RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Topline Dr. Anthony Fauci declined to answer questions during a Senate hearing Wednesday morning, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights and accusing committee chair Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has said Fauci should be “behind bars,” of an “unhinged obsession with me.”
In a prepared opening statement, Fauci accused Paul of calling him to testify “to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, quote, behind bars.”
“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” Fauci said.
Fauci said he will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights on the advice of counsel, though he said it “pains” him to do so given his “decades-long record of cooperating with Congress.”
Fauci also accused Paul of releasing more than 1,000 pages of his diary over the weekend to embarrass and intimidate him, also accusing him of making “repeated slanderous comments about me” and an “obsession with calling for my prosecution.”
After Fauci’s opening statement, Paul began asking questions, to which Fauci responded he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and decline to answer.
President Donald Trump criticized Fauci’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in a post on Truth Social, minutes before he began testifying. He said Fauci’s “ideas were CRAZY,” claiming he “overrode” Fauci on Operation Warp Speed, the plan to develop COVID-19 vaccines. He also alleged Fauci “strongly disagreed” with the theory the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, claiming Fauci was “always trying to protect China.” Trump said he “relied less and less” on Fauci over time, saying he made “too many bad calls, like on MASKS,” accusing Fauci of being an anti-masker before becoming a “super-masker.” Trump claimed he warned Biden that Fauci “was no good, either didn’t have a clue, or was dishonest,” but said Biden gave him “vast destructive power.” Some of Fauci’s diary entries were fiercely critical of Trump, whom Fauci described in some entries as “out of control,” “a total embarrassment” and “incorrigible.”
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