Bombshell text messages revealing Dr. Anthony Fauci knew about Covid vaccine risks to pregnant women but kept quiet could open the door for state prosecutors to bring charges against the former White House health czar, legal experts told The Federalist.
President Joe Biden’s sweeping last-minute pardon may have slammed the door on federal prosecution, but specialists say state attorneys general still have options to pursue the man who oversaw America’s pandemic response under two presidents.
“I am very much in the camp that Fauci lied to the American people, and he deserves to be held accountable for those lies, both at the state and federal level,” Chad Mizelle, a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute and former senior Justice Department official, told the outlet. “I certainly think that state governments have options in pursuing claims against Fauci, and I very much hope that they will.”
The renewed push for accountability comes as newly unearthed government records continue to paint a damning picture of Fauci’s conduct throughout the pandemic. Documents released in recent weeks have confirmed his obsession with self-promotion, his collusion with corporate media, and the numerous falsehoods he told the public about the virus and its origins. Most explosive were text messages showing the former NIAID director privately acknowledged risks the Covid vaccines posed to pregnant women, risks he and his allies never disclosed to the American public.
For millions of Americans who watched Fauci position himself as the unquestionable authority on “the science,” these revelations have sparked fresh demands for justice.
Mizelle outlined several potential legal avenues state prosecutors could pursue. Consumer protection and deceptive practices statutes, typically used against major corporations for intentionally deceiving consumers, could potentially apply to Fauci’s conduct.
“Here, it could be buying masks; it could be getting vaccines that they otherwise wouldn’t have done; it could have been foregoing opening a business when they otherwise would have done that,” Mizelle explained. “I think that’s one potential interesting avenue that, if I were a state, I’d want to explore.”
The former DOJ official also pointed to mass tort action as another possible path forward. He compared it to how states might pursue an oil company whose negligent conduct leads to a massive spill affecting residents. A similar analogy, he said, could be drawn to Fauci’s Covid misconduct and its lasting damage to American families and businesses.
The damage from policies Fauci advised is well documented: children’s learning loss from school closures, businesses destroyed by lockdown mandates, and families who made medical decisions based on incomplete or misleading information from the government’s top health official.
