Youngest member of Congress vows to prosecute Dr Fauci if GOP takes control of House in 2022

North Carolina Republican Representative, and the youngest member of Congress, Madison Cawthorn, has vowed to prosecute Dr Anthony Fauci if the GOP takes control of the House in the 2022 midterms.

Mr Cawthorn, 25, said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases should be prosecuted for being a “pawn of the Chinese Communist Party” and for lying to Congress.

There’s no evidence that either of those claims are true, and the House of Representatives doesn’t have the power to criminally prosecute, something that takes place in the court system.

The congressman was speaking to former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis on the Just the Truth programme on the website of “Real America’s Voice” when he claimed that the chief medical advisor to the president “directly lied to Congress”.

He was echoing a narrative pushed Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, who had a dustup with Dr Fauci as he testified before the Senate on Tuesday.

“I’ll tell you when we take the majority back in 2022, I’ll make sure consequences are doled out,” Mr Cawthorn told Ms Ellis. “We want to prosecute this guy to the full ability of the law because I’ll tell you, to lie to the American people just to get your name in the news, just to see your face on the cover of books just to get fame or fortune, I’ll tell you, Dr Anthony Fauci does not deserve either fame or fortune.”

Mr Paul indicated on Tuesday that he will ask the Department of Justice for a criminal referral for Dr Fauci after the senator accused the infectious disease expert of lying to congress.

“I will be sending a letter to the Department of Justice asking for a criminal referral because he has lied to Congress. We have scientists that will line up by the dozens to say that the research he was funding was gain-of-function,” Mr Paul told Fox News.

Dr Paul said Dr Fauci is “doing this because he has a self-interest to cover his tracks and to cover his connection to [the] Wuhan lab”.

Gain-of-function refers to research conducted on a virus to develop vaccines and other medical tools. Dr Fauci has denied that the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan and refused Mr Paul’s claims.

“Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about … If anybody is lying here, it is you,” Dr Fauci said during the fiery exchange on Tuesday.

“I want to commend Rand Paul, he’s always been a champion of justice, always been a champion of liberty,” Mr Cawthorn said on Thursday. “His referral to the DOJ I think is well-founded. You can just go back and very simply through the clips of Dr Fauci speaking back in May, or even subsequent months after that, and you can tell he has directly lied to congress.”

“When Dr Rand Paul gave him the opportunity to recant his statements, he declined. And then when Rand Paul started pressing him further and saying there will be consequences for those responsible, I’m not sure if you noticed ... you see his hands start to shake uncontrollably.”

“A lot of people say ‘oh, that’s uncontrollable rage’. No, that is fear. Dr Fauci knows that he’s been working as a pawn of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr Cawthorn claimed without providing evidence. He also claimed that Dr Fauci has been funding “militaristic research” on how to make an animal virus “more transmissible to humans”.

He said he didn’t know what the DOJ referral would lead to, citing it being under the control of the Biden administration.