Contempt for The Science™ | Hour 1

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetcleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. All righty, So, yesterday the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee up in DC voted to hold the Science in contempt of Congress. Doctor Anthony the Science Fauci is now recommended for a vote to the full Senate to be held in contempt of Congress. He is the obviously the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Effect Diseases, and last week he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination one hundred eleven times in front of the committee, even on easy questions like what color is your tie and what day of the week is it. He was granted a pardon you'll recall by former President Joe Biden, a very sweeping, expansive pardon for any crime he may have committed in the previous decade. And Republicans argue that all he had to do was come in and tell the truth at this hearing last week, and he couldn't do it. He refused to say anything. So I watched the hearing so you didn't have to. I've pulled some audio clips. They debated this for like an hour and a half, Okay, and you'll get an idea of why. But first I'm going to start with rand Paul. He's the chairman of the committee, and he offered this opening statement. Eight days ago. Doctor Anthony Fauci sat before this committee in the witness chair under subpoenam for conduct covered by the President Biden's full and unconditional pardon reaching back to twenty fourteen. Doctor Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution. All he had to do is tell the truth more than one hundred times, though he refused. The chair ruled that doctor Fauci's assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege was unsupported in light of the pardon and the testimony he offered in his opening statement. The chair directed Anthony Fauci to answer. He refused again. That is what we were voting on today, not his opinions, not his policies, not anything he said from a podium six years ago. We are voting on whether a witness. Who has received the benefit of a sweeping federal pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence. A million Americans died from COVID, many of them died alone. Workers were forced to choose. Between a mandate and a job they needed. Businesses closed and never reopened. Children lost years of school they will never get back. Americans lost the freedom to work, to worship, and to decide what went into their own bodies. Nothing we do today can undo those losses, but silence does not honor them either. This Committee and the American people have a right to know why doctor Fauci's agency funded dangerous research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and what role he played in approving and overseeing it. Why he told his colleagues to delete emails, why he told them to delete emails and then delete the deleted file. What was he told in January twenty twenty, what was said on those calls, what his agency did with and for the intelligence community, and whether knowing what he knows now, he still believes that the risks were worth taking. Documents tell only part of the story. Many of these questions can be answered only by doctor Fauci. He answered none of them. There will be another pandemic. The time to. Determine which legislative reforms are necessary to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated is now, not later. This Committee passed the Bipartisan Risky Research Review Act to strengthen oversight of dangerous life sciences research funded by the federal government to address failures exposed by the. COVID nineteen pandemic. But Congress cannot determine what additional reforms are necessary until it fully understands what remains unanswered. Holding a witness and contempt is a serious thing, and it should be rare. But the contempt power exists for precisely this circumstance. Oversight is not a courtesy this Committee extends, or a favor a former official grants us. It is a constitutional obligation, and when voluntary cooperation is Congress must be able to compel compliance with its lawful demands. That is Congress's compulsory instrument a subpoena is not an invitation. A subpoena with no consequence is not a subpoena. It's a suggestion. Seeking the truth is not a witch hunt. Accountability is not vengeance. Accountability is what stands between the American people and a repeat of the mistakes. And the very real consequences of the past. Right. So, did you catch the part where he references communications with the intelligence community. What was that about? That's part of the line of questioning that Rand Paul was apparently interested in pursuing. Interesting. I'd have no idea what all that's about. Was this about, you know, China? Did somebody in the intelligence agencies say don't pin this on China or something or what like? I don't know. I thought that was interesting, And I think Rand Paul is exactly right. If you are going to subpoena somebody who has already received a pardon and you cannot compel them to testify when there isn't a risk of any federal charges because he has a federal pardon, then what's the point of a subpoena? He says, it's not a subpoena, it's a suggestion, And that's correct. Now, there is this other potential of states bringing charges against Fauci for what? I don't know. Because those would have to be state or state laws that were violated, So I don't know, And so maybe that's what he was worried about, But all indications have been that he was worried about a perjury trap. So it sounds like that argument that Democrats have been making about. Oh, well, now you've got a couple of states that are that they've launched investigations, you got attorneys general for hmm, was it I have it here somewhere it's like Wisconsin, I think. No, Sorry, now Wisconsin. I was thinking. Florida, West Virginia, and Louisiana. They have announced a joint investigation into Fauci. So don't know what that's about. Don't know what state crimes he may have he may have committed, or that they're going to allege. But the point of bringing him in front of the committee was to say, you have this pardon, and we need answers on what all happened at the beginning, at the origin of COVID, and