NPR’s Michel Martin asks U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., for his takeaways from Wednesday’s confrontational Senate committee hearing with former top U.S. health official Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Transcript
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let’s turn to a member of the committee that summoned Dr. Fauci for questioning. Senator Richard Blumenthal is a Democrat from Connecticut. Good morning, Senator. Thanks for joining us once again.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Thank you very much for having me, Michel.
MARTIN: You’ve questioned many people, many times as a senator. You’re also a former state and federal prosecutor. What’s your take on Dr. Fauci invoking his Fifth Amendment rights throughout the hearing? Do you think it was appropriate?
BLUMENTHAL: Not only was it appropriate, but probably necessary because plainly, this hearing was designed to trap him. And the background here is that repeatedly and explicitly, Chairman Paul has said he wants Fauci behind bars. In fact, as recently as May of this year, he said, quote, “the American people want Fauci behind bars,” end quote. In December, he said, I want to give him a subpoena and a jail cell. So the effort here was, in effect, to trap Fauci in some kind of statement, no matter how small, that could have been prosecuted.
And much was made of the fact that Fauci has been pardoned, but that pardon only pertains to acts or statements before January of 2025. So the fear of potential prosecution was very well-founded. And in fact, there are rules for prosecutors when they know a defendant is going to take the Fifth Amendment, not putting them in a grand jury or on a witness stand simply to embarrass or shame them because the Fifth Amendment is a right, and all of us have access to that right.
MARTIN: You have said this hearing was part of the Trump administration’s campaign to, as you put it, rewrite the history of the pandemic. Why do you think they want to? And why now? It seems that many Americans just want to put that whole chapter behind them. So why this focus now?
BLUMENTHAL: The administration’s eager to rebrand Fauci as a villain and to vilify public health in general because of its failure to protect Americans from soaring healthcare costs, which we’ve seen continuing to rise in the last year and a half. Unsafe food, the Cyclospora outbreak is just one example. Resurgent measles resulting from its anti-vax policies. And Dr. Fauci dared to contradict President Trump about COVID-19.
The effort to vilify him has been a continuing campaign, but it’s not only against him, it’s against science, medical advance, research. They’ve cut research grants under the NIH, which Dr. Fauci led for some 38 years. It is part of a larger campaign to distract the American people from current ongoing, deeply dangerous failures.
MARTIN: You’ve credited Dr. Fauci with saving American lives, though. In hindsight – with the benefit of hindsight, is there anything that you believe Dr. Fauci could’ve done differently or better in the guidance he provided or how he communicated with the public?
BLUMENTHAL: That is a really good question, Michel, but it wasn’t the focus of this inquiry. What could we have done differently? Not just Dr. Fauci, but our society as a whole. Should we have shut down schools and adopted other measures that some regard as extreme. Where did the virus originate? How did it spread? The lessons there really should be explored, but this hearing was designed to embarrass and perhaps perjure the witness here, Dr. Fauci. There were no other witnesses that would testify about what lessons we might have or should have learned. And so we learned absolutely nothing from this hearing.
MARTIN: Before we let you go, I mean, first of all, I’m just – you couldn’t miss the vitriol directed at him. I’m sure the Republicans – and I want to say again that we invite them, and we continue to invite them to share their views with us. But you couldn’t miss the vitriol directed at him. I’m sure that many of them would argue that this was, in fact, a good faith effort to find things out, but you can’t miss the kind of personal attacks. And I’m just curious why so much vitriol directed at this individual. Scientists disagree all the time, just like other professionals disagree. And I’m just wondering if you have a theory about why these attacks seem so personal.
BLUMENTHAL: Unfortunately, and really sadly, I think Chairman Paul has this obsession, which he’s demonstrated over the last five years. Dr. Fauci has an extraordinarily distinguished record in public health, leading Americans through HIV, swine flu, SARS, Zika, Ebola and other epidemics. And I think it is part of a bias against scientists, public health officials, professionals who help to lead us like he has. And it is really so regrettable for the country because we need these courageous people who go into areas where there are dangerous epidemics and try to eradicate them or at least stop them. And so I think it is part of a bias against science…
MARTIN: OK.
BLUMENTHAL: …And, frankly, truth.
MARTIN: That is Senator Richard Blumenthal. He’s a Democrat from Connecticut. Senator, thank you for your time.
BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.
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