TMZ founder Harvey Levin defended Dr. Anthony Fauci against a right-wing “witch hunt” after congressional Republicans grilled him about private diary entries from the COVID era that were leaked by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Monday.
Opening his nearly five-minute statement saying he rarely uses TMZ to “vent personal feelings,” Levin told viewers, “Watching Anthony Fauci before a congressional hearing taking the Fifth Amendment is just one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen in government in my lifetime.”
While Levin said he did have problems with the way that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “handled COVID,” he added that he didn’t think it was done “maliciously” but out of an abundance of caution.
He went on to call Fauci, who served as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022 before stepping into the role of chief medical adviser to the president in 2021, an “amazing public servant” for decades, noting how the work he did during the AIDS crisis of the late 80s and early 90s “really saved lives.”
Taking Congress members to task for the “witch hunt,” Levin reminded watchers how Paul has publicly called for Fauci to be jailed for years now.
Levin defended the doctor for pleading the Fifth, saying that no matter what Fauci said, Republicans would try to find a way to weaponize it.
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Nodding to criminal charges former FBI Director James Comey is currently facing for a social media post, Levin said, “If you can prosecute somebody for frickin’ seashells on the beach shore, then you can certainly prosecute somebody for what they say in a congressional hearing.”
“That’s the climate we’re in,” Levin went on, comparing today’s political environment to the era of anti-communist crusades led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1940s and 50s.
“Rand Paul has a political agenda,” he said, calling it a “dark period in America.”