The Republicans’ election-year crusade against Anthony Fauci isn’t limited to Congress
The latest Pew Research Center poll asked Americans which issues they would most like to hear congressional candidates focus on during the 2026 midterm elections. Not surprisingly, the economy dominated — concerns about affordability and the cost of living easily came out on top — but issues such as corruption, health care and immigration were also in the mix.
The percentage of Americans focused on prosecuting Dr. Anthony Fauci and relitigating his efforts to protect the public during the pandemic was zero — though with 89 days remaining before Election Day, Republicans seem obsessed with trying to tear down the 85-year-old immunologist anyway. MS NOW reported:
A Republican-led Senate committee voted Thursday to advance a resolution to hold former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a contentious hearing last week.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved the measure by a party-line vote after Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., argued Fauci unlawfully refused to answer lawmakers’ questions despite appearing under subpoena on July 29.
The underlying legal dispute is rather mind-numbing. Republicans realized that President Joe Biden’s pardon for Fauci offered him a sizable shield, so GOP senators demanded his congressional testimony in the hope that he would say something that might lead to possible perjury charges during a hearing that resembled a classic show trial. On the advice of counsel, the immunologist avoided the rather obvious trap by repeatedly invoking his constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment.
Senate Republicans responded that Fauci, a private citizen, wasn’t allowed to take advantage of his constitutional rights (which is a tough sell, as my MS NOW colleague Jordan Rubin explained), leading to Thursday’s vote to hold Fauci in contempt.
Looking ahead, Paul said he would refer Fauci to the Justice Department for prosecution on his own, bypassing a vote in the full Senate for the time being. If Trump’s DOJ actually were to try to pursue a criminal case against Fauci, it would likely face long odds in the courts, although the White House might very well want the prosecution anyway, if for no other reason than to please the president.
For now, let’s not dwell too long on the oddity of seeing an ostensibly libertarian-minded senator trying to punish a private American citizen for exercising his constitutional rights. Let’s instead shift our attention to the partisan legal campaign, which isn’t limited to Capitol Hill: MS NOW has confirmed that Florida’s Republican attorney general, James Uthmeir, has also subpoenaed Fauci, and West Virginia and Louisiana have joined the Floridian’s efforts.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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