Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the public face of the federal government's COVID-19 pandemic response, stands accused of having repeatedly lied about multiple issues to both Congress and the American people.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that, in a "sane system," Fauci would be prosecuted and imprisoned for lying under oath to Congress, the Conservative Brief reported.
The remarks from Sen. Cruz about Dr. Fauci came on Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC, near Washington D.C. as part of a broader discussion with others for the senator's podcast.
"Dr. Fauci is the most -- has done more damage than any bureaucrat in the history of our nation," Cruz said. "He led policies that destroyed people's lives, that hurt tens of millions of kids across this country, that destroyed businesses, and he lied repeatedly, over and over and over again.
Dr. Fauci has done more damage than any bureaucrat in the history of our nation.
✅He led policies that destroyed lives.
✅He elevated politics above science & medicine.In any sane system, he would go to jail for lying under oath to Congress.
Full pod:https://t.co/A2oERj8Ntb pic.twitter.com/KrfAcLjSzi
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 3, 2023
The senator accused the bureaucrat of having "elevated politics above science and medicine," and proclaimed, "There has been no person who has done more to destroy trust in the scientific and medical community than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who told millions of Americans lies willingly, knowingly, glibly -- supremely arrogantly."
"In any sane system, he would be prosecuted for lying under oath, and he would go to jail for lying under oath to Congress," Cruz added.
The Washington Examiner reported that Sen. Cruz expressed certainty that President Joe Biden's Justice Department would never prosecute Dr. Fauci, but did hold out hope that Congress would be able to exact some measure of accountability.
"We have a majority in the House, and I am confident in the House that we’re going to use that majority, and use it to hold Dr. Fauci and the others who lied accountable," he said.
Cruz added, "We need to have hearings on the origins of COVID. We need to have hearings to follow the money. And we need to have hearings examining and laying out the facts about how Fauci misled the American people, and the corruption that drove that."
The New York Post reported last week on what was arguably Dr. Fauci's biggest act of deception toward the American people in the form of his deliberate downplaying of the likelihood that COVID-19 originated in China's Wuhan Institute of Virology and his fervent denials of the now-confirmed facts that the Wuhan lab with a spotty safety record was conducting risky gain-of-function research on bat-borne coronaviruses with U.S. taxpayer funding provided through NIAID grants.
Even left-leaning Slate magazine called out Fauci in 2021 for having told several "noble lies" -- dishonest statements intended to further a well-intentioned cause and change public behavior -- to the American people.
That includes him first saying that masks were useless and unnecessary at the start of the pandemic before becoming a staunch advocate of masking just months later, his ever-shifting target on herd immunity and dismissal of natural immunity to drive up vaccination rates, and his erroneous assessment of vaccine efficacy and downplaying of adverse side effects.
Sen. Cruz is absolutely correct that Dr. Fauci knowingly and willing lied to the American people and Congress, as well as that President Biden's DOJ will never prosecute him for such, which leaves the question of accountability up to the Republican-controlled House, where certain relevant committees have already begun to investigate him.
