Democrats Doom Rand Paul’s Push To Compel Testimony From Mystery Witness In Fauci Case

Democratic senators doomed Sen. Rand Paul’s effort to seek testimony from a longtime special assistant to Anthony Fauci who allegedly destroyed federal records on his behalf.

The “resolution authorizing an application for a court order compelling testimony under immunity” would have immunized the aide from potential criminal charges related to her testimony about the destruction of federal records. Paul said he hoped it would allow her to share what she knows about Fauci’s efforts to contain and suppress public discussion of a potential leak from the coronavirus lab in Wuhan and his institute’s ties to the lab.

But Democrats voted down the resolution Wednesday, which would have required a two-thirds majority, in an 8-7 vote.

The witness, whom Paul did not name, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to a subpoena in a private meeting with senators last week.

The business meeting of Paul’s Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee stems from his continued push for answers since Fauci stonewalled two months ago, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than one hundred times in a July 29 hearing.

Paul said Wednesday that he ultimately placed the blame for the records destruction with Fauci and did not want the aide to face criminal penalties. But in a push for more transparency and accountability and in light of the Democrats’ vote, he said he would refer the matter to the Department of Justice. He also said he would seek her records for the last three years to investigate whether her destruction of federal records has continued.

Paul described the fact witness as an aide to Fauci from 2007 to the day he left the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 2022. He also described her as an aide “in the flow of communications” in the frenzied early days of the pandemic, as Fauci worked with then-Wellcome Trust Director Jeremy Farrar to produce an influential scientific paper dismissing a possible lab origin of the COVID-19 virus.

Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and congressional subpoena would later reveal that the authors had serious doubts about their own arguments and speculated about a possible lab leak too.

Paul also said the special assistant may have destroyed public records for Fauci for two decades, possibly referring to evidence that has not yet been released to the public.

A special assistant who worked for Fauci from 2007 to 2022, Patricia Conrad, appears looped into many of the discussions during the late January 2020 to early February 2020 period. An email obtained in an earlier House investigation suggested that a National Institutes of Health employee named Marge Moore, who “hated FOIA” and oversaw those requests, helped Fauci’s aide David Morens “make emails disappear.”

Morens pled guilty to conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States related to federal records destruction last month.

Moore and Conrad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Let me be clear about what just happened here. A majority of the committee voted to seek the truth. All Republicans voted to seek the truth. We voted to protect this witness, and hear her story. All we needed were two Democrats willing to hear her story, but not a single one of them is interested in the investigation or the truth about the destruction of federal records,” Paul said. “This is disappointing. It doesn’t end here.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno criticized Democrats for not showing up to the hearing and voting nay by proxy, save for Ranking Member Maggie Hassan.

“Evidently there’s more important things to do in the United States Senate than to find out who destroyed public records,” he said. “I guess when you get paid to be a United States senator it’s optional to show up for committee hearings.”