The Vilification of Dr. Fauci

Last week Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Senator Rand Paul, who chairs that committee, had long accused Dr. Fauci of having misled the Congress about the origins and dangers of the COVID-19 virus. There’s no question that the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought about the worst medical disaster since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, was a worthy topic for careful examination. Indeed, for over the four years following the onset of the virus, there were scores of inquiries regarding the virus’ origin; and Dr. Fauci had testified at almost all of them. 

            Even today, the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic officially remains an unsolved mystery because the U.S. never had full access to the evidence that might have definitively resolved this issue. Out of all the various hearings two principal theories of the virus’ origins have emerged. One was that it may have simply been transmitted from an animal (most likely a bat) to a human. This is the path that two previous coronaviruses (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS) had taken to infect humans. That hypothesis was supported by the fact that the first two individuals found to have been infected by the virus had recently visited the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market located in Wuhan, China where live bats were sold. Wikipedia currently reports that the consensus among infectious disease experts is that this is the mostly likely way the COVID-19 virus came to infect humans.

            The second hypothesis is that the transmission of the virus took place in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a Chinese medical research laboratory which was studying how viruses are transferred from animals to humans. Specifically, one of the research techniques utilized by WIV was “gain-of-function” experiments in which the properties of known pathogens are altered in an effort to ascertain how to interdict the spread of potentially more lethal mutations of the viruses. The evidence pointing to the WIV as the origin of the virus is that some of its employees fell ill with the COVID-19 virus shortly after the discovery of the virus in the two men who had visited the near-by Huanan Seaford Wholesale Market. Further supporting this theory is a statement discovered in Dr. Fauci’s notes (and provided to Senator Rand’s committee) asserting that the Wuhan market was not the original source of the transfer but rather was only where the virus had been passed on to the two men who were first diagnosed with it. 

What makes the source of the virus such a sensitive issue is that the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s efforts were funded indirectly in part by the NIH. Specifically, the NIH had made a $3.7 million grant to the EcoHealth Alliance in 2014 of which just under $600,000 was set aside to fund infectious disease research being performed by WIV.  That grant had been negotiated and overseen by the NIAID (which was directed by Dr. Fauci) and is reported to have funded research regarding “the identification of bat coronaviruses, analysis of viral genetic diversity, risk assessment of cross-species transmission, and laboratory experiments creating chimeric SARS and MERS-related viruses.”  Admittedly, I am not qualified to say whether this description encompasses the gain-of-function research undertaken by WIV. In any event, gain-of-function research, while recognized as being “risky”,  had been undertaken by scores of virologists dating back over ten years.

Still, one has to wonder why Senator Paul’s committee was now concerned with the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Dr. Fauci had retired more than four years ago, and the COVID-19 pandemic ceased to be considered a “public health emergency” more than three years ago. Moreover, it seems highly questionable whether any benefit could be derived from now revisiting these issues. This raises the further question as to whether Senator Paul’s committee’s recent attempt to interrogate Dr. Fauci was a good faith effort to take remedial action or simply an unabashed attempt to blame him for the deplorable manner in which our nation’s sought to combat the spread of the COIVID-19 virus.

The recent discovery of Dr. Fauci’s personal notes, however, was not what rekindled interests in the origins of the COVID-19 virus. Rather, his statement included in those notes regarding the pandemic’s origin only provided a convenient rationale for attacking him; namely, because he had repeatedly failed to disclose this apparent conclusion in numerous Congressional hearings. The actual motivation for re-examining the origin of the COVID-19 virus was that Republican politicians, dating back to 2022 had vowed to attack Dr. Fauci to appease the anger that many Republican voters had expressed over Dr. Fauci’s role in prompting the federal government to implement business lockdowns, school closings and requirements that individuals wear face masks and observe social distancing requirements. Accordingly, when the Republicans took control of our federal government in 2025, the Department of Health and Human Servcices (HHS) had undertaken a months-long review of its 11 computer servers and had pieced together the various thoughts that Dr. Fauci’s had recorded on those servers. 

This leads to the question of why Dr. Fauci had neglected to reveal his apparent conclusion about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. The most likely reason is that it would have opened discussions about his involvement in funding research undertaken by WIV. This was a subject he wished to avoid for the simple reasons that (a) the federal government had suspended supporting all gain-of-function research shortly after the COVID-19 virus had invaded the U.S. and (b) knowing the origin of the virus would not have helped the government’s efforts arrest the spread of the virus. 

