus on it’s own people in the hopes that it would spread to the rest of the world? How would that benefit them in any way?
Yes, it’s possible that the virus accidentally came from the lab in Wuhan. But how does having testimony from a guy that’s retired help determine that? What does it even accomplish even if you did determine that a virus came from a lab in Wuhan?
Sounds to me like you just want someone to say “you were right, the virus came from a lab.” So ok…
You were right, the virus came from a lab.
Are you happy now? Has your life suddenly gotten better? Will you stop pretending that fascists cracking down on individual scientists is a good thing to do because you now feel emotionally vindicated about some internet arguments you had around five years ago?
If they caused the problem it is relevant.
Leaked Grant Proposal Details High-Risk Coronavirus Research This research plan was rejected inside the US, so abroad is the likely place where this could be done.
The point is that fauci’s associates were deliberately keeping communications a secret. Literally a conspiracy.
Maybe they want to hide that they funded the gain of function research that lead to millions of deaths.
To find out exactly what research Wuhan was doing for Niaid, and who authorised it. This would lead to even stricter controls on gain of function research worldwide.
I doubt they would. Most likely the virus was accidentally “walked out of the lab”.
I don’t care who cracks down. I don’t want dangerous viruses to be artificially mutated to make them even more dangerous for humans.
Are you under the impression that Dr. Anthony Fauci worked at the research lab in Wuhan?
This is like wanting to arrest a fire fighter because you suspect someone else burned down your house. You went in too deep on the anti-vax conspiracy theories, bud.
No. Are you? However, he may have been (ultimately) responsible for authorising funding for the research in Wuhan that created Covid.
“My ‘I’m not Dr. Fauci’ T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt”
They’re trying to make Trump and the GOP’s complete fuckup of covid his fault.
This regime is a fucking circus.