Ted Cruz demands Fauci face jail time, labels him as America's 'most damaging bureaucrat'

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is calling for Anthony Fauci to be held in contempt, prosecuted for perjury and sent to jail after the former White House COVID-19 adviser pled his Fifth Amendment right more than 100 times during a Senate hearing Wednesday.

"Years from now they'll look back and say, ‘What collective madness overtook this country?’" Cruz told Fox News Digital.

"I think Anthony Fauci has had contempt for Congress and contempt for the American people for decades," he said. "His diary shows that he deliberately lied to the American people over and over and over again."

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Cruz’s comments come after Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul announced that he will seek contempt charges against Fauci after he dodged self-incrimination by refusing to answer any questions throughout the entirety of the hearing.

"Dr. Fauci ought to think about what it says about the end of his career, that what he will be remembered for the most is pleading the fifth more than 100 times," Cruz said.

"He's been the most damaging bureaucrat in the history of America."

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Cruz and Fauci have had a longstanding feud, similar to his relationships with other GOP senators like Paul, over Fauci’s handling of the outbreak and claims he was dishonest about the origins of COVID-19 to both Congress and the American people.

"In his diary, he wrote early on that it was clear that the COVID virus did not come from the wet market in Wuhan and then he turned around and said exactly the opposite thing on national television," Cruz said.

The released private diaries expose that Fauci considered possibilities about how the virus originated that he later downplayed to the public. He wrote that scientists considered the possibility of a deliberately inserted laboratory origin worthy of further expert review, while his later statements suggested the opposite to the public.

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The Texas senator also accused Fauci of pushing for lockdown of schools — which Fauci wrote in his diary that he convinced both New York and California government officials to lock down their state’s school systems. This was, again, contradictory from what he said publicly, where he claimed multiple times in interviews and testified to the House Oversight Committee that he "did not close the schools."

"In his diary, he brags about convincing Democrats in New York and California to shut schools down and yet he goes on TV and says, ‘Oh, I wasn't for shutdowns,’" Cruz said.

"The school shutdowns, which Fauci bragged that he was responsible for, may well be the single most destructive public policy step we've seen in decades. That learning loss will stick with those kids the rest of their lives when they're 90 years old."

He continued, "They will still be suffering the consequences of Anthony Fauci's corrupt and dishonest shutdowns."

"The fact that he knew he was lying to the American people — he should be held in contempt, he should be prosecuted for perjury and he should go to jail."