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There comes a point when “trust us” stops being an argument—especially when the people demanding your trust spent years withholding the evidence.
That point may finally have arrived for Anthony Fauci.
On Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul and Senate Republicans voted to refer Fauci to the Justice Department for criminal contempt of Congress. Because the referral came directly from the committee rather than through the full Senate, legal scholar Jonathan Turley cautioned that the procedure could face a challenge. The underlying law is murky, and nobody should pretend that prosecution is guaranteed.
But the larger question is remarkably simple: After everything Americans endured during COVID, why is it still so difficult to get straight answers from the people who exercised so much power over their lives?
Joe Biden granted Fauci a sweeping pardon covering conduct dating back to 2014. Yet Fauci has continued invoking the Fifth Amendment, even when Paul says his questions were limited to matters covered by that pardon.
The committee’s position is that Fauci cannot be prosecuted for conduct Biden already pardoned. He could still face consequences for lying under oath—but that danger exists for every witness who testifies before Congress. A pardon is not supposed to become both a shield from prosecution and a curtain behind which inconvenient facts can remain permanently hidden.
Rand Paul made another important distinction during an interview with Piers Morgan. Immunity is generally offered to somebody lower in the chain who can help investigators reach the person giving the orders. Paul suggested that David Morens, Fauci’s longtime aide and confidant, might be the more logical candidate.
Morens has already provided Congress with an astonishing glimpse into how government transparency apparently worked inside Fauci’s orbit. He discussed ways of avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests, transferring conversations away from official channels and even altering spellings so electronic searches would not locate certain names.
Paul joked about carrier pigeons, but the underlying conduct is no laughing matter. Government employees were allegedly discussing methods of keeping government business away from the public—and doing it while the public was being ordered to trust them without question.
Then Sen. Ron Johnson dropped the number that ought to stop everyone cold: 11 million pages.
Johnson said his committee is only now receiving millions of pages of COVID-related material after getting “squat” from the Biden administration. His investigation has already uncovered evidence that former FDA official Peter Marks was shown safety signals involving the COVID injections. Johnson is now interviewing current and former federal health officials and has invited Fauci to appear for a voluntary transcribed interview. If Fauci refuses, Johnson says a subpoena may follow.
Think about that timeline.
Americans were ordered to take a newly developed vaccine or risk losing their jobs. Members of the military faced discharge. Businesses told employees their livelihoods could disappear. People who raised questions were mocked, censored or dismissed as dangerous cranks.
Meanwhile, Congress—the branch of government constitutionally responsible for oversight—was being denied the information it needed to evaluate those mandates.
Only now, six years after COVID began, are lawmakers receiving some of the records that should have been available while those decisions were being made.
That is not how accountability is supposed to work. You do not compel obedience first, suppress scrutiny second and release the paperwork years later when the damage is done and the public has moved on to the next crisis.
And that habit of refusing direct answers is not confined to the COVID bureaucracy.
Look at the Democratic civil war unfolding around Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. We are repeatedly told that the Democratic Party represents the working class. Yet El-Sayed lost all 15 Michigan counties with the lowest percentage of college graduates while winning 13 of the 15 counties with the highest percentage.
The polite media translation is that El-Sayed performed well among “highly educated voters.” My less polite translation is that his strongest support came from the college-indoctrinated progressive class—not necessarily from the men and women who build things, repair things, grow things and keep the country moving.
Now Democrats are discovering that winning a progressive primary and winning a statewide general election are two entirely different assignments.
Sen. John Fetterman, who has been attacked by El-Sayed and his allies, bluntly acknowledged that Republican Mike Rogers could win the seat. Fetterman said El-Sayed brought a “little man syndrome kind of energy” to the primary and now bears a serious responsibility to hold the seat in November.
Other Democrats went on television to insist the party is “absolutely unified,” which is Washington language for: Please ignore the people throwing furniture behind us.
Clinton adviser Paul Begala at least gave an honest answer. He urged El-Sayed to disavow streamer Hasan Piker, who has said America “deserved” 9/11, dismissed concerns about the sexual atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 and talked about killing Sen. Rick Scott.
Begala correctly noted that campaigning alongside Piker is practically writing Republican attack ads for Mike Rogers free of charge.
Asked whether he would renounce Piker, El-Sayed ducked the question. Piker’s own response to Democrats seeking reconciliation was a profanity-laced rant accusing them of Islamophobia and ordering them to “lock” themselves into supporting the nominee.
Ah, unity. Nothing brings a political family together quite like screaming obscenities at everyone who asks you to stop associating with extremists.
This is the Democrats’ “big tent” problem. Their leaders tell us the party has room for socialists, Democratic Socialists and radicals who believe America deserved 9/11—because defeating Donald Trump supposedly excuses everything. But when working-class voters recoil, those same leaders seem genuinely baffled.
Whether the subject is Fauci or the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, the pattern is familiar: evade the question, conceal the uncomfortable facts and demand obedience in the name of some greater emergency.
Americans have had enough of that act.
On Thursday’s Bo Snerdley’s Rush Hour, I went much deeper into the Fauci referral, the millions of newly released COVID documents and the Democrats’ increasingly bitter fight over El-Sayed and Hasan Piker. If you missed the fastest hour in American media—or simply want to hear these politicians perform their evasive maneuvers in their own words—listen to the full show on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And on Saturday, I’ll continue the COVID discussion with Dr. Miklos, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s contentious CNN interview, the media’s “anti-vaxxer” label and what Kennedy is actually saying about vaccine policy.
There are still a great many questions to answer. The people who demanded our trust are finally discovering that “because we said so” is no longer good enough.
