Dr. Anthony Fauci laughed off an attack from Senator Ted Cruz in a Sunday television interview, implying the Texas Republican should be investigated himself instead.
In an interview with CBS News’ Face The Nation, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser also dismissed Republican criticism of his work as ‘lies’ and agreed with the notion that GOP lawmakers were using him as a scapegoat.
‘Anybody who spins lies and threatens and all that theater that goes on with some of the investigations and the congressional committees and the Rand Paul’s and all that other nonsense, that’s noise… I know what my job is,’ Fauci told host Margaret Brennan.
She said, ‘Senator Cruz told the attorney general you should be prosecuted.’
Cruz told Attorney General Merrick Garland during a contentious hearing in late October that Fauci should be investigated over accusations he lied to Congress.
Fauci laughed off the accusation before appearing to claim that Cruz had a role in the events leading up to the deadly Capitol riot.
‘Yeah. I have to laugh at that. I should be prosecuted? What happened on January 6, senator?’ Fauci replied.
Fauci dismissed Ted Cruz’s claim that he should be prosecuted over accusations he lied to Congress
He sat down for an hour-long interview with CBS News’ Face The Nation that aired Sunday
The news anchor asked Fauci if he thought ‘this is about making you a scapegoat’ to deflect from Donald Trump.
‘Of course, you have to be asleep not to figure that one out,’ he said.
‘That’s OK, I’m just going to do my job and I’m going to be saving lives and they’re going to be lying.’
Cruz is one of several Republican senators who have accused Fauci of lying to Congress about funding for biological research involving studying the genetic sequencing of viruses, known as ‘gain of function’ research.
Republicans have claimed that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where Fauci works as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, funded the controversial research in Wuhan, where COVID-19 first emerged.
Both NIH and Fauci have denied the claim.
Ted Cruz is one of several Republicans accusing Fauci of lying, which the scientist claims is an attempt to distract from Donald Trump
Elsewhere in the hour-long interview, Fauci warned the US could be on the precipice of yet another surge in COVID-19 cases.
Infections have begun to rise in parts of the US after a hopeful downturn following the last summer surge.
Burgeoning cases are compounded by concerns over the new Omicron variant first detected in South Africa. No cases have been found in the US yet, but the Biden administration announced travel bans on eight African countries in a bid to slow the strain’s arrival.
‘We certainly have the potential to go into a fifth wave,’ Fauci said.
‘And the fifth wave, or the magnitude of any increase, if you want to call it that it will turn into a wave, will really be dependent upon what we do in the next few weeks to a couple of months.’
He also warned of a potential and even ‘likely’ fifth coronavirus wave if the US fails to blunt the rise in daily infections
He said the US needs to urgently ‘blunt’ the rising daily case rates – which averaged at nearly 95,000 this last week after hovering at 70,000 – 80,000 earlier in November.
‘If we don’t do it successfully, it is certainly conceivable and maybe likely that we will see another bit of a surge. How bad it gets is dependent upon us and how we mitigate,’ Fauci said.
In a separate interview on ABC Sunday, Fauci told host George Stephanopoulos that the Omicron variant will ‘inevitably’ be detected within the United States.
‘If and when – and it’s going to be when – it comes here, hopefully we will be ready for it by enhancing our capabilities via vaccine, masking – all the things that we do, and should be doing,’ Fauci said.
He admitted that Biden’s travel bans aren’t a fool-proof solution, but added they would ‘delay it enough to get us better prepared.’
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