Megyn Kelly claimed earlier this week that Anthony Fauci 'hurt a lot more people' than Jeffrey Epstein while recapping his testimony before several enraged members of the US Senate.
The former Fox News host was speaking to commentator Victor Davis Hanson, who joked about the public health official's emails becoming public, referring to them as 'the Fauci Files.'
'I like the idea that we are all saying files now because it's redolent of the Epstein files. I bet that really bothers him,' Hanson joked.
Fauci's diaries have been revealed showing how he delighted in his interactions with celebrities as America went through the death throes of the early COVID-19 pandemic.
Kelly chuckled, then added: 'Fauci hurt a lot more people than Epstein did.'
Hanson agreed, saying that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases hurt 'a lot more, millions, millions, millions, millions' more people than the serial pedophile financier.
He then compared it to the cover-ups of Joe Biden's 'mental cognitive decline' or the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
'This one was different because so many people died,' Hanson added.
Fauci sat through a grueling Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday in which he provided no answers to a bounty of questions from irritated lawmakers.
In the hearing, Fauci refused to answer more than 111 questions about COVID-19, starting with the moment he invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination in the opening round of remarks.
He then continued doing so repeatedly when interrogated by the committee's lawmakers.
Speaking with members of the media after Wednesday's hearing on Capitol Hill, Kentucky Republican Paul, the committee chairman, revealed that he planned to hold a vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress next week.
'That's the vote that will happen in committee next week, it will be on contempt of Congress,' Paul told reporters.
'We believe with his liability, his immunity from criminal liability, that he didn't need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn't attach when you have a pardon in place,' he continued, adding that the ability to plead the Fifth, as mentioned by Hawley, 'will be a legal question.'
'But the question on contempt will be voted on and then there's a question of whether or not the Department of Justice will take it up,' Paul concluded.
Fauci may not be done facing questions in Washington.
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the US Senate, is requesting transcribed interviews with the infamous COVID-19 doctor, as well as other Food and Drug Administration officials.
Johnson alleged that senior FDA officials ignored warnings that the agency’s COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring system was failing to detect potential safety signals.
The closed-door transcribed interview process is what the House Oversight Committee has been using in the Epstein investigations. Information obtained has been released to the general public within days of the interviews.
Johnson has requested that Fauci appear before his committee to 'provide much-needed transparency about the COVID-19 pandemic and the government's response to it, including early treatments and the development, deployment, safety monitoring, and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.'
If the doctors requested to appear for interviews do not do so voluntarily, Johnson noted that he is prepared to use a 'compulsory process.' The Daily Mail reached out to Fauci's attorney to see if the doctor plans to appear as requested in the letter.
Fauci's lead attorney, David Schertler, was also removed by security after trying to speak on his client's behalf.
'I didn't invite you here to testify,' Paul told him, before ordering guards to eject him.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, later read out a statement from Schertler accusing Paul of running something other than 'a serious effort to seek information'. The Republican, it said, has 'built a personal brand' around his pursuit of the doctor.
Paul hit back that in no courtroom in America can a witness plead the Fifth and then have his lawyer testify for him.
'The attorney is complaining and testifying, saying you didn't do it. The prosecution is unfair. You don't get to do that,' he said. 'That's one thing you give up when you take the Fifth Amendment and say I'm not going to testify.'
'He was not invited to testify, he was out of order, and it was appropriate to have him ejected,' Paul told the room of attendees and reporters at the hearing.
The subpoena is the latest in a long string of clashes between Paul and Fauci.
As far back as 2021, Paul accused Fauci in a Senate hearing of providing funding for a Chinese laboratory, which intelligence reports have revealed may have originated the COVID pandemic.
Fauci denied the accusations, but Paul believes the evidence shows otherwise and has pushed for an indictment of Fauci, alleging that he lied to Congress under oath.
In May, Paul warned in a social media post that the statute of limitations for Fauci's alleged misdeed was about to expire. Fauci has not been indicted by Trump's Justice Department.
Fauci received a pardon from former President Joe Biden at the end of the latter's tenure in office.
The 'full and unconditional' pardon cleared the former White House medical advisor for 'any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014' through the date of the pardon.
Nonetheless, Paul is still pursuing an opportunity to speak to Fauci, promising in another X post on Tuesday to 'review every aspect of Fauci’s pardon and continue demanding accountability.'
'The American people deserve answers about COVID’s origins and the actions of public officials,' Paul continued. 'No one is above scrutiny.'
Controversy surrounding COVID origins was fueled earlier this year by congressional testimony from CIA agent James Erdman, as previously reported by the Daily Mail.
Erdman alleged that Fauci 'injected himself' into intelligence community discussions about the lab-leak theory.
Before Fauci's intervention, Erdman said, the intelligence community was about to conclude that a Chinese lab had been the source of the pandemic.
In another blow to Fauci, David Morens, one of his former top aides, was indicted earlier this year for allegedly concealing and altering evidence.
An email from Morens appeared to show him proclaiming he had learned 'how to make emails disappear' to avoid FOIA requests.