you're the only one that can tell us these things. So you have a pardon already, just tell us what happened, and he won't do it, which kind of makes some bit of sense, because this is a guy who ten years prior was very public and vocal about gain of function research being worth the risk of a pandemic, even if something escaped a lab, there was some accident, it broke containment, he said that it would be worth the risk. The benefits of gain of function research outweigh the risk, and so it's not surprising he doesn't want to talk at all about any of the stuff that went wrong in the gain of function process because it could jeopardize future work. That's what it seems like to me at least. Also not surprising. Another Fauci flipping the bird to Americans. This was his wife driving away in their car with her husband, and she flips off the people outside that were videotaping it, which is really just what he did. Also right during his congressional hearing last week, she just did it with the digit all right. For over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create a Video, great local company in mint Hill that has helped more than two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes, now creative videos helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing group travel videos perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams, I mean, really any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. 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You can email Katie Katie at group travel videos dot com. Group travel Videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. All right. Next up, we have the ranking member, the ranking Democrat on this Senate committee, Gary Peters, and he made an opening statement as well about why he would not be voting for contempt of Congress against Anthony Fauci. The Senate Homeland Security and Governent Affairs Committee has a long and very proud history of conducting serious bipartisan oversight on behalf of the American people. Democrats and Republicans have worked together to follow the facts, compel information, and hold both Democratic and Republican administrations alike accountable. That work depends on the credibility of this committee. It depends on the legitimacy of our investigations, and a recognition by witnesses, courts, and the public that Congress is exercising its powers dutifully. The contempt resolution before us today puts all of that at risk. Following a one side investigation and a rushed process that has repeatedly excluded the minority and other members of this committee. The chairman is now asking the committee to take a vote that could harm our ability to conduct future investigations and disregards constitutional protections long recognized by the US Senate. All right, so note what he's doing. He's saying this contempt charge that we're going to lose. If you do this, then we have no more credibility for this committee. This committee has no credibility, one sided, rushed process, no credibility. He's undermining the institution. Right, if they don't get their way, then the institution must be undermined. All without making a reliable case that there is a legal basis for holding doctor Fauci in contempt. Speak clear, This resolution will not provide the Committee with any additional information or compel doctor Fauci to provide answers to our inquiries. Criminal contempt is punitive. It does not compel a witness to answer questions or produce the documents we'd all like to see. What it will do is create a damaging precedent that future witnesses will use to resist legitimate constitutional or excuse me, congressional oversight and weaken this committee's ability to compel testimony. Well, didn't Fauci do that by pleading the fifth wouldn't he set the precedent there? So now everybody that comes in after him will do so as well. For decades, the Senate has maintained that a witness must appear before a committee, even when that witness intends to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Senate committees have been able to defend that position in the courts because both Democratic and Republican chairs have considerably have consistently recognized and respective the constitutional rights of witnesses when they appear, and when a witness refuses to voluntarily appear, that the principle leaves the Senate on very strong ground to compel their appearance, and, where necessary and rare instances, make referrals for criminal contempt. If this committee now seeks to punish a witness for asserting their constitutional protected Fifth Amendment rights, future witnesses will argue that appearing before Congress exposes them to punishment, regardless of whether they comply with the subpoena and invoke a constitutional protection. They will point directly. To this vote, this vote as a justification for refusing to appear at all. That would make it harder for this Committee and every committee in Congress to compel testimony in future investigations. The Chairman has also suggested he may attempt to refer this matter to the Department of Justice without approval of the full Senate. Would be even more dangerous and widely unprecedented move. No individual center senator and no committee speaks for the entire Senate as a whole. The Senate's institutional powers belong to the full body. Allowing one chairman to unilaterally assert those powers would invite future chairs in both parties to bypass the Senate whenever they cannot secure the support of their colleagues. This investigation has been one sided from the beginning. The Minority has. Has been excluded from witness interviews and full access to committee records, and information has been selectively released to support conclusions that the Chairman reached years ago. A process that lacks bipartisan participation and seeks to confirm predetermined conclusions. It does not strengthen congressional oversight. It makes our work to conduct oversight more challenging and less likely to withstand scrutiny. This Committee should not damage its future investigative authority to advance the Chairman's years long campaign against the signal a single individual. It's not just what we investigate that matters, and that really matters what we