Omertà

Fully pardoned Fauci took the Fifth to protect someone else

On June 3, 2022, the FBI arrested Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House trade adviser and economic official, at Washington’s Reagan National Airport for the high and hideous crime of ignoring a congressional subpoena from the House January 6 Committee. The FBI handcuffed him. A grand jury indicted him and a court convicted him. Trump later pardoned him.

On October 12, 2011, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoena-ed Attorney General Eric Holder for Justice Department documents and communications related to Operation Fast and Furious, which gave rifles to Mexican drug cartels.

Holder ignored the subpoena. The House voted 255–67 to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress—the first time a sitting Cabinet member faced such a charge. But President Obama asserted executive privilege over the remaining documents and the Justice Department declined to prosecute Holder.

So the rule of law is Democrat presidents can go after political enemies, while protecting lawbreaking Cabinet officials from facing justice. Republican presidents face dealing with passive-aggressive Republican Congresses whose members would rather be in the minority than actually do the work of a majority Congress.

Which leads to Wednesday’s Senate committee hearing—chaired by Senator Rand Paul—into the trillion-dollar covid catastrophe caused by Tony Fauci, whom Reagan brought to Washington to find a cure for AIDS. Over the course of 40 years, Fauci built a bureaucratic empire and ingratiated himself among the politicians, celebrities and press gaggles of DC. Barbra Streisand had him on speed dial.

(People. People who need fascists are the ugliest people in the world.)

Fauci never did find that cure—despite torturing beagles such s having Tunisian sandflies bite them and cutting off their vocal cords, a debarking, a cordectomy. But he retired to a pension larger than a presidential salary and pocketed all sorts of deals including a $5 million book advance for a book that sold less than 100,000 copies.

Rand Paul is no dummy. He knew that Fauci is a liar who would never talk under oath even with the prosecutorial immunity of a presidential pardon—regardless of who actually signed it.

On Saturday, the senator released 1,100 pages of a diary—an Internet log of Fauci’s activities that was spread over 11 servers. The entries were the equivalent of a transgender mass murderer’s manifesto.

On Tuesday, Senator Josh Hawley got to tell Fauci to his face what conservatives think of him, “Yeah, well, silence is admission. And here’s the real thing—at the end of the day, it wasn’t just about the money, really, was it?

“It was really about a power trip. I mean, through all of this, you wanted to be the most famous scientist in the world. You were so focused on getting every award and every drop of cash that you could, all because you wanted to be on TV.

“You wanted to be the sun god of science. You wanted to be the guy who was in charge of it all. You wanted to lambaste Trump. You wanted to make sure that nobody else stole your spotlight. YOU wanted to be the GUY.

“You had time to sit for InStyle magazine. Here’s what you were doing with your time. You could sit for InStyle magazine, but you can’t answer questions for the American people! You could sit for InStyle magazine, but you’re here taking the Fifth!

“You could sit for InStyle magazine and get a MILLION BUCKS in cash awards, but now the cat’s got your tongue. I bet he does!

“I’ll tell you what, here’s my conclusion from all of this. This was really all about you the whole time. Somewhere along the way, you lost your way. You may have been a good public servant at one time, I don’t know.

“What I can tell you from reading your emails now, from looking at what you did, how you used your employees, somewhere along the line, it became all about you. You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar, and you’ve lied to the American people, and you’ve lied to this body! And you’ve disgraced your profession by doing it.”

“You called yourself the most famous scientist in the world—you’ve done more to harm science than anybody in my lifetime. And I hope you’ll go home and write that in your diary.”

Hawley spoke truth to power like Lindsey Graham defending Kavanaugh, who attended the senator’s funeral.

Liz Wheeler gave the best summary of the situation:

We were… right.

- Social distancing was a hoax
- Masks were a joke
- Lockdowns were worthless
- mRNA jabs were dangerous
- Case fatality rate was low
- Ivermectin worked
- Hydroxychloroquine also worked
- Remdesivir was a killer
- COVID came from the Wuhan lab
- Fauci funded it

Fauci lied about it all.

Fauci lied to profit himself.

Fauci abused YOU to bolster his ego, money, and power.

Put the despicable villain in prison.

Congratulations, conservatives. You were right. It doesn’t get your grandmother back so you can give her a decent funeral. It doesn’t bring the business your poured your life into back after losing it in a lockdown. It doesn’t get you credibility. Being right feels like a consolation prize six years later.

Fauci won’t go to prison for any of this.

But his contempt of Congress—his refusal to answer any questions despite having immunity from federal prosecution—should land him in jail because the Fifth Amendment should not apply to someone who received a pre-emptive pardon.

Lawyers can argue the fine points of a blanket pardon, but what struck me was Fauci refused to answer any questions at all, which should establish that he showed a contempt for Congress that is unacceptable. Senator Paul called it an obstruction of a congressional investigation. That sounds extremely serious. Whether John Thune—a euphemism for lifer Senate bots—has Rand Paul’s back is another matter.

My take is Fauci was not worried about being prosecuted but rather he was maintaining Omertà, the code of silence to protect his accomplices. By accepting the pardon, Fauci admitted committing crimes. Someone helped him. Now he is protecting them.

Finally, President Trump weighed in on the hearing.

REPORTER: “Dr. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times today. Do you think Dr. Fauci should face repercussions for this?”

TRUMP: “Well, I watched the whole thing today, but more importantly, I inherited Fauci. He was here from the 1980s, so I had him for a period of time, and I disagreed with him on a lot.

“I would have had to close down the whole country if I listened to him. I went the federalist way, which is basically to let the governors decide. Generally speaking, the Republican governors did very well.

“The Democrat governors did not do very well.

“But Fauci wanted to have nobody wearing masks, if you remember, and then everybody had to wear five masks, as many masks as you can get. I mean, he made a lot of mistakes.”