A historic commercial building in Bowling Green, Kentucky that housed the office of Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul was nearly completely destroyed in a massive fire in the early hours of Friday morning, the Conservative Brief reported.
It remains unclear at this time if the inferno that engulfed the entire building was sparked accidentally or was the result of arson, and the incident is being investigated by local, state, and federal authorities.
Coincidentally enough, the roaring blaze that essentially destroyed the Kentucky Republican's home office occurred just days after the senator referred Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution for perjury under oath.
Local media outlet WKRN reported that multiple fire crews and first responders spent much of the day Friday battling a massive fire that consumed and all but destroyed a commercial building in downtown Bowling Green that housed Sen. Paul's office along with a local law firm.
The fire department was first dispatched around 1:45 am in response to calls about flames and smoke coming from the building, and by the time the raging inferno was extinguished nearly 18 hours later, the roof had completely collapsed, the walls were weakened and partially collapsed, and the structure was quickly declared a total loss and condemned as unsafe with authorization for immediate demolishment of its remains.
Thankfully, and likely due to the early hours in which the fire began, there were no reports of any deaths or injuries in the incident, and fire investigators from the city, state, and federal government began probing what happened even before the flames had been fully put out.
Local media outlet WDRB reported that Sen. Paul quickly issued a statement to address the fire that "heavily damaged" the historic commercial building that housed his home state Senate office.
"We are thankful for the Bowling Green first responders who arrived quickly to the scene to put out the fire, and are continuing to work with authorities to assess damages and to determine a cause," the senator's office said. "We have a very well-established emergency management plan and have the ability to continue operations that will not impact our work helping Kentuckians."
Meanwhile, just one day prior to the fiery destruction of his Bowling Green office, Sen. Paul spoke with Breitbart about the criminal referral he had sent to the DOJ in regard to Dr. Fauci's prior dishonest sworn testimony to a Senate committee about the likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in a Wuhan virology lab in China and potential U.S. taxpayer funding that helped create the deadly virus through gain-of-function experimentation.
Days earlier, Paul had tweeted out a copy of the letter he sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland and captioned the post: "I’ve referred Anthony Fauci to the DOJ (again) for lying to Congress when he denied the NIH was funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan."
The impetus for this latest criminal referral was the recent revelation of emails from early February 2020 in which Fauci acknowledged the suspicious nature of the novel virus that appeared to have been unnaturally manipulated and further acknowledged the possibility that it had originated in the U.S. taxpayer-funded Wuhan lab where it was well-known that gain-of-function experimentation on bat viruses was being conducted.
"Well, this directly contradicts everything he said in committee hearing to me, denying absolutely that they funded any gain of function, and it’s absolutely a lie," Paul told Breitbart. "That’s why we ended up referring him again this week to the Department of Justice, for prosecution for lying to Congress."
Breitbart noted that Sen. Paul also took great issue with the fact that he had demanded for two years -- but was repeatedly ignored or denied -- the release of the aforementioned emails from early 2020, only for them to now be revealed via a Freedom of Information Act request and under threat of subpoena from a House committee.
Regardless, based on the content of the emails revealing Dr. Fauci's admissions paired with other evidence proving U.S. taxpayer funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, it seems undeniable that Fauci lied under oath to a Senate committee, and now the only question is whether President Joe Biden's DOJ will actually do anything to hold Fauci accountable for his apparent perjury.
