Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is pressing for what he described as a “COVID reckoning,” arguing that officials who shaped the federal government’s pandemic response should be publicly exposed and held responsible.
“I think it’s crucial that we have a COVID reckoning,” Johnson said during the Fight Club Roundtable hosted by – News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle. “These people need to be held accountable.”
Johnson said that bringing the full picture into public view may ultimately prove to be the most meaningful form of accountability, particularly because criminal prosecutions could be hard to pursue. He alleged that officials avoided creating written records and destroyed emails that might have revealed how key pandemic decisions were made.
“They didn’t leave much of a trail,” Johnson said. “They learned how to destroy emails. They didn’t memorialize things in emails. They’re not that stupid. So it’s going to be difficult.”
According to Johnson, his staff is examining about one million pages of material and is still finding additional information from newly reviewed devices. Rather than releasing the records in a massive document dump, he said investigators are working to sort and present the material in a clear, coherent way.
“We keep finding more things, trying to reveal that and expose it in an organized fashion so it actually makes sense to people rather than just dumping it on the public,” he said.
Johnson also said some documents must be held back while witnesses are being interviewed, so people connected to the investigation do not know in advance what evidence the committee has gathered.
“That’s not a way to conduct a serious investigation,” Johnson said of releasing every document immediately.
The Wisconsin Republican then turned his attention to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I want to make sure that Anthony Fauci’s reputation is completely destroyed, that people actually understand what a truly monstrous individual he was,” Johnson said.
Johnson accused Fauci of helping fund gain-of-function research that may have contributed to the pandemic and then covering up the origins of COVID-19. He also criticized Fauci’s role in promoting the COVID vaccines, which he called a “deadly injection”:
What he did — funding gain-of-function research — probably contributed to the pandemic. Then he covered it all up and pushed a deadly injection on the global population. Nobody knows how destructive that injection will be in the long term. This is a bad guy. I think his appearance before the Homeland Security Committee was a very bad day for him.
“He is being held accountable through the destruction of his ‘Saint Fauci’ reputation, even though Democrats and the media still want to put him on that pedestal. But I think more Americans’ eyes are open to what a monster he truly was,” said Johnson.
