Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday became one of the earliest members of Congress to urge criminal prosecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci after the former White House medical adviser invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during a Senate hearing examining the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Dr. Fauci ought to think about what it says about the end of his career, that what he will be remembered for the most is pleading the Fifth more than 100 times,” Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox News Digital.
The Texas Republican escalated his criticism further, calling Fauci “the most damaging bureaucrat in the history of America” and arguing that he “should be held in contempt [of Congress], he should be prosecuted for perjury, and he should go to jail.”
Fauci, 85, appeared under a subpoena issued by Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.). The former longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases declined to answer questions about his role in shaping the federal COVID-19 response, as well as issues surrounding U.S.-linked funding for high-risk pathogen research in China, where the outbreak first emerged.
Although Fauci had received a broad pardon from former President Joe Biden covering 11 years of conduct, he repeatedly invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination, a move that infuriated Republican senators seeking answers about pandemic-era decisions.
“I think Anthony Fauci has had contempt for Congress and contempt for the American people for decades,” Cruz said. He claimed Fauci’s diary showed he “deliberately lied to the American people over and over and over again,” including by privately expressing doubts that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan wet market before publicly promoting a different message on television.
Cruz also accused Fauci of contradicting himself on school closures. “In his diary, he brags about convincing Democrats in New York and California to shut schools down, and yet he goes on TV and says, ‘Oh, I wasn’t for shutdowns,’” the senator said.
The school shutdowns, Cruz argued, were among the most harmful policy choices of the pandemic era. “The school shutdowns, which Fauci bragged that he was responsible for, may well be the single most destructive public policy step we’ve seen in decades,” he said. “That learning loss will stick with those kids the rest of their lives. When they’re 90 years old, they will still be suffering the consequences of Anthony Fauci’s corrupt and dishonest shutdowns.”
On the Democratic side, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — a member of Paul’s committee who suggested during the hearing that he had let partisan loyalty blind him to the possibility that the pandemic may have started with an accidental lab leak — said his GOP colleagues had gone too far by making Fauci deliver his rote response to questions for three full hours.
“I do think it’s entirely appropriate to really hold Fauci accountable, but I don’t think it’s really appropriate to pound an 85-year-old man … just to try to humiliate the guy,” Fetterman told NewsNation’s “Cuomo” Wednesday evening.
“Is it really necessary to force the dude to say, ‘Fifth, Fifth, Fifth’ 111 times?”
