Florida AG threatens Fauci investigation after Senate hearing

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said he will be opening up an investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci, former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director, following Fauci's explosive decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment right and not answer any questions during a congressional hearing Wednesday.

"Fauci's lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable. My office is launching an investigation into Dr. Fauci. It's past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID," Uthmeier wrote in a Wednesday post on X.

Uthmeier expanded on his decision in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital.

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"In light of recent reports exposed by Senator Rand Paul, we will investigate any and all potential violations of Florida law involving Anthony Fauci," Uthmeier told Fox News Digital.

"Our inquiry will focus on what Fauci knew, when he knew it, and how he misled the American people. We will examine the physical and monetary harms to Floridians that may have resulted from his deceptions and determine whether his conduct exposes him to liability under state law," Uthmeier's statement concluded.

Uthmeier cited revelations published by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., which revealed internal notes Fauci wrote on government computers during his time at NIAID.

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The internal notes, which Paul and others have taken to referring to as Fauci's "diary," suggest Fauci appeared to publicly overstate the death rate from COVID-19 compared to what he wrote privately.

"[Former CDC Director] Tom Frieden called me this AM and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak," Fauci wrote on Feb. 8, 2020.

"He and I are on the same page in thinking tht [sic] this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 (above) making the case fatality rate (CFR) more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%," Fauci's entry concluded.

However, a month later, in congressional testimony to the House Oversight Committee on March 11, 2020, Fauci pegged the mortality rate at 1%.

"I think if you count all the cases of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection, that probably brings the mortality rate down to somewhere around 1%, which means it is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu," he testified.

When called to testify on the revelations before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Fauci exercised his Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer legislators' questions 111 times.

Uthmeier is not the only Republican to take aim at the former COVID czar in light of the revelations.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Wednesday that Fauci should be held in congressional contempt for refusing to answer questions despite receiving a presidential pardon.

"I think Anthony Fauci has had contempt for Congress and contempt for the American people for decades," he said. "His diary shows that he deliberately lied to the American people over and over and over again."

Paul, for his part, said his committee will vote on whether to hold Fauci in contempt next week.