Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) argued Wednesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 pandemic response, should be in prison.
Tuberville made the remarks the same day Fauci, who served under multiple presidential administrations, invoked his Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer questions during a stormy July 29 Senate hearing. Fauci was subpoenaed to testify under oath by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has had a yearslong adversarial relationship with him.
Speaking with Newsmax on Capitol Hill, Tuberville said Fauci should be “locked up” and “put in prison and then put on trial in front of the American people,” claiming he “lied through his teeth” about the origins of COVID-19.
There is no evidence to support Tuberville’s claims. Fauci has repeatedly denied lying to Congress about covering up the origins of COVID-19 when he was questioned previously. Health experts including Fauci and the World Health Organization have maintained that the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans, despite another theory that it emerged from a lab in China.
Fauci cited Paul’s “unhinged obsession” with imprisoning him as a reason to plead the Fifth on Wednesday.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something – anything – that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said.
Calling Fauci a “fool” on Wednesday, Tuberville claimed that “people are still dying” because of the coronavirus vaccines developed to fight the pandemic and accused Fauci of using Americans as “guinea pigs.” Deaths directly linked to the vaccines are very rare, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Elsewhere in the interview, Tuberville told Newsmax that it’s “embarrassing” that Fauci “took advantage of the so-called pardon that Joe Biden gave him.”
President Biden issued preemptive pardons to several of his family members in addition to Fauci during the last moments of his presidency.
Appearing separately Wednesday on SiriusXM’s “David Webb Show,” Tuberville, who is running for governor of Alabama, argued that Biden’s federal, preemptive pardon for Fauci does not grant him immunity from state-level lawsuits in Alabama.
Watch Tuberville’s remarks below.