‍ ‍Senator Blumenthal, who sits on Senator Rand’s committee, rightly pointed out that seeking Dr. Fauci’s testimony was not being done to lead to the enactment of corrective legislation or even to form the basis for a criminal prosecution against Dr. Fauci. Rather, it was simply a part of the Republican Party’s larger attempt to rewrite the history of our nation’s dismal efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, Senator Blumenthal asserted that the committee was trying to vilify Dr. Fauci to make it appear that the many misbegotten decisions regarding the virus made during President Trump’s first term should be attributed to Dr. Fauci. 

This assertion seems to be supported by Senator Rand’s own opening remarks that the hearing was being held to elicit an apology from Dr. Fauci for having knowingly misled Americans into believing that the source of the COVID-19 virus was natural when he knew that it had been originated in a project that had been financed by the NIH. Perhaps even more indicative of Senator Paul’s desire to pin blame on Dr. Fauci was his pointing to a statement made by Dr. Fauci on March 14, 2020 that he was “driving” the recommendations of the Coronavirus Task Force which President Trump had formed in late January 2020 to devise and coordinate the nation’s efforts to combat the spread of the virus. As more fully explained below, whatever role Dr. Fauci thought on March 14, 2020 he would be playing in guiding the efforts of the Coronavirus Task Force never fully materialized.

‍ ‍David Frum, writing in The Atlantic, gave a somewhat different explanation. He explained that Senator Paul’s committee was trying to get Dr. Fauci to accept responsibility for the Trump administration’s dissemination of misinformation about the dangers posed by the COVID-19 virus and the safety and the efficacy of the vaccines which it had been developed to prevent COVID-19 infections. According to Frum, Republican voters were misled into believing that the virus was no more dangerous than the various strains of flu viruses that had annually swept across the U.S. and that the COVID-19 vaccines, which were hurriedly approved by the FDA in late December 2020, were unreliable. These misconceptions caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to forego becoming vaccinated and may have led to as many as 300,000 unnecessary deaths.

Realizing that Republican politicians might seek to make good on their commitments to attack Dr. Fauci, on his final day in office (January 19, 2025) President Biden had taken the unusual step of granting a preemptive pardon to him for his actions while serving in the U.S. Government. That pardon, however, only protects him for his actions taken prior to its grant and wouldn’t protect him for any misstatements he might make in answering the questions posed to him during this seemingly senseless inquisition. Concerned by those limitations, Dr. Fauci’s attorney advised him not to answer any questions at the hearing and instead to cite his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. In fact, it was important that Dr. Fauci not answer any questions, lest his answers might be deemed a waiver of that protection. The result was that Dr. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment a total of 111 times while Republican members of the Committee castigated him for his presumed misconduct.

There’s no question that our nation’s record in combatting the COVID-19 virus was a dismal failure. All the 231 nations on the Earth collectively experienced 7,115,203 deaths resulting from the COVID-19 virus, of which 1,219,487 (or 17.1%) occurred in the U.S. To understand just how poorly our nation had performed in combatting this virus, one need only consider that the population of the U.S. at that time only represented 4.2 % of the world’s total population. Viewed from the perspective per capita deaths, the number of U.S. COVID-19 deaths per million was 3,626, placing it only ahead of 15 of the Earth’s remaining 230 nations; and none of those 15 nations were economically developed countries. This raises the question of how the nation with the world’s most advanced healthcare system could have performed so poorly.

There’s little question that the principal cause of that dismal performance was none other than President Trump. While Senate Republicans are now trying to cast blame on Dr. Fauci for the U.S.’s mishandling of the COVID-19 Pandemic, virtually none of the poor decisions were either made by Dr. Fauci or even encouraged by him. It’s also important to understand that the roots of our nation’s problems in coping with the virus began before the virus had come to exist. Indeed, they date back to the aftermath of the 2002-3 SARs epidemic when the administration of George W. Bush had formulated a plan to impede the spread of deadly viruses. One of the Bush administration’s first undertakings in implementing that plan was to station a virologist in China to act as a lookout for new infectious diseases so our government could prepare for them in advance of their arrival. In addition, the Bush administration had also established a pandemic response team within the National Security Council. 

