Paul urges DOJ to charge Fauci to test pardon

The Hill

12 hours ago

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is calling on the Justice Department (DOJ) to charge former senior national health adviser Anthony Fauci with lying to Congress to test whether former President Biden's pardon of Fauci will hold up in court.
'I do believe Anthony Fauci committed a felony by lying to Congress,' Paul told pro-President Trump activist Charlie Kirk in an interview when asked whether Biden pardon's signed by autopen would hold up in court.
'You have to charge him with a felony, take him to court and then the court will decide whether or not the pardon is upheld,' he continued. 'You can argue until you're blue in the face that you can't do autopens and that maybe the president wasn't aware of it. But the only way to actually do this is to charge someone who has been pardoned.'
The Kentucky Republican added, 'I think Anthony Fauci is the most likely to be chargeable. There are other people — Hunter Biden could be charged as well — but someone has to be charged.'
Paul says Fauci testified before Congress 'in a very vigorous and heated and animated way' that the National Institutes of Health never funded gain-of-function virus research in Wuhan, China.
'This is directly contradicted by the actual people who were involved in the funding,' the senator said.
Other Republicans, however, have expressed skepticism about challenging the autopen pardons after Biden told The New York Times that he personally approved them.
'I made every decision,' Biden told The Times earlier this month.
He said he had his staff use an autopen to replicate his signature because 'we're talking about a whole lot of people.'
Biden also pardoned his son Hunter, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.