https://www.twincities.com/2026/08/06/senate-committee-fauci-contempt-vote/
All Fauci had to do to really be in contempt was fail to show up. Taking the Fifth is not a contempt, it is a right, and those are clear lines everybody knows and should honor.
Rand Paul was clear. It was a witch hunt, with the witch, Fauci, already made aware that he could skate by using the Fifth Amendment while Sen. Paul knew he would and took the opportunity to embarrass him into having to do it. That set the table for this inexcusable further dog and pony addon.
Rand Paul and the Republicans are overreaching. They knew Fauci would do it, they catered to it, and now are saying, "That's contempt."
It is not. Misspeaking might have put Fauci into distress. He had the crystal clear right to avoid that. Not since Roy Cohn - Joe McCarthy days has that show been played. Rand Paul decided a little McCarthyism Revival would be good theater.
The entire dog and pony show deserves the contempt of the public, in the common sense of that word, for wasting taxpayer money on a show trial look-alike.
Yes, what Fauci did, the entire Wuhan lab thing aimed at boosting human susceptibility to a pathogen which generated a worldwide pandemic, is obscene and inexcusable. The mini show-trial took care of making that clear. There is no need to push it further into the election, where the Iran War and its impact, healthcare needs, and general suffering of the people inflicted upon them by the government under control of the wealthy who were and are and will be pursuing their class war on everybody else - and Rand Paul and Fauci are both tools in that situation and each came out of the exercise dirtier than before they entered into it.
Putting Fauci's Lab Leak knowledge into the public eye had some value, but this contempt thing is nothing but a sick political stunt where the Republicans should know better. But don't.
UPDATE: The Crabgrass headline is text taken from within the published report.