Although these efforts were embraced, augmented and perpetuated by the Obama administration, they were abandoned by the Trump administration when it took office in 2017. Were that not enough, the incoming Trump administration also chose not to replenish the nation’s supply of protective gear for healthcare workers (including face masks) or to place the order for breathing machines which had been approved by the Obama administration. As a result, even before the COVID-19 virus reached the U.S., our nation’s ability to defend itself against the virus had already been sorely compromised. 

Moreover, the Trump administration decisions to abandon these programs were made over the warnings it had received from the departing Obama administration. Simply stated, the Trump administration was bent on cutting the budget of the federal government and had proceeded without any input from Dr. Fauci. If this sounds familiar, it’s exactly what the second Trump administration did when it took office in 2025.

Although the Trump administration had learned about the existence of the COVID-19 virus shortly after it had been first discovered in late November 2019, it wasn’t until early January 2020 that news reports of a coronavirus outbreak in China first reached the U.S. Still, this outbreak did not receive much notoriety until late January when U.S. news agencies began reporting that China was imposing stringent restrictions on its population residing near the WIV. Shortly thereafter, the World Health Organization, which had been following the spread of the virus, had prepared a supply of test kits so cases of the virus could be quickly identified. The Trump administration, however, decided that it did not need the help of the WHO and would develop its own test kits. That turned out to be another costly decision as it took two more months for the Trump administration to secure delivery of effective test kits.

On or about January 28th the first U.S. case of COVID-19 was reported in the Washington State. By mid-February, Jay Inslee, the Governor of Washington State, and Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan, were making public statements about the dangers posed by the virus. That prompted President Trump to label Governor Inslee “a snake” and Governor Whitmer “a failing governor.”  President Trump would go on to proclaim that COVID-19 was not a threat to the U.S. and that this was “a hoax being perpetrated by the Democrats and the Fake News media” to scare the nation and the stock market as a means of undermining his re-election efforts.  Few Americans, however, realized that Trump ‘s statement had revealed his single most important motivation (getting re-elected) underlying his actions throughout the remainder of his first term in office.

President Trump continued to downplay reports of the spread of the virus even though in late January when he formed his Coronavirus Task Force which had 22 members, five of whom were public health officials. Vice President Pence was designated as the task force’s chairman, and he regularly echoed President Trump’s message that the virus was well under control and posed no threat to both the American public and the American economy. It’s worth noting that notwithstanding Vice President Pence’s nominal title as the task force’s chairman, President Trump appeared on each of its daily afternoon telecasts, both leading and dominating the task force’s discussions.

By the last week in February, health officials appearing on evening television were reporting that COVID-19 had two troubling properties: it tended to spread much more rapidly than the various influenza viruses and that it was at least ten times more lethal. Those properties strongly indicated that it was inevitable that this virus would soon spread throughout the world and would be the worst health crisis that had been experienced since the 1918 influenza epidemic which had killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. 

Throughout the month of February and the first week in March President Trump had continued to make daily public statements belittling the virus and had predicted that it would subside just as quickly as it had arisen. Specifically, he reported that there were only fifteen known cases of the virus in the U.S. and that in a few days they would all be gone. He would later admit that he was determined to control the public’s perception of the virus as he feared that it could spook the stock markets and his path to reelection in the Fall. To that end, in late February he threatened to terminate Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, for having issued a dire public warning about the impending pandemic.  Thereafter, all members of the Coronavirus Task Force, with the lone exception of Dr. Fauci, had been ordered to pre-clear their public statements relating to the virus with Vice President Pence. 

By early March, however, the U.S. stock markets were beginning to hemorrhage the gains that they had accumulated over the preceding three years. Specifically, on March 13th, the stock markets began to drop precipitously (the DJIA fell 1,000 points on each of the next two days, over 2,000 points on a third day and almost 3,000 points on a fourth day). Despite this alarming news, the Trump administration made no mention of testing to determine the extent of the inroads the virus had made in the U.S.  Moreover, President Trump had discouraged American businesses from reporting COVID infections among their employees even though the regulations published by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) required such reports. 

