Fauci on the hot seat and takes the Fifth | Hour 2

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 thepetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. All Right, so today Capitol Hill, Tony the Science Fauci on the hot seat. He pled the fifth on all one hundred and eleven questions on the origins of the COVID nineteen virus. That's what the focus of this hearing was. It's about the origin of the COVID nineteen virus. Democrats defended Fauci and said it was all just a partisan hearing, and they were like, what about all the Trump budget cuts and everything, just unwilling to engage in the actual material. So as such, I'm not going to give them really any kind of play here because they did not talk about the origins of. The COVID nineteen virus. So here is Senator Ran Paul. He's the chairman of the committee, and he gave this opening statement. The American people deserve answers. The American people deserve to know why dangerous research was funded by NIAID in a totalitarian country, in a lab that lacked acceptable safety standards. The decision to fund dangerous gain and function research in Wuan, China will likely go down in history as perhaps one of the worst public health decisions. Frankly, the American people deserve an apology. Yes, I hope today doctor Fauci will come clean. Admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China, Admit that the risk of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits, ask forgiveness, and pledge to help our government devise safeguards so a man made epidemic never happens again. He did not do that. Instead of an apology, You have for years avoided responsibility regarding the lockdowns. You argue that you did not personally issue every lockdown order, close every school, or impose every mandate, but officials across the country invoked your authority to justify these decisions, and you presented your recommendations not as judgments open to debate, but its dictates of science itself. Your own words demonstrate that you understood the influence you exercised. On March fourteenth, twenty twenty, you wrote that the task force recommendations were driven by me, yourself, deb and CDC. The next day, you wrote that you had convinced Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the New York City schools, so you were involved. That same night, Governor Gavin Newsom's chief of staff told you that the governor had decided to close California schools, bars, and restaurants after watching you on television. Presidents, governors, mayors, school boards, corporations, and congress all bare responsibility for. The decisions they made. The COVID lockdown, however, could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime. Children lost years of education, small businesses built over a lifetime disappeared. Patients delayed cancer screenings and other medical care. Families were separated from dying relatives. Workers were ordered to accept a medical procedure or lose their jobs. Worship, assembly, employment, education, and travel were restricted in the name of science. While you did not impose. Every restriction, you used your public authority to justify them. While you concluded publicly that COVID occurred naturally, Your private record tells a different story. In early twenty twenty, your handpicked virologists warned that the virus appeared to have been manipulated in the lab. In a conference call concerning the origin of the virus, all but to the participants believed deliberate insertion was possible. Your concern was not merely theoretical. That same week, you led an urgent effort to determine whether your own agency had funded the research related to these experiments that were now under suspicion. Hours later, your assistant reported that the wu Wan experiments had indeed been reviewed and approved by the NIH. And there's the problem. That's what he's been protecting ever since, the fact that there was a role that his organization played in the research. That's why everything shifted to the proximal origin theory, because had there been no connection with the NIH funding, then there would have been no downside to saying, yeah, it came from a lad definitely manipulated out of China. What were they working on? Oh my gosh, those chi coms are crazy, right, But you can't say that if it was funded through your organization, which is why he sent staff to go look for it, and when they found the connection, then the public posture became proximal origin that soup. Those were not the actions of officials who believe that a research related to origin was an absurd conspiracy theory. They were the actions of officials urgently trying to determine whether their agency funding was connected to the research under discussion contected to the pandemic. Correct You could not hide that your agency had funded. The Wuhan research, or your long history of defending gain to function research. The only alternative left was to argue that COVID nineteen did not originate in the Wuhan lab. You were not a detached observer. You had an in institutional interest in the public believing that federally funded research had nothing to do with the pandemic. It was a conflict of interest. From the very beginning, the authors of the Proximal Origin of SARS COVID two privately had serious doubts about a natural origin. Within days, though, they flipped and they all wrote in Proximal