Wednesday Reads

Posted: July 29, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

I haven’t been following the Antony Fauci story at all. I heard that his diaries were released, but I assumed it was just some wingnut thing. But today Fauci appeared in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, headed by Covid conspiracy theorist Rand Paul. In a surprise move, Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions.

NBC News: Anthony Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions at Covid hearing, calls Sen. Rand Paul ‘unhinged.’

Dr. Anthony Fauci declined to answer senators’ questions at a hearing Wednesday on the origins of Covid and the government’s handling of the pandemic, saying he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid the possibility that Republicans could try to use his testimony to prosecute him for perjury.

The surprise decision shook up the hearing, which was expected to be contentious given Fauci’s previous public clashes with Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Antony Fauci is swarn in Wednesday.

In his opening statement to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Fauci pointed to Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me” and his decision to publicly release the doctor’s personal journal.

“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 — quote — ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said.

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he continued. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

Despite Fauci’s refusal to respond, Paul still used his time at the hearing to ask the doctor a series of questions.

Fauci answered each question with the same line: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

At the end of his questioning, Paul told Fauci that he would face “repercussions” for not answering questions.

“The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so,” Paul said. “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”

I guess Rand Paul doesn’t understand the Fifth Amendment.

I know it’s CBS News, but this article by Caitlin Yilek provides very good background on the issues that came up in Fauci’s diaries: Fauci diaries, released by Sen. Rand Paul, touch on COVID origins and tense relationship with Trump.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has released more than a thousand pages of journal entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci, teeing up what is likely to be a contentious hearing with the nation’s former top infectious disease expert on Wednesday about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paul, who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee, subpoenaed Fauci to appear before the committee as part of the panel’s investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. Paul, who has pushed the theory that the virus emerged from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China rather than spilling over from animals to humans naturally, has long accused Fauci and other government officials of misleading the public and Congress about the source of the outbreak.

The journal entries date from December 2019, in the days leading up to the U.S. declaring a public health emergency, until December 2022, when Fauci stepped down as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a position he held for nearly four decades….

Many scientists believe the evidence suggests that the virus emerged naturally from infected bats before it circulated to other species and spread to humans who were handling those animals at a market in Wuhan, where the first human cases appeared in late 2019. But the FBI has assessed the coronavirus “most likely” emerged in a “lab incident in Wuhan.” In January 2025, the CIA issued a new assessment that favored the “lab leak” hypothesis, though it said the finding was made with “low confidence.”

Some of Fauci’s diary entries reflect early uncertainty about the source of the pandemic. In January 2020, he wrote that “we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” though he added that “somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.” About a week later, he referenced a conference call in which several top infectious disease experts thought the coronavirus might not have originated in nature.Paul on Monday accused Fauci of saying one thing to “Dear Diary” while telling the public “it’s implausible that it came from the lab, and we’re really convinced it came from these wild animals in the marketplace. But that level of dishonesty is really astounding.”
But isn’t it normal that Fauci would not be able to immediately determine the origins of the virus? There is much more interesting information about the diaries in the article. Read the rest at the link.This information is from Ari Daniel at NPR: Rand Paul releases Anthony Fauci’s pandemic-era diary notes. Here’s what they tell us.

On Saturday afternoon, as part of this ongoing inquiry, Paul published a thread on X describing the release of a string of what he called diary entries made by Fauci from December 2019 through December 2022. Paul commented on X at the start of the posts, “What [Fauci] wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.” [….]

Felicia Goodrum, a virologist at Dartmouth College who spoke to NPR from the American Society for Virology meeting in Minneapolis, says that it’s possible that Fauci may have been less certain in private with his colleagues as they were racing to learn about the new virus than he was in public where he had to assure a population that was panicking over the rapidly emerging pandemic.

David Schertler, center, an attorney for infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci, right, is removed by Capitol Police from a Senate hearing Wednesday. Maxine Wallace, The Washington Post

This thread emerges ahead of a scheduled hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Paul chairs. Paul unilaterally subpoenaed Fauci to testify after he said that Fauci notified the committee that he wouldn’t appear voluntarily. Lawmakers are expected to question Fauci about what he knew and didn’t know as the pandemic was unfolding.

For years, Paul and Fauci have differed over the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Fauci has asserted that the scientific evidence points to a spillover — whereby the virus would have found its way from an animal into its first human host, and then spread at that point from human to human.

Proponents of this theory point to the wet market in Wuhan where potentially infected animals were waiting to be sold. “There’s very good evidence that there are two lineages [of SARS-CoV-2] that emerged,” according to Goodrum. “Both of those lineages were present at the market, and susceptible animals were present at the market.”

Goodrum says the market was cleared before it was possible to take any samples. However, she says the genetic data “maps all initial cases to that market” and “none to, for example, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they have accused the virus of having been created or released.”

Most scientists in the virology community share this view, according to a survey published in February 2024 by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, a nonpartisan U.S.-based think tank that studies potentially catastrophic events.

Paul has advocated for an alternative explanation. He says the possibility that the virus was engineered in a lab should not be discounted. Two years ago, during a full Senate committee hearing, Paul said, “Do we know for certain it came from the lab? No, but there’s a preponderance of evidence indicating that it may have come from the lab.”

So Rand Paul didn’t get what he wanted today. What’s next?

Dan Diamond and Anna Liss-Roy at The Washington Post (gift article): Rand Paul threatens to hold Fauci in contempt after he declines to answer questions.

Anthony S. Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Senate hearing Wednesday where Republicans pressed the retired government scientist on whether he was sufficiently truthful in past testimony about the coronavirus pandemic.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), a longtime adversary of Fauci, concluded the nearly three-hour hearing by saying the committee is planning a vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

Paul acknowledged to GOP colleagues that there are legal questions about whether Fauci could be held in contempt — citing President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardon of Fauci last year — but contended that Fauci should have just answered questions on Wednesday, even if it meant admitting to a past lie or other wrongdoing.

After that surprise move, Paul and other Republican Senators asked Fauci numerous questions.