We may never know what caused the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken more than 7 million lives worldwide. Was it a leak at a laboratory, as some have claimed? Did it come from animals, as most scientific bodies have stated?

We do know this: The answers won’t come from a vicious Republican persecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci. And as if there isn’t enough shameful posturing in Washington, Florida is piling on, too.

State Attorney General James Uthmeier could not wait one day after Fauci’s ordeal before a show trial of U.S. senators to meddle, giving voters yet another reason not to vote for him.

Uthmeier is the worst Florida attorney general in decades, a dubious distinction when you remember who preceded him: Pam Bondi and Ashley Moody.

His “investigation” of Fauci is another stain on a résumé smeared with such stunts as the fetid, wasteful Alligator Alcatraz; the looting of $10 million in public money for a political campaign; his threats to impeach judges who do not rule his way; his refusals to defend Florida gun laws; his interventions in private lawsuits, such as Tesla’s appeal of a $243 million injury verdict; and his threats to the Catholic Church over its student vouchers if it continues, properly so, to reject religious pretexts for flouting state school vaccine laws.

He stands for secrecy

It is beyond ironic for Uthmeier to accuse anybody of hiding anything. He still refuses to ask for the unsealing of a grand jury report of the $10 million looted from Medicaid that he spent fighting voter initiatives while he was Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff.

The suppressed grand jury presentment, which courts have tacitly acknowledged to exist even as they keep it secret, may also reflect poorly on Moody, the U.S. senator DeSantis appointed so he could replace her with Uthmeier.

Moody was the attorney general whose deputy, now a DeSantis-appointed judge, signed off on the Medicaid overcharge settlement that diverted $10 million to the Hope Florida charity, a pet project of DeSantis’ wife. The money was subsequently laundered into DeSantis’ successful campaign, run by Uthmeier, to sink abortion rights and recreational marijuana amendments in 2024.

Alexander Vindman, the celebrated federal whistleblower and retired Army lieutenant colonel seeking the Democratic Senate nomination opposite Moody, is making an issue of the Hope Florida scandal. So is former state Sen. José Javier Rodriguez, Uthmeier’s opponent.

Moody’s campaign said she has “no issue” with releasing the report, but in typical Tallahassee fashion, she stopped short of demanding it be public, as it should be.

Rick Scott’s wretched hypocrisy

Speaking of irony, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who yammered at Fauci in the Senate hearing, is another hypocrite who shouldn’t criticize anyone for taking the Fifth Amendment, as Fauci did 111 times. Scott did it 75 times in a deposition, refusing to answer questions in a lawsuit involving his former hospital company, Columbia-HCA.

As for Fauci, no lawyer worth a law license would have let him say anything to a committee whose chair, Sen. Rand Paul, has been clamoring to make a criminal out of him. Fauci, 85, truly one of humanity’s great public health heroes, will be lionized in history long after mediocrities like Paul, Uthmeier and Scott have been relegated to footnotes.

Nothing in state law or in Fauci’s career would seem to create a state crime, but that isn’t the point. Uthmeier got the headline he wanted (“Florida AG threatens Fauci investigation,” Fox News).

Neither has there ever been any evidence that Fauci’s role in the war against COVID was anything less than the best traditions of government service and responsible science.

The Republican Party’s pervasive science denial reflects what historian Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” the title of his 1965 book.

Our national paranoia has intensified exponentially since, fed by the internet’s ability to propagate conspiracy theories as clickbait. The COVID epidemic, of unknown origin, found us as vulnerable to paranoia as to the virus itself. DeSantis, his quack surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, and Uthmeier are all faces of that paranoia.

A villain for science deniers

Fauci, as the point person of the federal COVID response, quickly became the obvious fall guy for vaccine mandates and other unpopular preventive measures that were fully justified at the time. All the while, Fauci did his best not to make a fool of his boss, President Donald Trump, for suggesting disinfectant as a remedy.

In a part of Fauci’s diaries that Paul released but were later redacted, the doctor discussed his humane efforts to help two Trump insiders cope with the virus: Stephen Miller and his wife, Katie, a native of Fort Lauderdale. The Millers are now among the jackals howling for Fauci’s prosecution.

Through trial, error, and above all the scientific method, Fauci and developers of the COVID vaccines found ways to control the pandemic, saving millions of lives. They deserve our praise and thanks instead of tawdry harassment by pipsqueak politicians who can’t distinguish between fact and fantasy and don’t care to try.

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