Then, on March 10, 2020, the Skagit Valley Chorale, consisting of 122 members, held a 2.5 hour practice session for a concert to be given in Mt. Vernon, Washington. Shortly thereafter, 61 of the members of the chorale were diagnosed with COVID-19. The large number of the persons infected, their close proximity to each other and their near constant use of their voices provided a strong inference that the virus was likely spread, not so much by physical contact, but rather via tiny droplets that were being propelled from the singers’ mouths. This emphasized the importance of social distancing which became one of the recommendations of the Coronavirus Task Force.

Up until this time the U.S. and China had been working together in trying to ascertain the nature and origin of the virus. Indeed, the Trump administration had issued occasional statements to the effect that the U.S. and China had the virus well under control. That cooperative attitude abruptly ended on March 12th when the Chinese Foreign Ministry posted a statement that U.S. army personnel might have brought the COVID-19 virus to China. While it’s not clear what prompted that statement, it nevertheless marked the end of the cooperation between U.S. and Chinese investigators.

This incident may have also prompted President Trump to cease downplaying the seriousness of the virus and to declare a national emergency. Thus, in less than 10 days Trump had gone from calling the virus a “hoax” to declaring it a national emergency.  Even so, at the daily press conferences of his Coronavirus Task Force he would boast about the wonderful job he and his administration were doing to combat the spread of the virus. At this point, however, the President’s credibility regarding the virus was beginning to ebb (even on Fox News). 

The sad reality is that the Trump administration had done virtually nothing from the time it had first learned of the virus in early December until early March, thus effectively giving the virus three months in which to travel to the U.S. and imbed itself in the U.S. population. That head start made it virtually impossible to try to contain the virus by identifying infected persons and tracing their contacts with others who could be quarantined to prevent its further spread. That inability continued for a few more weeks because the Trump administration’s efforts to acquire test kits for the virus were reported as having been delayed by manufacturing problems.  

After the Trump administration began receiving shipments of test kits it regularly boasted about the number of tests for the virus it had conducted. The problem was that by this time the virus had spread to so many people that it was impossible to seek out, warn and quarantine the individuals who had been in contact with those who had been identified as having been infected. Thus, one of the basic tools for containing the spread of an infectious disease had been rendered useless by the delay in commencing testing for the virus.

President Trump’s efforts to downplay the seriousness of the virus were also not working because private health organizations were doing their own polling of hospitals and businesses. Trump’s effort to conceal the extent to which the virus had spread was dramatically revealed when the per capita death rate reported by federal prisons was less than half that reported by state prisons. 

In any event, Congressional Democrats were not misled by the administration’s “happy talk”; and in mid-March passed legislation authorizing $8.3 billion to fight the spread of the virus. The President’s response was that all that was needed was about $2.1 billion but he would take the additional money, continuing to insist that the virus was “no big deal.” At this point, several far eastern nations had begun advising their citizens to wear face masks and to observe social distancing. While the Trump administration also started to encourage social distancing, it delayed advising that face masks be worn for the simple reason that the U.S. had insufficient supplies of mask to even accommodate the needs of its healthcare workers. To make matters worse, the Trump had resisted entreaties by many of the nation’s governors to invoke the Defense Production Act to increase the manufacture of face masks and protective gear for healthcare workers.

By late March, hospitals in New York City were reaching their capacity to handle the influx of COVID-19 patients and were desperately seeking ways to expand their number of beds. They even set up a tent in Central Park and took over space in the Javits convention center to accommodate COVID-19 patients. By the end of March, the Coronavirus Task Force began talking about projected death tolls. It also counseled that non-essential businesses should be closed for a couple of weeks. This was in response to the recommendations of President Trump’s scientific advisers that the business closures should last through the end of May so the spread of the virus could be reversed. Not only was he disinclined to accept their advice, by mid-April he was starting to pressure the states to resume full commercial activities. By this time, the CDC had drawn up regulations for the states to limit social distancing in commercial and manufacturing facilities. Those regulations, however, were never published; instead, President Trump ordered that they be replaced by a set of “suggested guidelines” which privately-owned businesses would be free to ignore.

In mid-April, President Trump, again ignoring the advice of his medical advisors, called for the states to lift all restrictions on economic activities and threatened to cut federal subsidies to those states that didn’t comply. Neither Dr. Fauci nor Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coordinator of the Coronavirus Task Force, had the courage to publicly state what conditions should be met to begin the process of reopening the nation’s economy. Rather than invite President Trump’s wrath, the most they were willing to say was that the necessary conditions for resuming commercial activity were not then present.  The result was that beginning in late April those states that had imposed restrictions on economic activity began to lift them. 