Origin that the virus was almost certainly not a laboratory construct. That paper was then used by the government and the media and you to discredit Americans who were asking the same questions that you and the authors were asking yourselves privately. You even cited proximal origin from the White House podium. You held it out as evidence that the virus could not have been engineered, But you didn't disclose your role and the discussions that preceded the writing of the paper. You did not disclose the author's original concerns. You did not concern You did not reveal that you had been part of the paper, that you had read and offered editorial comments on the paper before it was published, before you began using it as evidence that it couldn't have originated in the lab. You did not disclose that you had immediately investigated yourself whether NIAID funding might be connected to the research. You did not tell the American people a full story. Dowly released private messages indicate that the doubts with the authors and others didn't disappear after the publication. So while this was being waived at the White House to show that it couldn't come from the lab, the. Authors were still. Privately continuing to sign a meaningful probability to a laboratory origin. One thing in public and another in private. Some of the same scientists discussed avoiding email and carefully managing communications that might eventually be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The pattern is straightforward. Privately, there was alarm and. Then an immediate inquiry to see ifaid's post exposure to funding. That a rapid public declaration of certainty, continued private doubt, and then years. Of resistance disclosure. The question is why. The only logical answer is that your primary concern was avoiding culpability. Your primary concern was hiding the fact that you had approved. The funding for this dangerous research. Your support of gaina function research is extensive and long standing. In twenty eleven, your agency funded Ron Fucier's laboratory when it mutated the Avian flu until it could spread through the air between mammals. This was the tipping point. This is when others became worried. You funded this, You advocated for this. The federal government's own Biosecurity Board, though recommended withholding the details of these experiments because of the danger of the research posed. People were concerned that publishing it was publishing a roadmap. To creating bioweapons around the world. But you sided with the gain of function scientists PUCIA and argued that the benefits of publishing the research far outweighed the risks. You defended this avian flu transmissibility experiments as critical research. You wrote that even if a scientist became infected and triggered a pandemic, the benefits of the gain of function experiments outweighed the risk. In twenty fourteen, your agency and IAID began funding the Wuhan back coronavirus work. In twenty fifteen, Ralph. Barrick and the all right, I'm gonna stop it. There he's laying out the roadmap, right. FAUCI has a history of funding and defending publicly gain of function research and minimizing a pandemic and all the deaths, saying the benefits outweigh the costs. So COVID and the release of this virus would jeopardize that life's work. 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. 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Check out Group travel videos dot com. That's group travel Videos dot com or call seven O four eight four six seventy eight seventy extension two O six and when you do that ask for Katie. But Pete, can I just email? Well, yes you can. 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, here's the conclusion of Senator rand Paul's opening remarks at the hearing today, where Anthony the Science Fauci depleted the fifth on one hundred eleven questions the risk. In twenty fourteen, your agency and IAID began funding the Wuhan bat coronavirus work. In twenty fifteen, Ralph Barrick and the Chinese scientists She's angly published ANIAID supported research combining a bat coronavirus spike protein. With a sar's backbone. The resulting virus could infect human airway cells to novel virus that now can infect human sales, it gained transmissibility, it gained function. In twenty eighteen, the same group of scientists Eco Health, Barrick, she and their collaborators submitted the Diffuse proposal. Diffuse proposal, which involved the insertion of a fure and cleavage site into the coronavirus. Darper rejected it as too dangerous. When COVID was sequenced, though early on in January of twenty twenty, Within days, scientists discovered that lo and behold, it had a novel for your and cleavage site, just as had been proposed in the diffuse product. What a coincidence. This was either an extraordinary coincidence or a smoking gun evidence that the Chinese had created COVID nineteen. It made the laboratory origin question more legitimate. And it madeor categorical public denials indefensible. On May eleventh, twenty twenty one, you told the Senate the NIH has never ever and does not now fund gain and function research in Wuhan in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. When I gave you the. Opportunity to correct the record to reconsider the statement, you responded that you had never before lied to Congress. We were then told that only the