by WorldTribune Staff, January 23, 2025 Real World News
Did Joe Biden’s preemptive pardon essentially absolve Anthony Fauci from any accountability for his role in the Covid pandemic?
The pardon addresses any Covid-related offenses from 2014 to the present. While the pardon may protect Fauci from immediate criminal prosecution, some critics say he is not completely out of legal jeopardy, The Blaze reported on Jan. 21.
Members of Congress and the Trump administration have said that Fauci perjured himself on several occasions during the pandemic — especially regarding his agency’s links to the lab in Wuhan, China, and the risky gain of function research that many believe led to the creation of the Covid virus.
“These pardons will not stop Department of Justice investigations,” an adviser to the Trump transition team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Blaze. “We expected this and look at it as a predicate to get truth from people who can no longer use the Fifth Amendment. Now we can bring every one of them in front of a grand jury.”
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has vowed to continue investigating the origins of Covid. Sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and House Republican investigators plan to do so as well.
“If there was ever any doubt as to who bears responsibility for the Covid pandemic, Biden’s pardon of Fauci forever seals the deal,” Paul said. “Fauci’s pardon will only serve as an accelerant to pierce the veil of deception.”
Jason Foster, who now runs the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight, says that Biden’s pardon creates new legal jeopardy for Fauci: “They can ask him if he lied before, replow old ground. And if he lies about any prior lie, he can be prosecuted for that or held in contempt.”
Andrew Noymer, associate professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine, said hearings are necessary for scientific and historical reasons: “I’m hopeful that he will now come clean about everything he knows about the origins of the virus. For the sake of public trust in science — explaining what killed 20 million people — that a complete account is much more important than speculation about what criminal penalties he may have avoided.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is preparing an executive order that would stop scientists with U.S. funding from conducting gain of function research on viruses that could endanger human health, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health, has expressed his backing for the order.
The U.S. government was funding research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where many scientists and intelligence officials believe the Covid virus was created and leaked from.
Some viruses, such as the H5N1 bird-flu pathogen, might be exempt from the order, a source told the Journal.
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