Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that the former U.S. chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, should “go to prison” over his “dishonesty” in handling the COVID-19 pandemic and lying to Congress.
“For his dishonesty, frankly, he should go to prison,” Paul said during a Sunday interview with radio host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM. “If you lie to Congress, and you’re dishonest, and you won’t accept responsibility. For his mistake in judgment, he should just be pilloried. He should never be accepted.”
He added, “History should judge him as a deficient person who made one of the worst decisions in public health history — in the entire history of the world.”
The Kentucky Republican, who believes the virus came from a lab in China, accused Fauci of directly contributing to the deaths of “somewhere between 10 and 20 million” with his decision to “fund dangerous research — gain-of-function research, where you allow viruses to be combined.”
Paul and Fauci, who led much of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic, have a fiery history, with the Kentucky Republican repeatedly accusing the infectious disease expert of lying about the origins of the virus.
Paul’s Sunday comments echo similar ones he made last year when he said that the former White House chief medical adviser should “without question” be in jail.
Fauci, who became the target of intense scrutiny as the COVID-19 pandemic became politicized, previously shut down calls to prosecute him over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s no response to that craziness,” Fauci said on CNN in March.
He added, “I mean, prosecute me for what? What are they talking about? I mean, I wish I could figure out what the heck they were talking about. I think they’re just going off the deep end,” Fauci said.
He also slammed the calls to jail him as “irresponsible.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to say something like that, and it actually is irresponsible,” he said.