Senator Rand Paul remains determined to hold Dr. Anthony S. Fauci accountable and blasted the use of taxpayer money to fund the security for the retired immunologist as outrageous and that he is receiving treatment normally reserved for former presidents.
The Kentucky Republican, who has been a fierce critic of the man responsible for driving the nation’s COVID policies, joined Fox News host Jesse Watters to discuss documents obtained by his show through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the U.S. Marshals Service detailing how the agency took over responsibility for the protection of the elfin career bureaucrat at the beginning of the year.
(Video: Fox News)
On Monday’s edition of “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Paul responded to the host’s question as to why Fauci would be continuing to get “around-the-clock security” now that he’s no longer an employee of the federal government.
Responding that he’d heard rumors that Fauci was still showing up at his office and had his security detail, the senator said questions were posed to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as to whether the 82-year-old Fauci was still working and if he had a limo with a driver and security detail.
“HHS actually came back to us and said they haven’t been paying for it since January. But then we discovered that Fox did a Freedom of Information Act and a judge forced them to say that, well, while HHS wasn’t directly funding it, the U.S. Marshals were funding it,” Paul said, telling Watters that the government officials told him that while they weren’t directly footing the bill, that “somebody else is doing it and then we’re reimbursing them.”
“So it’s a terrible example of the government lying to its representatives and to the people. But also, why is a retired guy, the only retired official I know of that gets this kind of treatment is a former president,” Paul said. “So I have no idea why this bureaucrat still has a limo driver, security detail, and we want to know, does he still get legal representation, because I think he may need that eventually.
He added, “But he’s a rich man, his wealth increased by 30 percent during the pandemic, I think he ought to pay for his own security detail and his own legal defense if he needs one.”
If it’s up to Senator Paul, Fauci is going to need to lawyer up because he’s not backing off in his efforts to see him be made to answer for the harm that he was responsible for during the hellish pandemic response as well as the funding of dangerous “gain of function” experiments at the Chinese lab that the virus may have escaped from.
According to the Daily Mail, Paul sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week calling for a probe into whether Fauci perjured himself when he gave testimony to a Senate committee in 2021 regarding the origins of the virus.
Fauci, then Biden’s top medical adviser told the senator and his Republican colleagues that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) which he headed up since President Ronald Reagan’s first term in office “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
But evidence contradicting Fauci has since emerged in the form of newly released emails from early 2020 just before the lockdowns showing that Fauci was aware of the risky research and that “scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.”
BREAKING
New emails reveal that Dr. Fauci was aware of risky gain-of-function research occurring in Wuhan, China prior to the emergence of COVID-19.
Why didn’t he tell the American people?@COVIDSelect is demanding answers pic.twitter.com/pvxtaCRB5s
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) July 13, 2023
Paul shared the Daily Mail report on Twitter, confirming that he has asked the Justice Department to investigate.
I’ve referred Anthony Fauci to the DOJ (again) for lying to Congress when he denied the NIH was funding of gain-of-function research in Wuhan. https://t.co/LuPDleRhYW
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 18, 2023
The senator had previously sent a criminal referral on Fauci to the DOJ alleging that he lied to Congress about the funding for the research at the Chinese lab.
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