With Election Looming, GOP Gives America Summer Theater Starring Dr. Fauci

As time dwindles for Republicans to draw contrasts with Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, they’re instead fishing for the head of America’s Covid response, Dr. Anthony Fauci. If the party loses Congress in November, the choice to focus on him instead of current issues like Iran or gas prices will loom large in the party’s postmortem.As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to Presidents Biden and Trump, Dr. Fauci became the face of lockdowns and other policies. But a blanket pardon from Mr. Biden shields him from any repercussions for wrongdoing during that period.A Republican of Kentucky, Senator Rand Paul — also an M.D. and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — wants answers. He focuses on conflicting statements Dr. Fauci made during the pandemic and his recommendations to fight it.Dr. Fauci says he changed his position on things like masks based on new information. Detractors charge that he misled the country about the origins of the disease in Communist China. Yet every moment Republicans spend pursuing the 85-year-old Dr. Fauci is one they don’t spend campaigning or fund-raising.The hearings also give the impression that Republicans are more interested in relitigating the past than improving lives in the present. Dr. Paul did his best to create buzz ahead of the show. On Monday, he released more than 1,100 pages of a diary that Dr. Fauci kept on a government server.Senator Rand Paul on Capitol Hill, March 6, 2025. AP/Jose Luis MaganaDr. Fauci is Dr. Paul’s white whale and, if he can’t be prosecuted, the senator will aim for his legacy. Why else release the diary rather than spring it at the hearing? In any case, the most talked-about entries only showed Dr. Fauci following his coverage in the press; if that’s a crime, most Washingtonians are guilty.Thursday’s YouGov poll found that 37 percent of Americans hold favorable views of Dr. Fauci, 36 percent unfavorable, and 28 percent have no opinion. Those numbers don’t justify focusing on him as a villain. For villains it would be easier and wiser to focus on, say, the regime at Tehran.Releasing the diary allowed Dr. Fauci to arrive well-armed at the Senate table, one of Washington’s biggest stages for political theater. All the actors arrived ready to play their parts, and the ensuing pantomime pushed the midterm elections out of the headlines.When one of Dr. Fauci’s attorneys, David Schertler, defied the committee’s orders by sitting beside Mr. Fauci instead of his assigned seat and speaking, Dr. Paul had him removed from the chamber. “This is the way Anthony Fauci wants to be remembered,” he said, “for a lawyer not listening to the rules.”Yet Republicans already have the votes of those cheering that small humbling and no other harpoons pierced Dr. Fauci during the main event. The physician, knowing that answering questions could only expose him to jeopardy not covered by his pardon, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times.Next week, Dr. Paul plans a Senate vote to hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress. “That is a felony,” he said, and while the Senate can’t prosecute, he’ll recommend that the Department of Justice do so. The senator’s question now is if one can plead the Fifth Amendment after a pardon.In 1896’s Brown v. Walker, Justice Henry Brown wrote for the Supreme Court’s majority that if a “witness has already received a pardon, he can no longer” take the Fifth since it was as if no past offense “had never been committed.”The looming legal fight over that 130-year-old case and policies from an era that most would rather forget will have little impact outside Washington. Seeking accountability for the pandemic response is admirable, but turning over Congress to Democrats protective of Dr. Fauci won’t advance that goal.None of the Republicans on Dr. Paul’s committee is running for reelection. Yet 35 Senate races and all 435 House seats hang in the balance. Americans will vote based on who can best settle today’s pressing issues like the economy and Iran; not on the theater of trying to land yesterday’s white whale.

With Election Looming, GOP Gives America Summer Theater Starring Dr. Fauci

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