Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday promised to prosecute Dr. Fauci if elected president. The Sunshine State governor said the former White House chief medical adviser misled the public about the severity of Covid and the efficacy of mitigation measures.
Asked by Outkick host Clay Travis whether he would prosecute Fauci if he were elected, DeSantis replied emphatically: “Yes!”
“He is guilty of lying before Congress,” the 2024 GOP contender said.
DeSantis pointed out that “one of the problems we have in D.C.” is that “bad jury pools” favor Democratic officials and disadvantage Republican officials during the accountability process. As a result of the skewed judicial situation there, “Fauci would be protected in that,” he said. “That would be a huge hurdle.”
“The flip side of that is ‘oh, you’re a Republican, you’re j-walking.’ They’re going to go after you,” he told Travis. “What I’ve said we should do is that an American defendant in D.C. should have the right to remove the case to their home district. So if they try to ding you, you can move it to Nashville.”
When asked a similar question in January about whether Fauci should be prosecuted, former president Donald Trump said in an interview that he wouldn’t be as eager to penalize the doctor because of the long duration of his service in government. In December, Fauci resigned from his roles as chief medical adviser to President Biden and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The 81-year-old doctor served in government for over 50 years.
“Fauci for me wasn’t as big a deal as he was for the Biden administration because Fauci for me didn’t have the same juice in terms of my respect for him,” Trump said in a clip posted by the DeSantis campaign Rapid Response team. “But he was there a long time and, you know, you give credit for that.”
Congressional Republicans have vowed to continue investigating Dr. Fauci’s role as the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who advised the Biden administration’s Covid strategy and public communications, now that they have a GOP majority.
Republicans have demanded a reckoning for Fauci, who the allege misled Americans about the risks, origin, and efficacy of Covid restrictions. He discouraged cloth mask use early on before switching his opinion completely and urging mask-wearing in the majority of indoor settings for over two years. Fauci advocated for extended lockdowns, school shutdowns, and masks for kids, even amid a widely available vaccine, both of which critics claim subjected Americans to social isolation and severe learning loss.
Speaking with Outkick Wednesday, DeSantis was asked whether he’d consider RFK Jr., who’s made waves as a populist, conspiracy-theorist 2024 Democratic candidate, as a running mate. DeSantis that Kennedy would be disqualified from being his vice president because of his divergence from him on major issues. However, the governor said he’d consider appointing Kennedy to a federal public health agency because his contrarian views on the medical industry represent a growing cohort of Republicans.
“Sic him on the FDA if he’d be willing to serve, or sic him on CDC,” DeSantis said.
Long an anti-vaxxer who’s claimed some inoculations could be tied to autism, RFK Jr. vehemently opposed the Covid vaccine, which he called “deadly and ineffective” in an April tweet. He was also recently caught on a hot mic in an interview with the New York Post implying that the virus was a genetically engineered bioweapon that disproportionately targeted some ethnic groups but spared Jews and Chinese people.