Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul announced a long-shot bid to get the Justice Department to launch a criminal probe of Dr. Anthony Fauci over accusations that he lied to Congress, despite former President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardon.
Paul (R-Ky.) alleged that Fauci lied to lawmakers when he denied knowledge of US-funded coronavirus research in Wuhan, China. The re-upped criminal referral comes amid new details about how Biden’s team used autopen on a swath of clemency.
“Today I will reissue my criminal referral of Anthony Fauci to Trump DOJ!” Paul declared on X Monday. “Perjury is a crime. And Fauci must be held accountable.”
Presidential pardons cannot be revoked once issued; however, Paul is banking on the seemingly unlikely chance that the courts may nullify Biden’s clemency because of autopen potentially being used to sign it.
Biden had issued a pardon for Fauci and a slew of other former high-ranking officials on his way out of the White House, fearing that the incoming Trump administration might target them.
But Paul’s renewed push for a criminal investigation into Fauci comes in the wake of a stunning New York Times piece, which confirmed that the 46th president did not personally sign off on every name that received clemency — while simultaneously insisting, “I made every decision.”
Furthermore, emails obtained by the outlet show that then-White House chief of staff Jeff Zients approved the autopen use and that staff secretary Stefanie Feldman, who wielded the device, did so using written accounts confirming that Biden supposedly gave verbal orders to use the autopen.
President Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the validity of the documents Biden signed via autopen.
The Kentucky Republican has repeatedly called on the feds to probe Fauci’s May 2021 Senate testimony regarding US grants for gain-of-function research in Wuhan labs.
Gain-of-function research entails risky experimentation to enhance the virality and effectiveness of viruses.
During his testimony, Fauci told Paul that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute.”
However, in 2023, the since-defunct House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic divulged a batch of emails showing that Fauci acknowledged that type of risky research was happening in the Wuhan lab. That panel later concluded that Fauci was at least misleading in his testimony.
After the testy May 2021 hearing, Paul later tangled with Fauci again and gave him a chance to recant his claim about gain-of-function research, but the doctor declined to do so.
Lying to Congress carries penalties of up to five years behind bars and criminal fines.
Fauci has argued that the research funded “was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function.” Complicating the matter is the fact that scientists appear to have differences of opinion on what can be classified as gain-of-function research.
Critically, Wuhan is where the earliest known cases of the COVID-19 respiratory illnesses have been traced and the Chinese city his home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been doing research on coronaviruses.
Fauci and Paul repeatedly clashed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in fiery Senate hearings.
The former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director officially exited that post and his role as chief medical adviser to the president at the end of 2022.
The Post reached out to Paul’s office for more specifics and an attorney to Fauci for comment.
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