WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease specialist, sparred with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., during a hearing on Tuesday after the senator blasted the doctor for seeming to disagree with experts who said the coronavirus originated in a Chinese facility.
During the Senate hearing. Fauci said, ”what happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue, is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there, and I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family, and my children, with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me.”
At past Senate hearings on the coronavirus, the two men had heated clashes.
Fauci blasted Paul, an ophthalmologist before being elected to the senate, for having made political attacks against him, stating that an individual was arrested on Dec. 21 while traveling from Sacramento, telling police he was going to Washington, D.C. to kill Dr. Fauci and also had an AR-15 and magazines of ammunition in his vehicle.
“So I asked myself, ‘Why would a senator want to do this?’ So go to Rand Paul website and you see ‘Fire Dr. Fauci’ with a little box that says, ‘contribute here’ you can do $5 $10 $20 $100,” Fauci explained.
According to a report made by NBC News, an email conversation involving Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, Paul said earlier in the hearing, showed Fauci and Collins seeming to dispute with scientists who stated the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab.
You know, you’re going back to that original discussion,” Fauci explained, when I brought together a group of people to look at every possibility with an open mind. So you’re not only distorting it, you are completely turning it around as you usually do.”
The senator, who has already argued with Fauci on other pandemic-related matters, is a staunch opponent of Covid mitigation efforts and mask legislation. When Paul tested positive for the coronavirus in March of 2020, he became the first senator to do so.
Last July, the congressman suggested that Fauci had earlier misled the Senate and knew what the Wuhan, China facility was doing with NIH grant money.