government's narrowest regulation of definition countered here. That you could define gain and function in one way in which this wasn't gain of function, in which all of the common sense of the world would be thrown out. All of the idea that the mice were dying and the virus was more transmissible didn't matter, because you had a technical definition that allowed you to fund it, But the real question is was it dangerous? Was it a wise decision to fund this? And you haven't deviated from that. You've never admitted that it could have been a mistake funding this research in China. The American people weren't. Asking for a semantics debate over what is gain of function? They were asking does common sense say this research was. Dangerous in Wuhan. They wanted to know whether their money funded experiments in Wuhan that made bad coronavirus is better able to infect humans. The answers yes. They wanted to know whether NIAID adequately supervised their work. The answers no. When you defended this research, you described its benefits in the broadest terms, but when Congress demanded accountability, you hid behind the narrowest possible definition. You can't have it both ways. Your conduct concerning federal records raises for the questions. It is a crime to destroy. Federal records, Yet our investigation reveals your assistant diligently reported that she deleted tons of emails in twenty twenty four. You testify that you did not delete federal records. Who's telling the truth? Do you or your assistant. The Committee has obtained repeated instructions from you telling federal officials to delete communications. On February second, twenty twenty one, day after her Origins call, you told Francis Collins, please delete this email after you read it. The Committee asked for your voluntary cooperation to come today. Your appearance had to be compelled by subpoena. You're here today under duress. You're here today because of the court ordering it. President Biden issued you a sweeping pardon extending back to twenty fourteen, the same pardon he gave to his son Hunter. A pardon may protect a person from criminal prosecution, doesn't rewrite history. It does not erase documents. It does not convert a misleading statement into a truthful one, and it does not prevent Congress from establishing what happened. There will be another pandemic, There will be another crisis, and there will again be officials who insist that uncertainty must be hidden for the public's own good. They will demand obedience. They will invoke science, I am the science and data. Or a commandment and data. They will argue that government officials cannot be questioned because questioning them would undermine public trust. They have it backwards. It is secrecy that destroys trust. It is arrogance that destroys trust. It is censorship that destroys trust. And it is the refusal to admit error that destroys trust. That loss of trust may be your most damaging legacy. Trust can't be ordered, it has to be earned. No scientist is above scrutiny, no government official is beyond accountability, and no public servant has the right to treat the suffering a million of Americans as a footnote to his preferred version of history. So for the Texter data in the last hour, he said, oh, he was smarter than you because he didn't you know, he knew he was walking in there and they were going to try to trap him with something and get him charged with perjury and all this other stuff. You know, what is another way to go there is to just tell the truth when you're under oath. He could have done that. He could have gotten up there and said, essentially, you're damn right. I ordered the code red like he could have done that. I'm a proponent of gain of function research. And if you know, ten million people globally need to die in order to advance this science and data, then we should do it. That was his position before, but he didn't do that today. He did not. He's a coward, all right. So Fauci refuses to answer any questions today. I have his opening statement where he explains why basically Republicans are out to get me. Remember, he has a full unconditional pardon for any crime, including perjury, going back to twenty fourteen. Okay, but Democrats say, if you attack Fauci, that means you're attacking all scientists, and now you're going to dissuade everybody from getting into this field. No one's going to want to work in science because of this. Also, we didn't get access to all the committee records. Wheah, where where we haven't seen everything that you have compiled. Well, Rand Paul, he nipped that one in the bud. The accusation that the Committee has denied access to the minority to records is categorically false. This is the most transparent investigation in the history of Congress. We actually created a website and we've all of the information on the website. It continues to operate. The reason it hasn't been access is no Democrat ever signed up for it, not one Democrat. We told them the access they never asked for the access code. They haven't been on the website because they have not cared about the investigation. Right, They haven't cared why you were affected by COVID as well, unless, of course, maybe you got a little out of hand during the pandemic with your newfound authoritarian powers. Maybe I don't know, all right. So then Fauci reads an opening statement saying that he has proven, with over fifty plus years of his career, that he agrees with and believes in the value of legitimate congressional oversight. In fact, I testified before and or briefed Senate and House can Senate and House committees well over two hundred times. Over those thirty eight years. During and after the COVID pandemic, I have appeared multiple times for hearings in the Senate and the House, usually under oath, and sat for several days long transcribed sworn interviews answering questions about the very issues that are now. The subject of this hearing. However, given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me. 