{"id":357282,"date":"2026-07-30T07:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/357282\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T07:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:36:11","slug":"florida-ag-announces-investigation-into-fauci-over-covid-19-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/357282\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida AG announces investigation into Fauci over COVID-19 claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida<\/a> Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Wednesday that he is launching an investigation into Anthony Fauci<\/a> after the former public health official repeatedly declined to answer questions about the COVID-19<\/a> pandemic at a tense congressional hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cFauci\u2019s lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable,\u201d Uthmeier posted on X<\/a>. \u201cMy office is launching an investigation into Dr. Fauci. It\u2019s past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Senate<\/a> hearing, Fauci exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination over 100 times<\/a> as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) directed numerous questions toward the witness regarding his handling of COVID-19. Paul scheduled a committee meeting<\/a> for Aug. 5 to determine whether Fauci should be held in contempt of Congress<\/a> for refusing to testify.<\/p>\n

Speaking with Fox News, the Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman said he hopes the contempt resolution can go directly to the Department of Justice<\/a> for prosecution rather than to the full Senate floor. In the latter case, Democratic senators would likely oppose the contempt effort.<\/p>\n

For years, Paul has taken action to uncover Fauci\u2019s ties to U.S. grant funding going to the Wuhan research laboratory in China<\/a>, where the first COVID-19 cases were reported in late 2019 and early 2020. The senator recently released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci\u2019s personal records, including his pandemic-era diary, and several batches of documents pertaining to the origins of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> (R-FL) called for Fauci to be held in contempt<\/a> because he \u201creceived a blanked presidential pardon so he has no basis to invoke the fifth over that conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hours before leaving office in January 2025, former President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon<\/a> to protect Fauci from what he called \u201cunjustified and politically motivated prosecutions\u201d under the second Trump administration. The federal pardon, however, doesn\u2019t preempt Fauci from facing possible state charges.<\/p>\n

In response to a social media user\u2019s question about prosecuting Fauci in Florida, DeSantis said, \u201cIt would require either a state AG or local state attorney to bring a case, which would need to establish violations <\/a>of state law as well as personal jurisdiction over the defendant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after the governor\u2019s post, the state\u2019s Republican attorney general announced the investigation into Fauci.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier previously said he was open to filing state charges against Fauci over his recommendations on social distancing, face masks, and school closures. Republicans strongly criticized these measures, which continue to hang over Fauci in his latest interaction with federal lawmakers.<\/p>\n

FAUCI\u2019S FIFTH AMENDMENT ANSWERS MAY TEST BIDEN PARDON AS GOP EYES CONTEMPT<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people were misled<\/a>, and there were harms, dangers and lives lost as a result of what he did,\u201d Uthmeier told Politico last month. \u201cI will go after everybody, Fauci included, that has gone out and broken the law. What I will say is, as prosecutors, we have to bring a case. We have to follow rules of evidence. We have to bring a case and be successful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be somebody that says I\u2019m going to go do ABCD and I cannot deliver,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo, I promise you, I lay awake at night in bed thinking, \u2018How can I prosecute Anthony Fauci for the crimes he committed on the American people?\u2019 And when I have a case ready, we will bring it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Wednesday that he is launching an investigation into Anthony Fauci after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[145327,5142,11754,28,30,29,145688,412,145839],"class_list":["post-357282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-anthony-fauci","tag-congress","tag-covid-19","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-rand-paul","tag-ron-desantis","tag-x-formerly-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}