Sen. Ted Cruz wants Anthony Fauci held in contempt, prosecuted for perjury and sent to jail after the former COVID adviser invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times before Congress.
The Texas Republican unloaded after Wednesday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, where Fauci refused to answer questions about COVID-19’s origins, school closures and his previous sworn testimony.
“Years from now, they’ll look back and say, ‘What collective madness overtook this country?’” Cruz told Fox News Digital.
“I think Anthony Fauci has had contempt for Congress and contempt for the American people for decades,” he said. “His diary shows that he deliberately lied to the American people over and over and over again.”
Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., announced that the panel will vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer its questions.
“There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today,” Paul warned.
Fauci invoked his constitutional protection against self-incrimination on advice from his attorneys. Exercising that right does not itself prove guilt, and a committee contempt vote would not automatically send him to jail.
Cruz said Fauci’s final appearance before Congress could now define his legacy.
“Dr. Fauci ought to think about what it says about the end of his career, that what he will be remembered for the most is pleading the Fifth more than 100 times,” Cruz said.
“He’s been the most damaging bureaucrat in the history of America.”
Cruz pointed to recently released pandemic diaries that Republicans say conflict with Fauci’s public statements.
In January 2020, Fauci wrote that the earliest known infection was “not connected to the market,” referring to Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market. That entry did not establish that the virus came from a laboratory, but it showed officials were questioning the market narrative early in the outbreak.
Fauci later publicly favored natural emergence while saying a laboratory accident remained possible. COVID-19’s origin has not been conclusively determined.
Cruz also cited diary entries in which Fauci described influencing school closures in New York and California.
“I spoke with Bill de Blasio and convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools,” Fauci wrote in one entry, according to Fox News.
Fauci later testified, “I did not close the schools,” noting that state and local officials possessed the legal authority to make those decisions.
Cruz saw that distinction as a dodge.
“The school shutdowns, which Fauci bragged that he was responsible for, may well be the single most destructive public policy step we’ve seen in decades,” he said.
“The fact that he knew he was lying to the American people, he should be held in contempt, he should be prosecuted for perjury, and he should go to jail.”
Watch the clip above.