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 unquote. Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government, yeah, 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. Thank you, all right. Ed Morrissey at hotair dot com said, just in case his attorneys have not informed him, a pardon negates Fauci's ability to refuse to testify. So this is direct contempt and this Department of Justice is likely going to respond enthusiastically if the Senate produces a contempt referral. Now, whether there are votes for that, we shall see. Rand Paul noted that Fauci has been compelled to appear and answer questions, and that he has that full and unconditional pardon from Joe Biden. The Chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer them, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege despite the existence of the pardon. 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. It's against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your usual to testify today. Right at this point, one of Fauci's lawyers tries to speak, and it did not go well. You're not recognized. You're not recognized. If you are unruly, you will be removed from the proceeding. You are not you are not recognized. And you you are not recognized, Sir, sir, you are not you are not recognized. Security. Oh well, well, we'll hold off, but you will respect these proceedings. You were told not to sit at the table. You insist on sitting at the table, and we told you you would not be recognized. You are not invited here for testimony. Sir, you are being disruptive. Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can't do that today, but I can have you escorted from the premises. So I would say, sir, sit quietly and don't say another word. I said, sit quietly. You are not recognized. Another word and you're gone. Very well, he says another word. I'd like to hear what the attorney has to say, Democrat. He is not recognized by the committee or the chair. If he speaks again, he will be removed from the room. This testimony is from Anthony Fauci. This is not a game with his lawyers. He can advise. His lawyers can give him advice. He's got a half dozen here. They're all allowed to talk to him. Yes, all right, but the attorneys are not recognized. In fact, the attorney was told not to sit at the table, and he's not obeying that recommendation. There's a row behind you, sir, that's where you were told to sit. And you're not. And now you're disrupting the proceedings. And so look, this is the way Anthony Fauci wants to be remembered for a lawyer not listening to the rules. That's the way you want to be remembered, and that's where. You're going to do. You are not recognized, Sir of Security. Please remove him from the room. Ah, get him out. And with that, as Senator Moreno called him, the dirt bag lawyer got kicked out. That's a criminal defense attorney. He represented Bob Menendez, he of the famous gold bars from Egypt corruption bribery scandal. That's who Fauci brought in. And Rand Paul went on to note that, look, we kicked out your lawyer, but don't worry. You still have half a dozen attorneys behind you that can offer you advice. This is from Senator Josh Hawley, who laid out the law that Fauci does not have these Fifth Amendment protections that he claimed. Let's try someone, what day of the week is it today? On the divisive Council, I respectfully declined to answer, based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitutional. Color tie you're wearing. On the advisive Council, I respectfully decline to and sebased upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Well, colors a carpet in front of you. On the Advisive Council, I respectfully decline to and sebased upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Let's just get one thing straight. You don't have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you've been pardoned, as you very well know, as a Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more Brown versus Walker, eighteen ninety six. When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege. You know that your lawyer as sitting behind you now shifting nervously in their chairs. They know it. This isn't about the Constitution, This isn't about the law. This is about contempt, contempt for this body and contempt for the American people. But I think I know why you're doing it. It's because you don't want to answer questions. It's because you did all kinds of terrible things. It's because during the pandemic you got rich, didn't you rich? While people were dying, hundreds of thousands of Americans over a million in the end, and you were getting rich. And not only were you doing that, you were using federal employees with taxpayer money to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you