Congressional questioning of Anthony Fauci isn't a good-faith effort, it is political persecution

Congress has every right to investigate the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It should ask difficult questions about the origins of the virus, school closures, public-health restrictions, research oversight, masking guidance, and the government’s changing messages to the public. More than a million Americans died, businesses closed, families suffered, and trust in public institutions was badly damaged.

But what is now happening to Anthony Fauci as he appears before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the Capitol Wednesday, no longer looks like a good-faith effort to learn from those failures.

It looks like political persecution.

Fauci, appearing under subpoena before the committee chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky), invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to answer questions.

[Rand] Paul has not approached Fauci as a neutral investigator.

His critics immediately treated that decision as proof of guilt.

It is not.

The Fifth Amendment does not protect only guilty people. It protects anyone who reasonably fears that his words may be used against him in a criminal prosecution. That protection is especially important when the person asking the questions has already spent years accusing the witness of crimes and demanding that he be imprisoned.

Paul has not approached Fauci as a neutral investigator. He has repeatedly accused him of lying to Congress and called for his prosecution. Under those circumstances, Fauci had every reason to believe that the hearing was not simply intended to gather information. It was also intended to create a criminal referral, a damaging headline — or both.

There is a difference between oversight and a trap.

Fauci has testified before Congress many times. He has answered questions about the National Institutes of Health, coronavirus research, government funding and the still-unresolved debate over whether COVID-19 emerged naturally or through a laboratory-related incident.

Republicans are entitled to challenge his answers. They are entitled to criticize his judgment. But they should not be permitted to announce that he is guilty, threaten him with prosecution, and then place him under oath in the hope that some minor difference in wording can be turned into a new criminal allegation.

The release of more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s pandemic-era notes shortly before the hearing only strengthens the appearance of a coordinated political campaign.

Those notes reportedly show that Fauci and other scientists privately considered several possible explanations for the virus’s origin.

Of course they did.

That is how science works.

In the early months of the pandemic, scientists were working with limited and rapidly changing information. They considered competing theories, debated evidence and revised their conclusions as new facts emerged.

Scientific uncertainty is not evidence of dishonesty.

Considering a laboratory origin in private did not require Fauci to publicly declare that theory proven. Nor does changing one’s position as evidence develops amount to perjury or a cover-up.

Scientific uncertainty is not evidence of dishonesty.

The journals also reveal Fauci’s private criticism of Donald Trump. Republicans may find those comments offensive, but criticizing a president is not a crime.

Fauci’s real offense in the eyes of the MAGA movement appears to be that he sometimes contradicted Trump publicly.

Trump wanted optimism. Fauci warned of danger.

Trump wanted the country reopened. Fauci warned about transmission.

Trump promoted claims before strong evidence supported them. Fauci attempted, sometimes imperfectly, to return the discussion to science.

That made him a political enemy.

None of this means Fauci should be beyond criticism. His decisions should be examined. The government’s masking guidance, vaccine messaging, school-closure recommendations and oversight of research funding all deserve scrutiny.

But an honest investigation begins with open-minded questions.

This one began with a verdict.

The broader danger goes far beyond Fauci. Scientists and career public servants are being warned that if their professional judgment conflicts with the political needs of a president, they may face years of investigations, public attacks, and threats of prosecution.

That will not produce better science. It will produce fear and silence.

The next pandemic will require experts willing to speak honestly, revise their conclusions and tell a president when he is wrong. A government that punishes experts for delivering unwelcome information will eventually be left with people who say only what political leaders want to hear.

Fauci is not infallible. But political disagreement is not a crime. Scientific uncertainty is not perjury. And invoking the Fifth Amendment is not a confession.

Michael A. Gottesman is a lawyer and the founder of the New Jersey Public Education Coalition.