By this time President Trump was becoming desperate to find a way to avoid having to again shut down the nation’s economic activities. He began making suggestions that certain drugs currently approved by the FDA (like Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir and Azithromycin) might be able to combat the COVID-19 virus. At one point he even suggested that Lysol, the household disinfectant, might be injected into humans and that ultraviolet light might be inserted into the lungs of infected patients. Although Dr. Birx was under strict orders not to contradict anything President Trump might say, I vividly recall her expressions of horror when the President made those suggestions.

To be sure, President Trump enjoyed appearing on national television each day, dominating the discussions of what his administration was doing to arrest the spread of the virus. However, now he needed to awaken the nation from its brief self-imposed economic coma. He, therefore, terminated the Coronavirus Task Force and embarked on a public relations campaign to support the revival of the nation’s economy. This campaign consisted of a series of public rallies designed to assure the nation that the virus had been defeated. This message was reinforced by Vice President Pence’s assurance that by Memorial Day the virus would completely disappear.  With temperatures warming the severity of the pandemic did seem to subside for the next two months. 

May was also the month in which the Trump administration embarked on Operation Warp Speed, a program to rapidly develop vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infections. This operation was headed by HHS Secretary Alex Azar, an attorney who had previously served as the President of the American division of Ely Lilly, the world’s largest drug manufacturer. This was by far the most important undertaking by the Trump administration in its fight against the COVID-19 virus. Azar’s efforts would lead to the creation and distribution of two highly successful vaccines in late December 2020.

Unfortunately, by mid-July the spread of the virus again began to increase. That raised questions as to whether the nation’s elementary and secondary schools which had been closed since mid-March should be reopened in the Fall. Dr. Fauci expressed the view that this would be unwise. Unfortunately, his remarks prompted President Trump to begin seeking the guidance of Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist and TV pundit who was advocating doing nothing and allowing “herd immunity” to bring the pandemic to an end. This was a wholly unworkable suggestion.  Herd immunity required that roughly 80% of the nation’s population to have been infected and thereby attained immunity against the virus. At this point, however, only 5-10% of Americans had been infected. Perhaps more importantly, the virus would be quickly mutating so that even those who had been infected might not have become immune to the emerging strains of the virus. 

Such details, however, did not seem to concern President Trump who embraced Dr. Atlas as his chief scientific adviser and proceeded to accept his advice to stop all efforts to control the spread of the virus. What followed was the emergence in September 2020 of the Alpha strain of the virus which was both more lethal and faster spreading than the original strain. This led to a dramatic increase in the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths through the Fall and Winter months as the weather became colder and Americans tended to congregate in inside venues. This change was also detrimental in one other respect. It had led many Americans (mostly President Trump’s most ardent supporters) to believe that they were probably just as well off simply going about their lives and not taking any special precautions to avoid becoming infected. In short, it gave rise to the anti-vaxxer movement consisting of individuals who were predisposed against being immunized.

It should be appreciated that although the virus had been around for nine months, only a small percentage of Americans had become infected and that over 95% of those who had been infected were able to survive. In addition, President Trump had contracted the virus in early October and had survived his infection after having spent two days in a hospital. In true Trump fashion, he was quick to show how tough he was by immediately appearing in public without wearing a face mask and making statements that COVID-19 “was no big deal.” 

By the end of 2020, COVID-19 virus had mutated twice, and the daily number of COVID-19 deaths had reached as high as 4,000 (or 1000 more deaths than had occurred on 9/11). It’s important to understand that the more people who have become infected, the greater the chance that the virus will mutate further and that one of those new mutations may be more lethal and faster spreading than the preceding dominant mutation.

The only good news was that in late December 2020 two of the vaccines that emerged from Operation Warp Speed proved to be 93% effective and were quickly approved by the FDA. That news, however, was significantly offset by the fact that many of President Trump’s most loyal supporters had grown disinclined to become vaccinated. As a result, even though Trump had been vaccinated, he chose not to tout his administration’s greatest achievement and made no effort encourage Americans to become vaccinated. By the time he left office on January 20, 2021, the virus had taken the lives of approximately 400,000 Americans.

