Sen. Rand Paul’s demand to have Dr. Anthony Fauci’s attorney forcibly removed from a Wednesday Senate hearing faced immediate blowback.
The Kentucky Republican, chairing a US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, grew visibly frustrated that Fauci, who led the COVID pandemic response under President Donald Trump, repeatedly pleaded the 5th Amendment in an attempt to avoid what legal experts are calling a “perjury trap.”
After Paul threatened the noted former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases with criminal charges for invoking his constitutional rights, Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, protested, leading Paul to scream he was “not recognized.”
Paul then ordered security to remove Schertler from the hearing after stating, “Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can’t do that today. But I can have you escorted from the premises.”
Schertler later told an NBC News correspondent, “Dr Fauci has a valid 5th amendment privilege and he has the right to assert it. That’s what I was trying to tell the committee and that’s all I was trying to tell the committee.”
Viewers were stunned.
“We’re really living through a version of the inquisition or the red scare," Former Justice Department official Harry Litman wrote.
“Rand Paul is such an a--,” wrote media analyst Jeff Jarvis, before adding, “Their willful antiscience ignorance is deadly.”
“Their whole intention in calling Dr Fauci for a hearing is to entrap him into false statements so he can be prosecuted,” commented attorney and Harper's contributing editor Scott Horton. "Fauci is handling this just right."
Meanwhile conservative pundit Glenn Beck celebrated Paul's move.
"I've never seen anything like this," Beck wrote. "GOOD."
