Politics
NEW: Fauci Slapped With Criminal Referral
Republicans on Capitol Hill are moving swiftly to slap Dr. Anthony Fauci with a criminal referral for benefitting from an alleged scheme to circumvent former President Joe Biden and pardon him using the White House autopen.
Leading the charge is U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who announced on Monday that he is referring Fauci to Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice after it was revealed in a new interview that his pardon from Biden was signed with the autopen.
The disclosure came as part of a New York Times investigation into the Biden administration’s final weeks. The outlet reported that former White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients signed off on last-minute pardons for Fauci and members of the J6 select committee, including former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY).
“I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons,” Zients wrote in an email shortly after a summarized list of pardons was apparently presented to Biden for approval.
President Donald Trump has encouraged Republicans to investigate whether pardons signed with an autopen may be invalidated. The machine, which replicates a person’s signature, is typically used for low-level documents such as constituent letters or proclamations, but was used liberally after Biden ended his reelection campaign amid allegations of his declining mental acuity.
The opening has left Republicans salivating at the chance to investigate Fauci, Cheney, and members of the Biden family who were pardoned on the Democrat’s last day in office. In particular, Trump has vowed to prosecute Fauci for the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Cheney’s participation in the J6 committee, which laid the blame on Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol.
Biden spoke with the Times for its story, underscoring how defensive he and his aides have become about shaping the damaging narrative surrounding his presidency. He admitted that he “did not individually approve” each pardon but insisted that he only overlooked the names of criminal convicts, not those benefitting from high-profile pardons that have garnered the most attention.
“Rather than ask Biden to keep signing revised versions, his staff waited and then ran the final version thru the autopen, which they saw as…routine,” the story states about the Biden White House’s processes for obtaining his approval during the pardon process.
Shortly after receiving his pardon, Fauci insisted he had “committed no crime.”
“Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he told Politico in January.
But the “mere articulation of these baseless threats and the potential that they will be acted upon, create immeasurable and intolerable distress for me and my family,” Fauci added.
He added in a statement that he appreciated “the action that President Biden has taken today on my behalf.”
Trump at the time responded to the pardons, writing on Truth Social, “It is disgraceful. Many are guilty of MAJOR CRIMES!”
“He doesn’t have to accept the pardon. If he did nothing wrong be a man and turn it down… But you know he won’t because everyone knows he’s guilty of so much,” said Donald Trump, Jr.
Among other allegations, Republicans have accused Fauci of hiding evidence that the Wuhan lab in China leaked a bioengineered coronavirus that caused the global pandemic in 2020. They have cited emails from National Institutes of Health workers under Fauci who discussed ways to avoid complying with public records laws.
After leaving government, Fauci went on to secure a $5 million deal to sell his memoir.