Paul, Comer plan to haul Fauci back from retirement if GOP wins Congress.

When Dr. Anthony Fauci announced this week he would depart government service at year’s end after nearly four decades, Rand Paul first declared victory.

“We did it!” Paul beamed in a fundraising solicitation. “Fauci is finally heading out.”

Then, he asked for a donation.

“I hope you’ll celebrate with me by joining my FAUCI RETIREMENT CLUB today,” he wrote.

For a donation of $22 or more to Paul’s re-election, anti-Fauci enthusiasts would receive a sleek black card that instead of monetary value, would carry the joy of knowing that the medical official most responsible for steering the response to the coronavirus pandemic would no longer command such sweeping power.

But at the same time he was celebrating his planned exit as President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Paul was also promising to haul Fauci back into the center of the political storm next year if Republicans retake Congress in November. Fauci said he’ll depart sometime in December.

“Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic,” he said. “He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak.”

Paul moved to formally request the National Institutes of Health retain Fauci’s documents for review; Fauci responded on Fox News that he welcomed “legitimate dignified oversight.”

Bianca Keaton, the campaign manager for Paul’s Democratic opponent, Charles Booker, said Booker believes in oversight but panned Paul’s motives.

“Rand Paul is a conspiracy theorist and a crisis actor,” Keaton told McClatchy. “This is all an attempt to rile up his shrinking base, sow confusion and boost his fundraising another failed presidential run...The real investigation that needs to take place is into the fact that he and his wife secretly invested in drugs designed to treat Covid after receiving privileged information, all while downplaying its impact and existence.”

But Kentucky’s junior senator will only wield such oversight power if Republicans are able to recapture Senate control, an expectation that has depreciated during the month of August, as GOP candidates have struggled to gain their footing across the country.

The Kentuckian more likely to secure oversight power is Rep. James Comer, who has constructed close to a mirror image of Paul’s approach to Fauci in the House, the chamber that is more likely to flip into Republican hands this fall.

Comer is slated to run the House Oversight Committee in such a scenario, handing him broad power to probe the first two years of the Biden administration as well as Fauci’s decisions during the final year of the Trump administration.

Speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox News this week, Comer made clear what he would ask Fauci, who has not testified before the House since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak.

“Why didn’t you tell the Trump administration early on and why didn’t you tell the American people early on that even your closest advisers suggested that this virus originated in the Wuhan lab?,” Comer asked, referring to emails his committee has already unearthed from January and February of 2020.

Jimmy Ausbrooks, Comer’s Democratic challenger this year, said he would support hearings to analyze the health crisis that ravaged the country.

“If it is a deliberate attempt to discredit [Fauci], I would see no relevance in the hearings and it would be a waste of taxpayer money,” Ausbrooks said. “I believe with the level of knowledge that citizens and government leadership had, Dr. Fauci did his job.”

Comer has accused the NIH and Fauci of redacting critical information in emails and obstructing any investigation into the origins of Covid-19.

“I think the reason that Dr. Fauci’s retiring is because now that the dust is settled, the scientists who he always refers to, are now realizing that the odds that this originated in the Wuhan lab are almost 100%,” Comer claimed.

Paul believes Covid-19 was accidentally leaked from a Wuhan, Chinese laboratory. While the main scientific consensus is that the virus originated from a wet seafood market – moving from infected animals to humans – some scientists continue to probe the theory of a lab leak.

Fauci said this week he’s always maintained he’s kept “an open mind…as to the origin.”

If Paul takes the reins of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, observers can expect a grilling of Fauci on the effectiveness of masks, school closures and vaccines as well as a thorough examination into gain-of-function research that’s frequently employed to study highly transmissible viruses.

But at this moment, Comer’s path to a congressional gavel looks more likely.

“I think it’ll be the most high profile committee in Congress next year,” Comers told a Paducah television station Wednesday, referring to the House Oversight panel.

This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Paul, Comer plan to haul Fauci back from retirement if GOP wins Congress.."