investigate, but it's also how we conduct those investigations that matters too. So I urge my colleagues to protect this committee, protect the Senates institutional powers, and oppose this rejet this resolution. All right, real quick, Rand Paul did respond. Despite Minority statements to the contrary, this investigation has been conducted with unparalleled transparency. Thousands and thousands of documents have been put up for review from the minority. You have to request a password. They've been informed of that. Not one Democrat has requested a password to look at any of the documents, so there is transparency. They're just not interested in reviewing the documents. Right, Well, that would make it one sided. If you just refuse to participate, that that would make it one side. Let me jump over to the text line real quick, Kevin says, Dude, Fauci being held in contempt is the lesser of two evils for those that don't have blanket immunity. He's clearly protecting other people by pleading the fifth Yeah, that might be the case, Dana, I'm still waiting on someone to tell me the difference between his pleading the fifth and the president doing the same thing. If they're innocent of the charges, why not answer? Okay? So you say you've been waiting for somebody, somebody to tell you this, So you are in luck, Okay, because I'm going to tell you the difference. You ready, the pardon, that's the difference. Fauci had a pardon, So there's no reason he couldn't tell the truth, unless, of course he's worried about catching charges from states or something. Right, But all he had to do was walk in there, answer the questions truthfully, not perjure himself, which he's not supposed to do anyway, right, So that he could have done that and he did not. That's the difference. He had a pardon. Donald Trump, no pardon. Right, You're welcome, all right. So next up here we have Maggie Hassan. Hassan Democrat from New Hampshire. She said that the Republicans were only trying to entrap poor doctor Fauci. That was the whole reason why they brought him up there under subpoena. That's it. My colleagues in the majority held a hearing openly designed to target a single doctor and dedicated public servant who has testified before Congress many times before, and they wanted to blame him for everything that went wrong during the pandemic. Wrong. The goal was collided, and I want to emphasize this, Wait, hang on a second. What went wrong during the pandemic? I'm not aware of a single mistake that was made. I thought we got everything right, didn't we. I haven't heard any of the people that made the decisions express any kind of lamentation, any regret. I haven't heard any of that. The goal was to wait for doctor Fauci to make any kind of misstatement and then have a weaponized Department of Justice fund criminal charges for that new statement that would not have been covered by the pardon a misstatement. Noticed what she said? They're a misstatement, now a lie? If he perjured himself, right, you're not supposed to perjure yourself. And if that's the case, if every single time you bring somebody before you, there's an opportunity for them to perjure themselves, So then wouldn't that make every single hearing and witness wouldn't that also be a perjury trap then for everybody, like, wouldn't that apply across the board, of course it would. Leaving doctor Fauci little choice but to invoke his constitutional right to not walk directly into a trap. Very all right, So it's just this, uh, it's just this warrant at sob Johnson, right, That's it's your fault, Republicans that he did this, your fault. Ron Johnson then had a he had a very good, a very good rundown. I don't want to play because it runs about four minutes, so I don't want to do that before the traffic. I'll do it after traffic. I'll go a little bit earlier to traffic. But I will give you some more of the details here. This is from to time dot com. Contempt of Congress is a federal misdemeanor in which an individual willfully disobeys or impedes a congressional investigation. A contempt of Congress charge may be levied against someone if they failed to appear before a committee after being subpoena. That's what happened to Bannon. He refused to appear, or they could refuse to produce require documents, or refuse to answer questions related to an investigation. Okay, so that's when a contemptive charge can be applied when they refuse to answer questions related to an investigation. Congress does not hold the power to prosecute or convict someone of the crime. Instead, the House or Senate can vote to approve a resolution finding a person in contempt and refer the matter to the executive branch for prosecution. So the executive branch would be doing the prosecution the DOJ it And that's why Rand Paul is saying, if Democrats aren't going to allow this to proceed, then I'll just refer it myself. Now, can the Department of Justice investigate a contempt of Congress charge? Yes, it's my understanding it can. I don't think it actually needs a referral under Senate procedure. After this committee vote, it then goes to the full Senate. If it passes there, then it is certified and sent to the DOJ. As Democratic support would be needed to reach a sixty vote threshold, so you could you avoid the filibuster or end of filibuster. It is not likely that this is going to happen. And by the way, for everybody that's you know, got the newfound respect for John Fetterman. That guy voted with Democrats in every attempt to delay this contempt resolution. They tried to table it multiple times, like half a dozen times. He voted lockstep with all the Democrats. So he is not interested in pursuing this against Fauci either. So Senator ran Paul has said that he would look to bypass the Senate vote and hand deliver the resolution to the DOJ. What does the DJ do with it? Don't know. He is within his right to submit a referral. However, a former Biden era official named Donald Sherman, who previously served as senior counsel for the ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, says that within the procedural context of the contempt resolution, Ran Paul's promises to go straight to the DOJ are quote silly theatre. It is absolutely no legal effect. He says, all right, so I think I have