personally, cash prizes totaling over a million dollars. You did all of that during the pandemic, didn't you. That's a question on the advisive counts, respectful. The decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Yeah, that's the issue, one of the issues. Ran Paul said after the proceeding about the Fifth Amendment protection. He said, it wasn't a perjury trap today because he's already got a pardon, and everything they were talking about was everything that happened within that window. All he had to do was tell the truth. All he had to do was explain when they asked him the questions, Okay, your diary entry, you're you know, you're you directed staff to apply for these prizes so you could win over a million dollars in violation of federal law. By the way, All you had to do was tell the truth. But he he he wouldn't do it, all right, So let me get to the text line here. This is monica. He got away with it, Yes, but you know that this is killing him as much as his press meant to him. Yeah, all the positive press, well, I mean that's the thing. Will he suffer any kind of public shaming? Are other news outlets going to cover this story? They haven't so far. When all the diary entries dropped over the weekend, the major legacy media outlets, they haven't been covering it. I think one, it may have been CNN covered it the most at like a minute, a minute. And a half something like that. It's not a lot. No, And the other like ABC, CBS, NBC, they haven't covered it at all. Maybe they would today, Maybe they will today. I don't know. Candy Crusher says, I am sure the legacy media is all over the Fauci hearings and diary leak. Surely they are all finally apologizing and saying, Okay, we were wrong, it's time to correct the record. Surely right, No, No, they are not. That's why it's important to find people in the media and at institutions that will tell you these stories. Ground News, by the way, is another website, ground News. It's a good website so you can find stories that are not being covered by left and right media. Steve says, it seems like the Democrats always defend the wrong side of history. Surely there are some democrats who personally lost friends or family to the virus. Would it still outweigh the cost? Do they still defend fauci I mentioned earlier. John Fetterman actually made comments during the hearing today, and he did not answer. He yielded all the rest of his time back to the chair. He spoke for like a minute and a half and he was just and I didn't get the audio because I was driving in listening to it, but he was like, look, I was Lieutenant governor and we didn't get everything right, and we but we should be saying this is what we got wrong, which is all that I have been asking for throughout the pandemic and ever since. We need an accounting of the ledger. We need to hear these politicians, the people who made these decisions. We need to hear them say this worked, this did not. We made a mistake on that we should not do that again. But nobody's asking them that, nobody is pressing them on that, and the politicians their incentive is to say. Oh, no, I got it all right. I was just following orders. Basically, I was just following the scientists. Tracy says, I am sickened by Fauci's responses. I worked in the healthcare field for thirty five years taking care of elderly residents. I watched for weeks as my residents were not able to have visitors and when they caught the COVID, due to no fault of their own and family could not see them during their last moments in this life. The woke crap that those so called experts spit out and this hearing proves they were a joke. Love your show, Thank you. Bain says Fauci acted very king like, don't you think No, no, no, no Kings, no Kings. Johnny says, the fact that people are defending Fauci is mind blowing. Yeah. RJ says, shut up. The Democrats explained, except for Fetterman, he is definitely going to switch parties soon. Very well. We're going to talk to Stacy Matthews at the top of the next hour, probably talk a little bit about Fetterman. How long we're gonna have to listen? Okay, that's a different. Topic to do your science and data sounds like the Ricola commercial that is purely coincidental. There is no trademark infringement there to do seven oh four and then there's Mandy Cohen and Roy Cooper together, they're just pathetic from Rhonda. Yes, I will have audio from them in the next hour. Can we get replays of your podcast from twenty twenty? I think so? Or no, I don't think so. I think it's I think some of them expire. Because the podcasting host platform that I was using, they started charging me like a lot of money because I was using so much of their server space because I, you know, I put out three podcasts a day and I've been doing that for you know, since I've been back at BT and so they started charging me like four hundred dollars a month, and I was like, okay, that's this is crazy, and so I put a cap on the number of episodes to keep. But I migrated away from that platform, moved over to the spreaker platform, and I have unlimited capacity there, so so that yes, so I don't know, I might, well, I might go back. I could go back and upload all the old episodes. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to vpetecalanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and uh, don't break anything while I'm gone.