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Whatever you say about Joe Biden, he got one thing right. Actually, a whole lot more than one thing. But one thing we can be grateful for today is that, before leaving office, he gave Dr. Anthony Fauci a preemptive presidential pardon.

In announcing Fauci’s pardon, Biden said it was not because Fauci had done anything wrong. It was to protect Fauci from threats of “unjustified and politically-motivated prosecutions” in the future.

Bingo! How prescient was that? “Unjustified and politically-motivated prosecutions” was exactly what we saw this week in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where Fauci was subpoenaed to testify by Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY), who for years, without any evidence, has accused Fauci of both causing the Covid crisis and profiting from it.

To understand how outrageous this is, let’s remember the early days of Covid in the White House. There were two main players. First, Donald Trump, who initially refused to take the virus seriously. He compared it to the common flu, telling people "Just stay calm. It will go away.” He suggested Covid could be prevented by ingesting bleach. He opposed making vaccines mandatory, wearing masks, and canceling public gatherings – and lashed out at governors who did so.

On the other hand, in the same White House news conferences, there was the calm, steady voice of his chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who warned Americans to take the Covid threat seriously, to wear masks, to get vaccinated as soon as it was available, to avoid close physical contact, and to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with the hottest water possible.

What’s wrong with this picture? Who knows how many lives were lost because so many people listened to Trump rather than Fauci? And now Republicans are going after Fauci and not Trump? This is insane. They refuse to hold Trump responsible for January 6. And they won’t hold him responsible for mishandling the Covid crisis, either.

Paul’s hearing may have been long on drama – he ordered Fauci’s attorney escorted out of the room – but it was short on substance. He leveled four charges against Fauci, based on excerpts from a private diary Fauci kept during the Covid Crisis, from December 2019 to December 2022, or what Paul calls “Tony’s Diary.”

OK, stop right there. What right does the federal government have to seize anyone’s personal diary and make it public? None! But the law never stops the Trump administration. In this case, over eight months, Fauci’s diary was dug up and handed over to Rand Paul by – wait for it – HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Paul’s first charge. That Fauci believed the virus spread from animals to humans, what’s called the “natural spillover” theory. While Paul, again without evidence, insisted the virus was deliberately spread by a laboratory in China. Most scientists, and the World Health Organization, agree with Fauci. Paul accuses him of a coverup. The truth is, we still don’t know, and may never know, how Covid was started.

Second charge. Fauci misled the public, based on a diary entry where Fauci admits that Covid was already out there before being detected at a Wuhan market. However, in his diary, Fauci acknowledges that the market was an “amplifier” of the market (his words), not the original source. Again, nobody knows where and when. All we know is, as Fauci writes, “Somehow the virus jumped from animals to humans.”

Third charge. Fauci lost the president’s trust. No kidding! Guilty as charged. Who wouldn’t lose trust in a president who belittled the disease and talked such nonsense. In his diary, Fauci describes Trump’s press conferences as “painfully rambling” and “stream of consciousness” and accused him of “spewing nonsense” on the campaign trail in 2020. Note: Fauci wrote that in his diary. He never said it publicly.

Fourth and final charge. According to Paul, Dr. Fauci let his celebrityhood go to his head. And, while it’s true that Fauci acknowledges how exciting it was to get such national media attention, he also says it made him very uncomfortable. “Geez!! I do not like this one bit,” he told his diary.

Good for Anthony Fauci. He refused to play Rand Paul’s game. He took the Fifth Amendment rather than respond to Paul’s ridiculous questioning, designed only to trip him up.

Rand Paul’s wrong. Anthony Fauci doesn’t deserve to be put “behind bars.” For 50 years of public health leadership, he deserves a statue on the National Mall.

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)

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