Well, bless his heart.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the man who ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly four decades, pulled down a salary of almost $500,000 a year as the highest-paid employee in the entire federal government, retired with a pension that rivals a president’s paycheck, and sat on a reported $12.6 million net worth with his wife, has now put out a tin cup and asked you to fund his lawyers.
I am not making this up. “The Anthony S. Fauci M.D. Legal Defense Fund” has a website and everything. “Your contributions directly support these defense efforts,” it says. So let me get this straight. The man who told you to mask up, lock down, shutter your churches, keep your kids out of school, and line up for shots wants you to dig into your wallet, after inflation ate your grocery budget, to pay his legal tab? That’s just not how it works, hon.
Here is what’s actually going on. Fauci sat before a Senate committee in July and invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times. Over a hundred. This is a man who had appeared before Congress more than 250 times across his career and never once needed that protection. Not once. And now suddenly he can’t answer a single question without his lawyer whispering in his ear? Sen. Rand Paul, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, held him in contempt of Congress for it. Paul has been after Fauci for years over whether U.S. taxpayer money funded risky viral research in Wuhan, and Fauci has denied it under oath repeatedly. Now he won’t talk at all.
Meanwhile, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has subpoenaed Fauci to investigate whether he personally profited off the COVID guidance he handed down to the rest of us. Louisiana and West Virginia are backing that effort. And just to put a bow on it, Fauci’s former advisor David Morens pleaded guilty this week to concealing pandemic-related documents and evading public records laws. The man who stood next to Fauci for years is now a convicted document-hider. But sure, let’s all pitch in for the legal defense fund.
Oh, and let’s not forget the cherry on top. Joe Biden, on his way out the door, slapped a preemptive pardon on Fauci so he couldn’t be charged for anything he said or did in prior years. A pardon. For a man who hadn’t even been charged with anything. If that doesn’t raise your eyebrows, you’re not paying attention. Paul and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have been looking for new angles to pursue perjury charges anyway, and Kennedy reportedly dug up entries from Fauci’s own diary on a government server. Paul published them before the hearing. Fauci called it “aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me.” Well, Dr. Fauci, if you didn’t want to be embarrassed, maybe you should have answered the questions.
Here is what I know with my own two eyes. Regular people lost their jobs, lost their businesses, watched their kids fall behind, and buried loved ones during that pandemic. They followed the rules. They trusted the experts. And the chief expert, the one on every television screen for two solid years, is now sitting behind a legal defense fund website with his hand out while he pleads the Fifth and his old deputy pleads guilty.
The man had seven presidents’ ears and a half-million-dollar salary. He can pay his own lawyers.
- Fox News: Fauci’s lawyers launch legal defense fund as federal, state investigations mount against him
- CNN: Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment more than 100 times in Senate hearing
- Yahoo News: Fauci’s lawyers launch legal defense fund