{"id":334,"date":"2026-08-02T04:10:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T04:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=334"},"modified":"2026-08-02T04:10:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T04:10:25","slug":"fauci-agonistes-its-time-to-end-the-republican-witch-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=334","title":{"rendered":"Fauci Agonistes: It\u2019s Time to End the Republican Witch Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The right danced a jig of joy over Dr. Anthony Fauci\u2019s invoking the Fifth Amendment before Rand Paul\u2019s Senate Homeland Security Committee.<\/p>\n

Read more The Case for the DNC\u2019s Ken Martin. Really.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Kentucky Republican knew in advance that Fauci would give no substantive testimony. Yet he paraded the 85-year-old doctor before the cameras to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights over a hundred times, then warned him of \u201crepercussions\u201d for refusing to answer. Judges often instruct juries that they may draw no adverse inference from a witness\u2019s invocation of his constitutional rights, but Paul seemed to forget this in his admonition.<\/p>\n

Fauci\u2019s great crime: He served his country during the COVID crisis, acting as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022 and as Chief Medical Advisor to the President from 2021 to 2022, a position handed him by a fellow named Donald Trump. Trump made Fauci the face of the government\u2019s response to the COVID pandemic. But ironically, he has become a hate figure for the MAGAs who would politicize medicine and scientific research.<\/p>\n

\u201cDR. NO,\u201d gloated the tabloid headline in Rupert Murdoch\u2019s New York Post<\/em> reporting on Fauci\u2019s appearance before the Committee. \u201cFauci invokes Fifth Amendment a shocking 111 times, denying Americans answers about Covid failures.\u201d And Murdoch\u2019s Wall Street Journal<\/em> featured a front-page picture of a pursed-lipped Fauci under a Headline \u201cFauci Refuses to Answer Senators\u2019 Covid Queries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul released Fauci\u2019s personal diary to the public. It is always dangerous to keep a diary. It can and will be used against you. Job lamented, \u201cOh, that mine enemy had written a book!\u201d It means that adversaries, giving you written evidence of their thoughts, provide damning ammunition that may be used against them. Diaries often express uncurated feelings and opinions that the diarist might later find embarrassing. Writing your diary on a government computer would seem like a particularly bad idea.<\/p>\n

Portions of Fauci\u2019s diary are certainly unflattering to the author. Whose personal diary isn\u2019t? While containing notes about the COVID-19 health crisis he managed and the players he dealt with along the way, much of his musing is about himself. On Jan. 6, 2020, he writes of a \u201cSuper A list\u201d party he attended. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hugs and kisses him and tells everyone \u201chow great I am.\u201d Strange he would brag about this.<\/p>\n

Is Fauci showing a bit of vainglory? Undoubtedly. But compare that with this Trumpian braggadocio: \u201cAnd when you\u2019re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab \u2019em by the pussy. You can do anything.\u201d In this culture, can you fairly rubbish this second-generation Italian American from Brooklyn for taking the Fifth and noting in his diary, \u201cAll my friends kept saying I was a national hero\u201d and that they \u201c\u2018felt safe in my arms\u2019?\u201d Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan did. She oddly likened the Fauci hearing to \u201ccongressional hearings on la Cosa Nostra, and the head of one of the five families is fiddling with his diamond pinkie ring as he asserts his right not to incriminate himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the hearing, Fauci accused Paul of a \u201ccampaign of slander\u201d against him, an \u201cunhinged obsession\u201d with putting him in jail. He\u2019s right. Fauci received a broad pardon from Joe Biden before he left office, to spare him criminal prosecution and congressional witch hunts such as these. Fauci\u2019s only criminal exposure would appear to be for perjury before the committee. But given Paul\u2019s obsessions and so many GOP officials saying he belongs in jail, including the anti-vax Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who wrote a monomaniacal bestseller about the good doctor, Fauci was wise to invoke the Fifth Amendment as advised by his lawyer, the well know white collar criminal defense attorney, David Schertler who was ejected from the committee room by Paul for having the temerity to address the committee.<\/p>\n

Read more How Left Will Democrats Go In 2028? That Depends on 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Taking the Fifth Amendment is not a left-wing preserve. Roy Cohn advised his clients to do it all the time. Trump took the Fifth more than 440 times in an inquiry by the New York State Attorney General into asset valuations, loans, and documents involved in his business activities.<\/p>\n

The Fifth Amendment is never a badge of admitted criminality, although in the Senator Joe McCarthy era it stood as such. The Constitution says that no person \u201cshall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,\u201d and that has been a privilege guaranteed to all of us since 1791.<\/p>\n

And refusing to answer questions put by a congressional committee isn\u2019t a stigma either. Respected lawyer Jay Clayton, Trump\u2019s second pick for Director of National Intelligence following the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard, came before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Reviewing his qualifications for the job, Senator John Ossoff asked him who won the 2020 presidential election. He refused to answer the question, directly responding, \u201cI\u2019m not gonna engage in this theater.\u201d The Senate subsequently confirmed Clayton.<\/p>\n

Fauci has already testified before Congress more than 200 times about such luscious topics as whether the lockdown went on too long, whether the evidence still obviates the theory that the virus leaked from a China lab, and the like. Maybe there is a case for a Pearl Bailey \u201cOne More Time,\u201d but he refused to testify, and that is his sacred right.<\/p>\n

How long is Paul going to obsess about Fauci? Besides, what angers the Kentuckian are policies that President Donald Trump enacted during his first term and that governors and mayors of both parties pursued. History can judge Fauci, but elevating political disagreements into a trial by inquisition does no one any good.<\/p>\n

The much-maligned Senator John Fetterman, the mercurial Pennsylvania Democrat who is on Paul\u2019s committee, used his time at the hearing not to pound the table in defense of Fauci or against him but to publicly muse about whether he pursued good policies as the Commonwealth\u2019s lieutenant governor during the apex of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fetterman wasn\u2019t sure, which demonstrated rare humility. The iconoclast lamented that the debate over the source of the pandemic\u2014wet market versus Chinese lab\u2014was being swayed by politics and not science. It was a welcome moment of modesty on a day dominated by Senator Paul\u2019s Javert- like pursuit of Anthony Fauci.<\/p>\n

Read more The Doctor Shortage Is Here\u2014and Getting Worse<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The right danced a jig of joy over Dr. Anthony Fauci\u2019s invoking the Fifth Amendment…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,5,2],"tags":[139],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-higher-education","category-podcast","category-politics","tag-tagged-anthony-fauci-covid-19-donald-trump-jay-clayton-john-fetterman-john-ossoff-rand-paul-rupert-murdoch-senator-joseph-mccarthy-tulsi-gabbard"],"yoast_head":"\nFauci Agonistes: It\u2019s Time to End the Republican Witch Hunt - USA Business Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=334\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fauci Agonistes: It\u2019s Time to End the Republican Witch Hunt - 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