Watch: Fauci’s Acceptance of Biden’s Pardon ‘An Acknowledgment of Guilt’

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s acceptance of President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardon is “an acknowledgment of guilt,” despite Biden’s claims to the contrary, investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker said in this week’s edition of “The Defender In-Depth.”

Thacker, editor of The Disinformation Chronicle and a contributor to outlets like RealClearInvestigations, said Fauci didn’t accept the pardon “for no reason.”

“He knows that he faces legal jeopardy because there are already two referrals over to the Department of Justice to prosecute him for lying to Congress,” Thacker said.

According to Thacker, Alex Azar, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the first Trump administration, advised Fauci not to accept the pardon. HHS oversees the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which Fauci headed until late 2022.

Thacker said Azar advised Fauci not to accept the pardon “because it’s going to set a terrible precedent” and “does imply guilt.” Thacker noted that Azar was speaking not just as the former HHS secretary but also as the former attorney general of California.

Congress can continue investigating Fauci

The pardon, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2014, shields Fauci from federal charges for actions performed as part of his official government duties during this period — but Thacker said Fauci may still face other legal challenges, including from Congress.

“They can continue to investigate him,” Thacker said. “He can be pulled into committees that have said they’re going to continue investigating how the pandemic started. He can be deposed again, and he no longer has a Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate.”

If during these inquiries, Fauci “continues to lie and states that he did not lie about a lie that he was caught in, he can be prosecuted … for lying under oath,” Thacker said.

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According to Thacker, Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have said they would continue investigating issues that Fauci is implicated in, such as the origins of COVID-19 and Fauci’s role in funding gain-of-function research that could have resulted in a lab leak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

“Millions of people died … and a lot of the evidence points to the fact of Fauci’s involvement in funding research that could have started this pandemic,” Thacker said.

Fauci’s involvement included helping draft “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Often referred to as the “Proximal Origin” paper, Thacker said it became the most cited scientific publication in 2020 and was widely used to promote the zoonotic — or animal — theory of COVID-19’s origin and discredit proponents of the lab-leak theory.

The paper “further inflamed this idea that it was a conspiracy theory to say that there had been a lab accident,” Thacker said.

Although Fauci denied involvement in drafting “Proximal Origin,” emails showthat he reviewed “multiple drafts” of the paper before publication. Fauci’s NIAID later awarded the paper’s lead author, Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., with “the largest grant he’s ever gotten in his history as a scientist.”

Thacker called Fauci “a pathological liar” who has repeatedly misled the media, but while “it’s not illegal for someone to lie to the media or to lie in a press conference,” Fauci has been “caught for … the lies that he said under oath.”

According to Thacker, “those lies involved him denying funding research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and also his sworn testimony … where he lied about his use of private email to get around federal law’s document retention.”

Public perception of Fauci will ‘continue to erode’ 

Thacker noted that other former government officials and virologists who played a key role in the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including Andersen, former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx and former Director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins, were not preemptively pardoned.

This is because “Fauci put himself out there” during the pandemic, Thacker said.

“He is not an infectious disease expert,” Thacker said. “Once the pandemic started, Fauci inserted himself into the public sphere to turn himself into the expert’s expert about everything involving the pandemic, and he pushed aside the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], which rightfully should have been handling this.”

Thacker said Fauci did this because his agency had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and was “worried that he may have actually started it and worried about how this would make him look historically.”

“The problem, however, is that those emails are out there,” Thacker said. “People’s perspective on him is going to continue to erode over time as more stuff comes out.”

Thacker said he believes there’s “a very good chance” newly confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who in 2023 testified in favor of the lab-leak theory, will declassify more documents implicating Fauci.

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Executive orders protecting free speech, exiting WHO ‘a good first step’

Thacker, who helped release the “Twitter Files,” also addressed President Donald Trump’s executive order barring government censorship of speech. Thacker called it “a good first step” but said it’s “completely insane” that an executive order is considered necessary to protect a constitutional right enshrined in the First Amendment.

He said an “entire infrastructure” targeting “misinformation” had developed including nonprofit organizations, academic institutions and inside government, which were reliant on government funding that they will now lose. Thacker said these entities may now attempt to “censor the fact that they were doing censorship.”

Thacker also addressed the Trump administration’s executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO), noting the WHO played a key role in COVID-era censorship.

In one instance, the WHO pressured Twitter to censor Tucker Carlson after he exposed content on the WHO’s website stating that no studies showed the COVID-19 vaccines were safe for children. The WHO then deleted that content.

“They did it secretively to make Tucker Carlson look bad,” Thacker said. “It just sets a precedent for the fact that this is a corrupt organization.”

He said recent developments suggest “things are going to be much more open now,” but everyone involved in COVID-era censorship “needs to be held accountable.”