Dem
47
GOP
53
Rand Paul has had an adversarial relationship with Anthony Fauci for many years. That is due, in part, to the fact that one of those two men is a legitimate academic who takes seriously the scientific method, while the other is a conspiratorial loon. It is also due, in part, to the fact that one of those two men is a real doctor, well respected in medical circles, while the other is a quacky ophthalmologist who is underqualified to work at your local mall's LensCrafters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they butted heads many times.
Yesterday, Paul once again hauled Fauci before Congress, to testify about the pandemic (yet again) before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The Senator's motivation is apparently personal; he wanted to humiliate Fauci and/or to promote conspiracies about the pandemic. The other Republicans on the committee apparently think that bringing COVID/vaccines/Fauci back to life as a culture wars issue will help them in the midterm elections. Perhaps you thought politicians should be running for office based on their ideas and their policy preferences, and who will do best by the American people. How quaint.
Paul and his GOP colleagues were loaded for bear. But Fauci is no fool and is, in fact, several orders of magnitude cleverer than Paul. And so, in his opening statement, the good doctor noted that he knows exactly what game Paul is playing, making specific references to Paul's repeated threats to send him to prison. Fauci also noted that he knows exactly what game the other Republicans are playing. And so, he advised that he wasn't going to play along, and that he would plead the Fifth Amendment in response to any and all questions. And that is what he did, over 100 times.
Fauci's refusal to answer questions left Paul hopping mad. The Senator threw a temper tantrum while the questioning was ongoing, and ordered that Fauci's lawyer be forcibly ejected from the hearing. Afterwards, Paul threatened to push for Fauci to be charged with criminal contempt of Congress, so that Fauci can be—wait for it—thrown in prison.
What Paul is demonstrating here is that his skills as a lawyer are about as strong as his skills as a doctor. Pleading the fifth is a basic right, one that is protected by—you guessed it—the Fifth Amendment. The Senator seems to think that because Fauci was pardoned by Joe Biden for any crimes he may have committed, the Fifth Amendment does not come into play here. But it does, because Fauci could still conceivably be charged with state-level crimes or perjury for lying to Congress. So he still has a theoretical need to protect himself from self-incrimination.
We do not know if Paul, et al., will keep flogging this dead horse or not. Certainly, Fauci checked the Senator, and it may well have been checkmate. What we do know is that Paul, who is at very least a deeply antisocial man, and who may well be a sociopath, brought shame to himself with his shenanigans. Reader R.B. in Cleveland, OH brought to our attention this video, from TMZ gossip-in-chief Harvey Levin, in which Levin absolutely decimates the Kentuckian:
Note that Levin has been a critic of both Fauci and the CDC (as he himself notes in the video), and that he's a Republican who has supported Donald Trump in the past. So, this isn't some Democratic Socialist taking Paul to task.
Again, GOP politicians and operatives think COVID/Fauci is a winner for them, as it was in 2020. They are not going to give up on that idea easily. But if Fauci isn't going to give them any fuel to work with, there may not be anywhere to go with it. Meanwhile, it is not a great look for him to plead the Fifth 100+ times, but the alternative was considerably worse. Similarly, it wasn't a great look for Joe Biden to issue a bunch of preemptive pardons on his way out of the Oval Office, but as reader J.K. in Los Angeles pointed out, Paul just proved yesterday that Biden had no real choice. (Z)