Imagine this:    

For two and a half years—1929 to late 1931—Elliot Ness and his special unit known as “The Untouchables” conduct Intensive operations, surveillance and brewery raids against the criminal empire of Al “Scarface” Capone. 

Six years later, a Senate subcommittee subpoenas Ness and brutally grills him on how his unit carried out those raids:

“Why did you target Al Capone—did you have something personal against him?”

“You never did convict him, did you? That was done by the IRS for tax evasion.”

“Capone was just a businessman. He never hurt anybody.”

“Your unit is famous for not taking bribes. Wasn’t Capone offering enough?”

“There’s no such thing as a Mafia.” 

Imagine, also, how such a brutal attack on a celebrated lawman would have damaged the morale of countless other lawmen—and would-be lawmen.

Elliot Ness

So it’s easy to imagine how Republicans’ brutal attack on Anthony Fauci affects current members of the medical profession—and would-be members of it. 

Fauci is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022 and as Chief Medical Advisor to the President–—Joseph Biden––from 2021 to 2022. 

So what did this man—who has dedicated his entire adult life to protecting Americans against infectious diseases—do to ignite such hatred?

He had merely spoken the hard medical truth about Coronavirus. In doing so, he had at times contradicted then-President Donald Trump’s ignorance- and lie-riddled statements.

For example: Trump had loudly touted hydroxychloroquine, used for treating malaria, as a miracle cure for the Coronavirus.

Yet Fauci dared to point out there had been no scientific trials of the drug for its effectiveness against Coronavirus. Moreover, given the medical condition of some patients, it could even prove fatal.

Statements like this infuriated Trump’s base of—at best—half-educated fans.

Donald Trump

On July 31, Susan Glasser, a journalist who writes a column for The New Yorker, appeared on Washington Week, a PBS public affairs television program.

Commenting on the “death match” between Fauci and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Glasser said: “Yes. I mean, look, the historical analogy that leaps to mind is not a reasonable bipartisan commission to look at lessons learned from a national tragedy. It’s a witch hunt. It’s McCarthyism.

“You know, we do, unfortunately, have a long history of that as well. And to see an 85-year-old public servant who spent 50 years of his life combating terrible diseases in this country and around the world, you know, it was a painful sight.

“You know, especially to see a bunch of senators accuse Fauci of the best they could come up with, you know, was a diary in which he was dazzled, you know, to meet celebrities and, you know, admitted that he butt-dialed Barbra Streisand….

“The person who was accountable ultimately for America’s failed initial handling of the pandemic in 2020 was someone named Donald Trump.” 

Susan Glasser

During 2020—the last year of the first Trump administration and the worst year of COVID—Trump offered 11 different steps for defeating COVID-19:

1. Denial: COVID entered the United States on January 19. By January 27, Trump didn’t think the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.
2. Lies: On January 22, Trump said “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.” By March 10, he was saying: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” 
3. Republican subservience to Trump’s denial and lies:  During the vital months of January and February, Republicans refused to challenge Trump’s unwillingness to take the virus seriously—before it gained a foothold in the United States.
4. Chaos:  Like Adolf Hitler, Trump likes to pit individuals and organizations against each other. This creates needless duplication of efforts and wastes resources. But it ensures that Trump—like Hitler—remains the final voice of authority, since so many others are competing for his favor and direction.
5. Extortion: Trump and Republicans used a deadly plague as a weapon against those Americans they hate. This included seizing medical supplies slated for Democratic states and sending them to Republican ones.
6. Propaganda Disguised as News: Since Easter weekend, President Donald Trump held almost 50 daily press briefings at the White House. Their purpose: To serve as a substitute for Trump’s hate-filled political rallies, which had been canceled and have been likened to those staged by Germany’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, at Nuremberg.
7. Quackery as Medicine: On April 23, Trump raised the possibility of preventing or curing the Coronavirus by use of ultraviolet light—or even injection of disinfectant.
8. “Reopen the Country”: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urged Americans to wear masks and keep at least six feet from their fellows. And most of the nation’s governors issued stay-at-home orders that banned large gatherings—including visits to parks and beaches. Yet Trump openly encouraged defiance of those orders. 
9. Ignore the Danger:  Although health experts expressed fears about large gatherings during the Coronavirus pandemic, Trump and his Republican allies—such as South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem—held tightly-packed, mask-free political rallies. 

Days before grilling Anthony Fauci at a Senate hearing, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) released more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s personal diary entries and work records.     

These had been made available to him by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—a notorious foe of vaccines. 

Fauci blasted the move by the senator as an attempt at “embarrassing and intimidating” him.

As a result, Fauci did not answer a single question from any lawmakers during the entire three-hour hearing, invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

Republican senators, in turn, attacked Fauci over COVID-19 pandemic guidance—and his refusal to testify.

Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) gave voice to that antagonism:

“It was about six years ago today that I decided I’m going to give up my businesses, sell them all, run for office, run for United States Senate. And here I am sitting in front of you six years later, saying who the fuck do you think you were for doing that? It is a total disgrace what you did to this country.” 

Moreno called Fauci a criminal and said he was more concerned about being a celebrity than helping the American people: “There is no defense of what you did. You may have had a 50+ year legacy of public service, but it ends in total and complete disgrace.” 

Bernie Moreno

Moreno asked Fauci to apologize to people, business owners and military members the Senator said were harmed by COVID restrictions.

As if inconveniencing business owners was a far greater sin than taking steps to save lives.

Others blasted Moreno for his questioning, with several pointing out how he had largely remained silent when his daughter accused her ex-husband, Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), of physically abusing her. Moreno had called it a “private, personal matter.”

