I suppose this is the place to discuss the new effort to jail Anthony Fauci. From Politico:
Hellbent on putting Fauci in jail, Rand Paul wants to skip a Senate vote
Reading the whole Politico article, and considering the Trump administration’s continuing inability to lock up Biden administration officials AKA enemies, I’m thinking the effort to jail Anthony Fauci will fail. But the bad guys haven’t given up.
Was discussing earlier today in this thread.
Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor crime. Usually no jail, but Steve Bannon recently served jail time for it.
Rand Paul wants to make a congressional referral to DOJ for Fauci pleading 5th. DOJ can allege that action is a crime to a DC grand jury, and if grand jury votes in favor, charge Fauci with the crime of Contempt of Congress.
Fauci would almost certainly get the charges dismissed by the Judge and if for some reason that did not happen and, 99.9999% certain be found not guilty.
Republicans like the lab leak theory because it reads more as a conspiracy theory. The “official story” is that there are no signs that it was a lab leak, and therefore they get to have special knowledge of a conspiracy where it was. That makes them feel smarter and makes them able to weave that into their other conspiracy theories. It’s also just reactance. Liberals and the experts are telling them one thing, so they do the opposite just like a bratty toddler would. This is the motivation behind a significant fraction of their behavior.
Because it really doesn’t matter, it just changes what kind of accident it was. What difference would it make? Our response to the pandemic was shameful regardless of whether it originated as a random mutation and zoological spillover in a wet market or if it was accidentally leaked by a bio lab. They act like it would somehow absolve Trump of his incompetence if the Chinese were a little more to blame, but the decisions before Trump were identical regardless of the origin and his failure is regardless of the origin.
I’m a fan of post-mortems, Morbidity & Mortality Conferences, and After Action Reports. I think we should learn from history in an effort to avoid repeating it.
But plucking Fauci out from the entire US COVID story is bat-shit flippin’ insane.
I always think about that loon, Peter Navarro, who gave a fairly stark warning to Trump via Feb and March 2020 Memos saying … this thing’s coming and it’s going to be bad:
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Trump adviser warned of coronavirus threat in January - The Hill
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Yeah: as a general proposition, I’m in favor of this kind of inquiry, but there are about 3,459,273 things about this that are risibly wrong with this chapter of the Salem Witch Trials.
Maybe the one that most sticks out to me is the Senators like Josh Hawley who accused Fauci of trying to “enrich himself” from/during the pandemic, also using words like “narcissist,” “megalomaniac,” and “liar” to describe Fauci?
Why, Senator Hawley. You say that as though you believe it were a bad thing 
In addition to Navarro’s clarion calls, …
Who did the CDC, NIH, and NIAID keep posted? To whom did the intelligence community give advance notice of a pandemic? Who defunded the CDC? Who fired the American epidemiologist embedded with the Chinese IN China to monitor and work on such diseases? Who disbanded the NSC’s Global Health Unit? Who was in a position to replenish the Strategic National Stockpiles?
Is this the readiness posture that we need from a leader in the face of a global pandemic?
Trump conceded on Friday that he would let others decide whether to allow the passengers to leave the Grand Princess, where 35 people have reported flu-like symptoms. Trump appeared to explicitly acknowledge his political concerns about the outbreak, saying: ‘I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault’
Also, according to Dear Leader, if CHINA had acted sooner, more lives would have been saved. But the same is NOT true of the USA??
It’s (constantly) the ultimate display of cynicism watching today’s GOP take for granted that their base is earth-shatteringly credulous and ignorant (“You know: morons”).
It’s endlessly both distressing and depressing that the GOP base … never proves them wrong.
And the more I contemplate it, the more wisdom I believe exists in the notion that Trump isn’t a liar; he’s a bullshitter.
And a bullshitter is far, far more dangerous.
Shamefully, Florida’s Attorney General says he is investigating Fauci to determine if he “illegally profited” off COVID. Other states have followed suit.
This is outrageous harassment of an 85 year old man. One who has been a dedicated and skilled public servant for decades
This, of course, is exactly what they will be saying about any accusations levelled against the current regime after 2028.
Rand Paul’s obsessive hatred of Fauci has gone beyond multiple daily posts on Twitter and reached the stage of ranting about him IN ALL CAPS.
THE SENATOR IS A LOON.
He also reposted this genius observation by Trump.
Believe it or not, Paul is a physician.
*to be fair, in addition to tsingle-minded Fauci glurge on X, Rand Paul occasionally obsesses about Bill Gates.
Yep. The GOP has hated the professional public service for decades. This is also about making people think twice about taking a government job. If you’re some young scientist type, who’s just graduated with a PhD, would you want a job where someone might decide to charge you criminally just for following where the science leads? And in which those charges may come years later, during a completely different presidential administration? And maybe even after you’ve left that job?
The difference is, if they’d convinced people that it was a foreign government responsible, it not only deflects the blame from Trump et al., it gives you an enemy to fight that you can actually just bomb, or at least talk about bombing. And that all helps distract the masses from the shitty job they’re doing. “Why are you criticizing the president during a bio-war?!? Do you want China to win, you traitor?!?”
And sure, they probably can’t actually bomb China directly, but any country that tries to deny the bio-war narrative is obviously a Chinese stooge, and you can sure as heck bomb the shit out of them.
And the bio-war narrative also gives them the political capital to stop immigration like they’ve always wanted. “Every migrant is potential bomb!!”
The Anti-China Lobby wanted to know along with the Nutcake lobby.
Oopsie.
Good point.
But this is mostly an excuse to attack a scientist.
I guess Paul thinks he’s clever with “wearing a mask after being vaccinated” but I see he has forgotten that a vaccine is not 100% immunity to COVID. It protects you but you still have to be careful. I always tried to remember that even though I have COVID vaccines, that doesn’t mean I should engage in high-risk behavior and assume nothing bad will happen. Fauci “wearing a mask” by pleading the fifth is the same idea. They’re not trying to get him with the old strain, they’ve mutated into a new strain and he’s protecting himself against that.
And Rand Paul was an eye surgeon; I really doubt he went into operating rooms without wearing a surgical mask. In other words, he understands why a vaccinated person would still wear masks but knows that his audience does not.
And found it expedient to cater to the worst of their followers who resent “them experts with their fancy degrees who can’t tell me what to do”.
Someone should open a restaurant near those followers that doesn’t require its cooks to wash their hands after using the toilet.
Good point.
More good points.
Generally, any motivation that reeks of spite and petulance is a likely explanation for GOP positions and actions.
If all attempts to convict Fauci fail, and then Fauci disappears----check Rand Paul’s basement.
85, yes. Dedicated and skilled public servant? 0 for 3.
And we have the receipts.
As opposed to Rand Paul?
I think that post comes from…questionable sources.