Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday he would send a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting a criminal referral of White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“You kicked off your questioning of Dr. Fauci emphasizing federal law makes lying to Congress, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Is it your belief based on the evidence, senator, that he lied before Congress and broke the law?,” Fox News host Sean Hannity, on whose show Paul appeared Tuesday, asked.
“Yes, and I will be sending a letter to the Department of Justice asking for a criminal referral because he has lied to Congress,” Paul replied.
Rand Paul says he will be sending a criminal referral letter to the DOJ about Fauci pic.twitter.com/B17FZCAVoW
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 21, 2021
Paul had accused Fauci of lying about gain-of-function research funding during a Capitol Hill hearing earlier the same day.
The senator had an intense exchange with Fauci, where he cited a 2017 paper, in which chief scientist of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIH) Dr. Shi Zhengli thanked the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for providing funding for the research. (RELATED: House Committee Votes To Defund Wuhan Lab, Gain-Of-Function Research In Adversarial Countries)
The Tuesday Capitol Hill hearing also saw Paul claim that Fauci had provided a false testimony before the Senate in a May 11 hearing by denying NIH’s funding of the gain-of-function research undertaken in Wuhan.
“Sen. Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement,” Fauci replied, noting that “qualified” people had determined the scientists’ actions did not meet the definition of gain-of-function.
“You take an animal virus and you increase transmissibility to human, you’re saying that is not gain-of-function?,” Paul objected.
“Sen. Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about,” Fauci fired back.