A nervous Fauci cites Benghazi probe to say GOP likely to come after him if they retake Congress
March 16, 2022 | Todd Jaquith
Dr. Anthony Fauci is getting a little nervous.
The White House chief medical advisor, whose handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn either abject endorsement or stinging rebuke depending on whom you ask, expects to face some tough questions come next year.
In an interview with The Washington Post, a mouthpiece not known for its hostility to the good doctor, Fauci speculated that he’d likely be in the hot seat if Republicans take Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.
“It’s Benghazi hearings all over again,” Fauci told the Post, an odd comment for a supposedly apolitical and neutral medical advisor and chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The Benghazi comparison is a less than happy one for Fauci, given that those hearings were organized to investigate government negligence and incompetence and their contribution to the Libyan debacle in 2012.
The Benghazi hearings lasted for two years, intended to get to the bottom of the assault on US diplomatic offices in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The attack resulted in the death of four Americans, including CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, foreign service officer Sean Smith, and Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.
The hearings are probably best remembered for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tone-deaf “what difference, at this point, does it make?” comment, and the drubbing she received by the Republicans on the committee.
The House Select Committee on Benghazi ultimately cleared Clinton of responsibility, but the hearings appear to have made a lasting impression on the imaginations of Washington bureaucrats.
“They’ll try to beat me up in public, and there’ll be nothing there. But it will distract me from doing my job, the way it’s doing right now,” Fauci lamented. Oversight and accountability, in other words, are terrible distractions.
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https://www.bizpacreview.com/2022/03/16/a-nervous-fauci-cites-benghazi-probe-to-say-gop-likely-to-come-after-him-if-they-retake-congress-1213423/
