Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Fauci Should Be Jailed After Congress Grilling

Marjorie Taylor Greene has suggested Anthony Fauci should be jailed for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, as the former chief medical adviser to the president testified in Congress as part of its ongoing investigation into how the crisis was handled.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was interviewed on Monday for seven hours and will be interviewed for a further seven hours on Tuesday by a committee led by Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio.

Fauci has also agreed to attend a public hearing at a later date, which has yet to be confirmed.

Fauci has previously denied in testimony to Congress that the National Institutes of Health, of which he was a member of between 1984 and 2022, had funded risky “gain-of-function” research—which seeks to enhance viruses to predict their evolution—at a lab in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus is believed to have begun in late 2019. China denies this.

In March, House Republicans released a memorandum that accused Fauci of orchestrating the publication of a scientific paper that would suggest against the lab leak theory. Fauci described this as “false and misleading” in a previous statement given to Newsweek.

Speaking outside Fauci’s closed-door interview on Monday, Greene, a Georgia Republican, criticized Fauci and accused him of “enhancing viruses” to create vaccines to treat them.

“This is a shocking thing to think about,” she said to a reporter.

In a clip posted to X, formerly Twitter, she added that he used “an evil version of science.”

She also called him a “medical tyrant forcing his vaccines on the world.”

“His belief system is to create a vaccine/pandemic experiment, mandate a vaccine be developed from it, and have the American taxpayers foot the bill,” she wrote.

“I think I can speak for many Americans when I say Dr. Fauci belongs in jail!”

Newsweek reached out to Fauci via email for comment on Tuesday.

While the exact details of what was discussed during his testimony is yet to be made public, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Wenstrup issued a statement following Fauci’s testimony, accusing him of signing off on research without reviewing proposals and not being able to remember key details of the pandemic.

“Dr. Fauci’s testimony today uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America’s public-health systems,” he said. “While leading the nation’s COVID-19 response and influencing public narratives, he simultaneously had no idea what was happening under his own jurisdiction at NIAID.

“Dr. Fauci signed off on all domestic and foreign research grants without reviewing the proposals and admitted that he was unaware if NIAID conducted oversight of the laboratories they fund.

“Clearly, the American people and the United States government are operating with completely different expectations about the responsibilities of our public-health leaders and the accountability of our public-health agencies.

“It is also concerning that the face of our nation’s response to the world’s worst public health crisis ‘does not recall’ key details about COVID-19 origins and pandemic-era policies. Nearly 1.2 million Americans lost their lives to a potentially preventable pandemic.

“I look forward to asking Dr. Fauci further questions about mandates, his role in prompting the ‘Proximal Origin’ publication, and his policy positions related to masks and lockdowns. Tomorrow’s [Tuesday’s] testimony will continue the Select Subcommittee’s effort to deliver the answers Americans demand and deserve.”