Michael Goodwin: Faucis refusal to answer questions at Senate hearing reveals important truth

Because Dr.Anthony Fauci repeatedly cited the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering any questions, last week’s Senate hearing was reduced to a grudge match that produced no new information on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 7 million people worldwide, including 1.1 million Americans.Fauci was the nation’s most important health official and White House adviser as the virus gained a foothold in early 2020 and proceeded to spread its death grip across all 50 states.Despite his infuriating refusal to even defend himself, lest his answers lead to criminal charges, the hearing still served a useful purpose, albeit on a separate crucial matter.

The release of Fauci’s diaries, written on government computers, is another painful reminder of how the mainstream media has cavalierly failed America over the past decade.Only because of the persistence of GOP Sen.Rand Paul, chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which released much of those diaries, do we know that Fauci often said in private things that contradicted what he said publicly.A key example involves suspicions that a leak from a lab in China that was doing gain-of-function research, funded in part by America, was the source of the virus.

Fauci was well aware of the funding and the lab’s work, but nonetheless denounced the suspicions, calling them conspiracy theories.Yet he privately conceded he was uncertain, especially after a conference call with 11 other scientists, most of whom thought the lab-leak theory was the most likely culprit, a fact he noted in his diary but not publicly.Similarly, he boasted in his diary that he was a principal architect behind the idea of shutting down much of society, including schools, offices and even churches.In a March 15, 2020, entry, under the words “BIG DAY!” in red letters, he wrote that he had a conversation with then Gotham Mayor Bill de Blasio and “convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conv...