enough time now. Ron Johnson, Republican from Wisconsin, said that the Democrats should expect more hearings, more investigations on the COVID response and the gain of function research. Ranking Member p says this has been one sided and. Rushed, rushed. When I was chairman this committee back in twenty twenty, I started conducting oversight. I held hearings that there was no cooperation in those hearings. As a matter of factor, I remember one when we held a hearing with doctor PIERR. Corey. When he came in with the all kinds of evidence on the effectiveness of ivor mectin, the ranking member then denigrated him. Back then, doctor Corey was a Democrat. He was shocked at the treatment he was given by the ranking member. How many people died because they lacked early treatment, was safe, effective generic drugs. That hearing laid out the truth that this could be something that could help people, and we're a ranking member that did everything that he could to detigrate that truth. My current experiences chairman of PSI, we've been holding hearings after hearings my ranking member blueing Thal. In those hearings, we had one called Voice of the vaccine Injured. We had parents come in and tell their heart wrenching stories. We had parents coming in telling the truth, and the ranking member a few hours before that hearing held a press confidence said hope the press doesn't cover it because there's nothing credible about this hearing. It's these investigations are one side. It's because one size simply doesn't want to look at the truth. They want to bury the truth, they want to memory hold it. They don't want to look at the Fauci diaries and take a look at how contradictory what he wrote to himself, how contradictory it was to what he actually told the public. Of the revelation of those diaries, I think probably the most significant one that's being overlooked was early on the pandemic, he wrote in his diaries he thought COVID would be maybe twice a bad flu season. Now, I'm not downplaying a bad flu season. We have them. Oftentimes they overwhelmed hospitals. Something takes seriously. But a pandemic that is going to be twice that is that really worth destroying people's lives, shutting down businesses, destroying an economy. I argued back then that it wouldn't be. It's been six years in the since the pandemic began. We have not had a reckoning of what happened. Last Wednesday's hearing was an excellent hearing from a standpoint of legitimate questions being raised, legitimate questions. The American people want answers to legitimate questions, some of them only Anthony Fauci, Saint Fauci, mister science could answer. And even though we have quotes of him saying, I'm not afraid of any oversyched I'm happy to talk to any oversycham. I have nothing to hide. That's not the position he took last Wednesday. What he displayed last Wednesday was contempt for Congress, contempt for this committee, contempt for investigation, the same contempt that our ranking member, our ranking members have shown for the diligent oversight and the exposing of the truth that I've been undertaking for six years. There's nothing rushed. It's been one sided, but not because we haven't reached out, not because we haven't involved the other side, the other side, like way too many Americans have just closed their eyes, covered up their ears. And refused, refused to look at the truth. I am definitely going to vote yes on contempt of Congress, and my investigation has just begun, all right. Next up, Josh Hawley noted that Fauci's Fifth Amendment responses were not tailored to any specific fear of self incrimination. The invocation of the Fifth Amendment, particularly in a context where immunity has already been obtained. Doctor Fauci has full immunity. He has a full and unconditional pardon for a period of some eleven years. In that context, the assertion of Fifth Amendment privilege only adheres to those instances where the witness has a reasonable fear of future prosecution, and it must be tailored to any such fear. And the fact that he wouldn't answer questions about the tie he was wearing or the color of the carpet of the day of the week Senator Paul asked him about did he have a folder in front of me? He wouldn't answer. That betrays the fact that his invocation the Fifth Amendment wasn't tailored to anything. It was a predetermined, premeditated design to evade this committee's questions on any subject, including emphatically those for which he has a pardon. And the United States Supreme Court has been clear for over a century, dating back to eighteen ninety six, that when a witness has received immunity, he may not stand upon his privilege, and multiple courts of appeals from including the United States Supreme Court, in the cast of Guard case, has says that I'm going to quote now, witness must reasonably believe that his statements could be used in criminal prosecution or could lead to other evidence that might be so used. The Court has also said that the danger must be real and appreciable. It must not be one of imaginary and unsubstantial character. All that to say that I think it's pretty clear given doctor Fausti's one hundred and eleven invocations of the Fifth Amendment, including the questions that he he could have no fear of prosecution on it's not going to get prosecuted for the color of his tie. It shows that he had no interests and no intention of answering any of our questions, and that is an abuse of There's no privilege for any of that. And I think there was no good faith attempt. Yeah, and that's why Hawley asked him those questions during the hearing, what color is your tie? What day of the week is it to prove that this is not based on some fear of being entrapped or. Self incrimination. So what could happen if Fauci has found guilty of contempt of Congress in a court, which would be down the road obviously. But if it did get to court, if the DOJ were to bring a charge and prosecute and he's found guilty in a DC court, I mean, there's a lot of barriers to this, but he could face a fine of up to one hundred thousand dollars and a prison sentence of up to one year, which I doubt he would get. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. 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