House Republicans forced Dr. Anthony Fauci to answer for inconsistencies in his approach to Covid-19 during his Monday morning testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The hearing was Fauci’s first public testimony since announcing his retirement, and several committee members called for Fauci to be prosecuted over the disastrous and unfounded restrictions he championed during the pandemic.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene led the charge, calling for an investigation into Fauci’s role as a bureaucrat who created and advocated for baseless restrictions during the pandemic.
“You know what this committee should be doing? We should be recommending you to be prosecuted,” Greene said. “We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison, Dr. Fauci.”
Monday’s hearing underlined the inconsistencies and baseless judgment calls Fauci made during his tenure, highlighting the fact that the pandemic policies and regulations initiated by Fauci did not coincide with what the studies would have justified and demanded. Transcripts of Fauci’s January 2024 closed-door testimony, released over the weekend by Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup, further detailed the failures of Fauci’s pandemic-era domestic policy.
Members of the subcommittee used both occasions to question Fauci regarding one of the most crucial aspects of Fauci’s Covid-19 manifesto — his opinion and handling of the lab leak theory. When asked about the lab leak theory in the January hearing, Fauci equivocated, saying, “Well, it’s a possibility. I think people have made conspiracy aspects from it. And I think you have to separate the two when you keep an open mind, that it could be a lab leak or it could be a natural occurrence.”
But in Monday’s public hearing, Fauci was quick to appease viewers and deny any opposition to the theory.
“Do you agree that there was a push to downplay the lab leak theory?” Rep. Jim Jordan asked.
Fauci responded, “None on my part.”
Fauci’s blatantly false answer is deeply troubling given that in 2020 Fauci used unverified data to dismiss the lab leak theory — a theory that is now proven to have a solid scientific and factual basis and is accepted by the overwhelming majority of Americans.
Fauci’s role as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his rise to power as the nation’s chief Covid expert gave him authority over the subject. Fauci used this authority to compel lawmakers and the public to trust his judgment on treatments, prevention, and the virus’ origin. But these realities didn’t stop Democrats from continuing to lionize Fauci and attack those who questioned him.
California Democrat Rep. Robert Garcia teed Fauci up for a condemnation of alleged conspiracy theorists during Monday’s hearing. He asked, “Do you think the American public should listen to America’s brightest and best doctors and scientists, or instead listen to podcasters, conspiracy theorists, and unhinged Facebook memes?”
“Listening to people who you just described is going to do nothing but harm people because they will deprive themselves of life-saving interventions,” Fauci said. “People who refuse to get vaccinated, for any variety of reasons, probably are responsible for an additional two to three hundred thousand deaths.”
Fauci continued to blame the unvaccinated even when his testimonies revealed his culpability. A study from the National Institute of Health revealed, “After 9 months of follow-up, the cumulative risk of new SARS-CoV-2 infection was 21.8%, 22.0%, and 25.9%, respectively, among exposed to natural immunity, vaccine-induced immunity and unexposed.”
Even though these results were published over a year ago, Fauci doubled down in both the January and June hearings that unvaccinated individuals are the problem. As if Covid-era fearmongering were not detrimental enough to national morale in 2020, Fauci persists in his crusade against the unvaccinated.
The subcommittee played a recording of Fauci in which he claimed that all objections to coronavirus vaccinations could be overcome if corporations and government policies would make it difficult for people’s lives to go back to normal.
“It’s been proven that, when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bullsh-t,” Faucisaid in the recording.
Fauci has consistently changed his tune regarding the detrimental policies he enforced, as well as the dangerous rhetoric he propagated, all while failing to take responsibility for his role in the American pandemic response. However, one consistent factor in the Fauci hearings was that politics, not science, determined Covid-era policies. Fauci’s “expert” epidemiological opinion seldom relied on research.
When asked about social distancing rules, Fauci said, “You know, I don’t recall. It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever.”
Fauci was asked if any studies supported that claim. He replied by saying that no studies exist to justify it, and it would be difficult to conduct a study to determine and reinforce the six-foot distancing rule.
Rep. Michael Cloud pressed Fauci in Monday’s hearing on the reasoning and effectiveness behind other Covid policies, such as school closings, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates.
Fauci was unable to justify them, but he did say, “These were important when we were trying to stop the tsunami of deaths that were occurring early on. How long you kept them going is debatable.”
The motivation to implement and prolong those policies stemmed from Fauci’s advice, which he seems to forget.
Congressman Rich McCormick, an emergency room physician and veteran, also pressured Fauci on the danger of his unfounded policy decisions and the rhetoric spread about doctors who experienced treating Covid firsthand yet were ridiculed and silenced by the government.
“I’m being told by bureaucrats what’s right and wrong,” McCormick said. “And what’s funny is that everything I was censored on, I was proven to be right.”
Kamden Mulder is a summer intern at The Federalist. She is a senior at Hillsdale College pursuing a degree in American Studies and Journalism.
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