Fauci’s silence speaks volumes

Anthony Fauci had every legal right to stay silent before the Senate, but the public deserved far more than that, writes Eve Lugg.

Technically, Anthony Fauci had every constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment 111 times before the US Senate earlier this week. The Fifth says that nobody can be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”.

Constitutional rights are one thing. Public responsibility is another.

Someone who exercised such extraordinary influence over the lives of millions surely owes the public more than silence. Fauci arguably became one of the most influential unelected public officials in shaping the response to Covid. His advice shaped policies that closed businesses, destroyed livelihoods, kept children out of schools and placed some of the most damaging restrictions on everyday life that we have ever seen.

Accountability is not the same as criminal liability. It is the democratic expectation that those who exercise exceptional power should be prepared to explain and defend how and why they exercised it.

Fauci’s refusal to do so exposes a troubling double standard. Throughout Covid, ordinary Americans, and indeed us in the UK and around the world, had the ability to make decisions for ourselves, our families and our lives, removed. Decisions from whether you could keep your business open, visit your elderly relatives or send your own children to school. Yet when the public finally has the opportunity to question one of the architects of that extraordinary period, the answers, and consequences, simply stop.

Five years ago, every statement from Fauci led the evening news. Journalists carried his briefings live. Newspapers treated his pronouncements as front-page news. Governments reordered society around ‘expert’ advice, while dissenting voices were often dismissed as reckless or irresponsible ‘granny killers’. Yet when the man who largely came to symbolise that period finally appears before the Senate and declines to answer questions about it, much of the mainstream media barely pauses to notice.

People say we must move on. Perhaps the reluctance of the public, on a global scale, to engage in this is understandable. The whole period was traumatic, and sometimes it is easier to forget rather than acknowledge that perhaps, we were had. Families were separated. Businesses collapsed. Public finances were transformed. Children lost months, years of normal education. Some children never returned. Public finances were transformed. I understand that many would rather leave those years behind. It is often easier than asking uncomfortable questions.

The Covid years represented one of the greatest peacetime expansions of state power in modern history. Citizens were told where they could go, whom they could meet, whether they could work and whether they could participate fully in society based on whether they complied with public health advice masked as law. Whatever one’s view of those policies, they deserve serious scrutiny.

For those of us who care about freedom, this is not ultimately about Anthony Fauci. Nor is it about relitigating every Covid decision with the benefit of hindsight. It is about a principle that should unite us regardless of politics - extraordinary power demands extraordinary accountability.

Eve Lugg is a Voice for Freedom with Fighting for a Free Future. Eve served as Special Adviser (SpAd) in the Cabinet Office and brings with her experience in policy and comms, as well as knowledge of how Whitehall really operates.