Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., is blasting Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief Medical Advisor to the President for “obfuscating the truth” about the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of gain-of-function research.
The NIH admitted in a letter to House Oversight Committee Ranking Member James Comer, R-Ky., that a “limited experiment” had indeed been conducted.
Fauci further escalated his already heated spat with several lawmakers over the U.S.’s Covid-19 response by claiming the lawmakers oppose “science.”
Fauci has served as the visible face of the government’s pandemic response, which puts him at odds with legislators who remain critical of the administration’s response.
During a televised interview, Fauci dismissed opposition from lawmakers as “noise,” saying they’re “really criticizing science.”
According to Fauci, “Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distant anti-science flavor to this, so if they get up and criticize science, nobody’s going to know what they’re talking about.
“But suppose they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well. In that case, people can recognize that there’s a person there, so it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science.”
Senators seek prosecution
Senator Paul frequently spars with Fauci over policies and statements he has endorsed or made. In response to Fauci’s claims, the senator took to Twitter, saying it is “absolute hubris” for Fauci to claim or declare that he represents science.
“It’s astounding and alarming that a public health bureaucrat would even think to claim such a thing, especially one who has worked so hard to ignore the science of natural immunity,” tweeted Paul.
Fauci also quickly dismissed a suggestion made by Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that the attorney general should prosecute Fauci over his comments denying gain-of-function research.
Cruz tweeted, “It’s a crime to knowingly lie to Congress, so I asked AG Garland if he’d appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Fauci.”
Fauci laughed off the suggestion asking, “What happened on January 6th, senator?” and “You’d have to be asleep,” not to believe that Republicans are trying to make him a “scapegoat.”
In a Twitter thread five tweets long, Senator Cruz responded to Fauci’s comment against him on Sunday, denouncing Fauci as an “unelected technocrat who has distorted science and facts in order to exercise authoritarian control over millions of Americans.”
Cruz continued saying that Fauci “lives in a liberal world” and went on to cite the section of U.S. Code that he and Senator Paul allege Fauci violated when he testified before a Senate Committee in May that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Cruz continued, blasting Fauci for trying to deflect criticism from lawmakers against him by resorting to “ad hominem insults parroting Democrat talking points.”
Cruz concluded by reiterating that the Department of Justice should prosecute Fauci.
