Why Anthony Fauci could've faced five years in jail if Biden hadn't pardoned him
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Dr Anthony Fauci was given a pre-emptive pardon by outgoing President Biden on Monday - likely due to fears he could be charged with perjury by Trump's DOJ.
The former White House advisor has long been accused of misleading Congress under oath about funding risky virus research in Wuhan before the Covid pandemic.
While Fauci had not been charged with a crime, there were growing calls among Republicans - including Elon Musk - to charge the 84-year-old with perjury, which carries a prison sentence of at least five years.
In a May 2021 Senate hearing on the origins of Covid, Dr Fauci said his old agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had ‘not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’
But emails showed that in February 2020 Dr Fauci, NIH head Dr Francis Collins, and Dr Peter Daszak, head of the company that dispersed grants to the WIV, EcoHealth alliance acknowledged that scientists at Wuhan University were working on GOF experiments to study bat viruses adapting to human infection prior to the outbreak in Wuhan.
In one email, Dr Fauci admits the scientists had concerns that Covid might have been genetically engineered and that these were worsened by the fact that gain-of-function research was taking place in Wuhan before the pandemic.
Dr Fauci, whose pardon extends all the way back to 2014, has since claimed that he was using a different definition of GOF during his Senate hearing.
If the Department of Justice had pursued criminal charges against Fauci, prosecutors would have had to prove that Dr Fauci made a false statement and knew it was false, but deliberately misstated the facts.