Although the Biden administration encountered some problems in distributing the new vaccines, it faced some even greater obstacles. First, the Beta strain of the virus which had arrived in November 2020 was starting to replace the Alpha strain which had become the dominant strain of the virus in September 2020. That’s because the Beta strain was more lethal and faster spreading than its predecessors. Although the new vaccines continued to provide immunity to most people, they proved to be less efficacious against the virus’ latest mutation. Thus, by the end of March, 2021 infection and death rates, which had begun to fall in mid-January, were again rising.

Second, the anti-vaxxer movement, which had taken root over the Fall of 2020, had continued to grow. The result was that the Democratic voters who became vaccinated greatly outnumbered Republican voters who had become vaccinated. This disparity became apparent by mid-July 2021 when it was revealed that per capita COVID-19 deaths among Republican voters was roughly twice as high as the COVID-19 death rate among Democratic voters.

A third problem was that even though the COVID-19 pandemic had been ongoing since early 2020, there were still an estimated 216 million Americans who had yet to be infected. With a sizable portion of the U.S. population both unwilling to take steps to avoid becoming exposed to the virus and unwilling to seek immunization, it was inevitable that the worst was yet to come. The result was that over the next two years the COVID-19 virus would continue to mutate and would claim the lives of another 600,000 Americans.

Even though Dr. Fauci had continued to serve as a presidential advisor during the first two years of the Biden presidency, there was little that he could do to change the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking back, the future course of the virus had been firmly established during the Trump administration and almost exclusively by the actions of President Trump himself.  Dr. Fauci had not consulted with President Trump when he made his decisions to abandon the safeguards against infectious diseases that had been established by the Bush and Obama administrations. In addition, even though he had been elevated  to serve as President Trump’s principal medical advisor when the  virus reached the U.S. in January 2020, he had been unable to prompt President Trump to act more quickly in addressing the spread of the virus and to convince him to prioritize efforts to save lives over his determination to support the nation’s economy. Nor was he able to deter President Trump from accepting the advice of Dr. Atlas that the federal government should pursue a policy of achieving herd immunity. Indeed, his most successful endeavor was to help convince President Trump to approve Operation Warp Speed; and even that achievement was minimized by President Trump’s failure to speak out against the anti-vaxxer movement.

Senator Paul’s Senate committee has now gone on to find Dr. Fauci in Contempt of Congress and will be referring its findings to the Department of Justice for prosecution. It’s not at all clear what will happen from here. The DOJ tends to do whatever President Trump wishes it to do; and there are both reasons for and against prosecuting Dr. Fauci. At this point, it seems clear that the purposes of the Senate committee’s vilification of Dr. Fauci were threefold: (1) to mollify the Republican voter base for having been subjected to the hardships imposed to arrest the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) to deflect blame away from President Trump and onto Dr. Fauci for the embarrassing manner in which our federal government had mishandled the pandemic, and (3) to divert public attention from the current viruses bedeviling Republican politicians – the Epstein files, the Iran war and the President’s low favorability ratings. To a significant extent the objectives Senator Paul’s committee set out to achieve have already been largely attained.

On the other hand, while prolonging the vilification of Dr. Fauci would continue to divert the attention of the American public, doing so would pose two dangers to President Trump and his acolytes in Congress. First and foremost, the criminal prosecution of Dr. Fauci will take place in a federal court which undoubtedly will be a forum more favorable to Dr. Fauci than Senator Paul’s committee. Indeed, there is a good chance that his case might even be tried by a judge and jury that will be extremely sympathetic to a man who for 50 years served his country well enough to receive acclamations from each of the six U.S. presidents in whose administrations he worked. More importantly, that proceeding will provide Dr. Fauci with an opportunity to prove that his actions in helping to arrest the pandemic neither precipitated the COVID-19 pandemic nor added to the nation’s death toll. Perhaps even more important (at least to President Trump), it will provide Dr. Fauci with an opportunity to demonstrate that the President was the true villain in this saga. In that sense, it could undermine what the Republicans have already achieved in the Senate hearing.

I don’t purport to know how President Trump will cause the DOJ to act with respect to Dr. Fauci. So far, he has refused to comment on the charges that have been made against Dr. Fauci which is somewhat unusual for him. It should also be noted that on the last day of his first term in office President Trump bestowed a Presidential Commendation on Dr. Fauci.