Rand Paul Introduces Amendment to Remove Fauci as NIAID Director

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Monday introduced an amendment to remove Dr. Anthony Fauci as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), two years after the start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

Paul’s amendment would restructure the position, eliminating Fauci altogether and replacing his post with three other positions leading new institutes: the National Institute of Allergic Disease, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and National Institute of Immunologic Diseases.

“Each of these three institutes will be led by a director who is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for a 5-year term,” Paul’s press release reads, adding that this would be consistent with NIAID’s mission statement which asserts that the organization “conducts and supports basic and applied research to better understand, treat, and ultimately prevent infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases.”

“We’ve learned a lot over the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed ‘dictator-in-chief,’” Paul, a consistent critic of Fauci, said in a statement.

“No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans,” he continued:

To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again, I’ve introduced this amendment to eliminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s position as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and divide his power into three separate new institutes. This will create accountability and oversight into a taxpayer funded position that has largely abused its power, and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indeed, Fauci remained very vocal throughout the pandemic but flip flopped on key issues, including masking and mandatory vaccines. He also continued to lie about the National Institute of Health (NIH) funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, even attempting to change the very definition of gain-of-function to fit his narrative. Paul grilled Fauci on this matter in November, telling the director directly that the definition was changed to cover Fauci’s “ass”:

You’re simply saying it doesn’t exist because you changed the definition on the NIH website. This is terrible and you’re completely trying to escape the idea that we should do something about trying to prevent a pandemic from leaking from a lab. And what you’ve done is change the definition on your website to try to cover your ass, basically. That’s what you’ve done, you’ve changed the website to change the definition that doesn’t include the risky research that’s going on. Until you admit that it’s risky, we’re not going to get anywhere. You have to admit that this research was risky. The NIH has now rebuked them, your own agency has rebuked them. You’re still unwilling to admit that they gained in function when they say they became sicker. They gained in lethality. It’s a new virus. That’s not gain-of-function?

Speaking of his amendment on Jesse Watters Primetime, Paul deemed Fauci a “petty tyrant,” adding that it is “long past time that we remove him from government.”