“Did Senator Bernie Moreno call out his son in law who beat his daughter with any of the same vigor as he did fauci?” former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger wrote in a social media post.

Senator Gary Peters, (D-MI) the top Democrat on the committee, looked beyond the hearing to its impact on history and science:

“It’s tempting to turn one person into the scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across both the Trump and the Biden administration were responsible for handling.

“This is only going to, unfortunately, deter other scientific experts from public service to understand that this is what they would have to go through as they provide their advice to us.” 

Gary Peters

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that the hearing was an effort “to rewrite this history” of the pandemic: [“it is] shameful that in a country like ours, a dedicated public servant like Doctor Fauci has experienced persistent threats to his life since the pandemic because of the lies that are told about him.”

And he called the proceeding “an insult to the memory of more than one million Americans who died from COVID-19.”

Paul challenged Fauci over his Fifth Amendment right, warning him: “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify.”

Fauci’s attorney David Schertler called the hearing part of Paul’s “public crusade” against the scientist. And he repeatedly tried to speak up after Paul threatened Fauci but was silenced by Paul.

PAUL: “You will respect these proceedings. You were told not to sit at the table. You insist on sitting at the table and we told you you would not be recognized. You are not invited here for testimony, sir. You are being disruptive.”

Schertler continued to speak with Paul, and Senator Gary Peters asked for the attorney to be given an opportunity—but was denied.

PAUL: “There’s a row behind you, sir. That’s where you were told to sit … and now you’re disrupting the proceedings. 

“That’s the way you want to be remembered, and that’s what you’re going to do. You are not recognized, sir. Security, please remove him from the room.”

Upon exiting the hearing room, Schertler told reporters that Fauci “has a valid Fifth Amendment privilege and he has the right to assert it and that’s what I was trying to tell the committee.”

After the hearing, Paul told NBC News that the committee would vote next week on holding Fauci in contempt of Congress.

“We will schedule a vote. It’s already been scheduled for next week, for a vote on contempt of Congress, referral of contempt of Congress. If the vote is affirmative, it will be sent to the Department of Justice, and they will have to make a decision whether to pursue this.

“We believe that with his liability, his immunity from criminal liability, that he didn’t need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment, and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn’t attach when you have a pardon in place.”

The vote was expected to occur at a Department of Homeland Security business meeting scheduled for 10:00 a.m. on August 5. 

In contrast to Anthony Fauci, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has repeatedly attacked efforts to lessen the spread of COVID and spread factually incorrect information about the virus.     

In August 2021, Paul stated in a video that “most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work” and that “cloth masks don’t work” to prevent infection.

YouTube suspended Paul for seven days following these remarks, stating the content violated their COVID-19 medical misinformation policies. 

in November, 2021, Paul claimed that: “Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection. Trying to shape human behavior isn’t the same as following the actual science, which tells us that cloth masks don’t work.”

This contradicted the results of a scientific study from Denmark, which showed that mask usage helped to mitigate the spread of the virus.

On December 17, Paul said on Fox Business Thursday: “There’s no science to keeping schools closed, and there’s actually no good science to keeping restaurants closed, in fact there’s no good science that anything we’ve done has changed the trajectory” of the pandemic.

“Every one of the mandates—and you look in country after country, state after state—you look at when the mask mandates went in—the incidents went up exponentially after the mandates. Restaurants, nobody can eat in a restaurant, there’s no science behind any of that,” Paul told Breitbart News at the Turning Point USA convention. 

Anti-lockdown demonstration at the Ohio Statehouse 

Becker1999 from Grove City, OH, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Paul claimed that high school graduation ceremonies and possibly wedding anniversaries even a decade later would be banned by the government if “we’re not careful” to protect our individual freedoms.

Mocking masks as “face diapers,” Paul said: “It’s like wearing your underwear. You might as well cut your underwear up and wear your underwear as protection. It doesn’t work. 

“None of it really makes any sense, and there’s no epidemiological evidence. You know, it’s like, ‘Wash your hands, stand six feet apart.’ There’s no evidence that that slowed down the [spread]. The trajectory of the virus hasn’t been altered at all by any of these things.”

N95 mask

Republicans contend that because President Joe Biden gave Fauci a pardon, he cannot claim fear of prosecution for questions about the time the pardon covers.

But Fauci could theoretically face state or local prosecution, as well as federal prosecution for making any false statements to the panel. And Fauci said he was convinced Paul’s goal was to trip him up and trigger a perjury allegation.

Fauci said in his opening remarks that he welcomed congressional oversight, pointing to the more than 200 times he appeared before Congress over his more than five-decade career with the federal government.

But he stated his belief that this hearing was being held in bad faith:

“Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.

“Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

Anthony Fauci and President George W. Bush

In the days before the hearing, Paul had released more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s personal diary entries and work records. These had been made available to him by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—a notorious foe of vaccines.  

Among the diary entries, released by Paul in an attempt to damage Fauci, were those showing Fauci’s growing disillusionment with President Donald Trump in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These described Trump as “rambling”, “crazy”, “desperate”, “bumbling”, “incompetent”, “an idiot”, “a true embarrassment”, “totally nuts” and “truly an obnoxious adolescent.”

Trump’s lies about the dangers of COVID and his fake cures for it—such as drinking bleach and shining UV light up a patient’s anus—ultimately resulted in tens of thousands of American deaths.

Fauci’s disillusionment with Trump clearly rested on a firm foundation. But Paul obviously believed that Fauci’s disgust with Trump reflected badly on him, not the President. 

Fauci blasted the move by Paul as an attempt at “embarrassing and intimidating” him.

As a result, Fauci did not answer a single question from any lawmakers during the entire three-hour hearing, invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”