Rand Paul, the Senatorial Batman to Fauci’s Joker, is now claiming he has “bombshell” evidence in the forms of emails that the longtime Public Health™ bureaucrat knew that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the result of illicit gain-of-function research funded by his agency through the “nonprofit” EcoHealth Alliance.
Via Newsweek:
Senator Rand Paul promised “bombshell revelations” against Dr. Anthony Fauci, vowing to take down the former chief medical adviser to the White House.
“We now have emails that show [Fauci] saying that he knows it was gain-of-function, that the virus looked manipulated, and that he was worried that this came from the Wuhan lab,” the Kentucky Republican said during an interview with Fox Business. “February 1, 2020, then he spent the last three years saying ‘nothing to see here.’ We also know that there was a safety committee that should have reviewed this and we know that Anthony Fauci went around the safety committee.”
“This is a bombshell revelation, and this will eventually bring down Anthony Fauci,” Paul said.
RAND PAUL: “We now have emails that show him saying that he know it was gain-of-function, that the virus looked manipulated and that he was worried that this came from the Wuhan lab… This is a bombshell revelation and this will eventually bring down Anthony Fauci.” pic.twitter.com/S6U6SyenvP
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 10, 2023
If true, these emails could prove that Fauci knowingly lied to Congress when he claimed to know nothing of gain-of-function research on SARS-CoV-2, a criminal offense that carries a potential years-long sentence behind bars.
Related: Fauci Responds to Musk’s Calls for Prosecution
Critics of Rand Paul and the broader COVID justice movement will often offer their two cents that Fauci is no longer head of the NIAID and that pursuing prosecution of him is some kind of a gratuitous witch-hunt against a retired civil servant.
First of all, Fauci is a criminal of the highest order, protected by the state and the pharmaceutical industry he served his entire career. His public service status is irrelevant.
Second of all, one of the underlying justifications for punishment in criminal justice theory is deterrence. Other reasons include restraining criminals from further criminality and punishment for punishment’s sake — all three of which apply to Anthony Fauci, as he is alive and well and at liberty to promote dangerous gain-of-function research in capacities outside of his government sinecure.
Via Minnesota House Research Department (emphasis added):
Governments seek to protect citizens in a variety of ways. Regulations like health inspections, license requirements, and building codes exist to assure the general public that businesses, professionals, and buildings meet a basic level of expertise or safety. Criminal laws, in part, exist to create some assurance that people are unlikely to harm one another, or take property that belongs to someone else. When people believe they will be caught and punished, they are less likely to commit crimes. That is, an appropriate level of punishment coupled with a high likelihood of being caught is likely to deter some potential criminals. Legislators can consider those two prongs, certainty and severity of punishment, in crafting legislation to deter crime. Deterrence is not the only reason for significant penalties. Criminal laws indicate a community’s morals and values, restrain potentially violent offenders, and impose punishment for actions that society finds reprehensible. There may be strong policy justifications for increasing penalties based on those considerations. But, if the goal of a policy change is to deter crime, research suggests that an increase in the likelihood of being caught has a greater deterrent effect than an increase in the potential penalty.
