Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), speaking at a Turning Point Action conference on Saturday, vowed to have former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci sent to prison over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Dr. Anthony Fauci should be tried for crimes against humanity,” Greene said at the conference, in comments highlighted by Mediaite, leading to the crowd chanting, “lock him up.”
She responded, “Well I can assure that if I have anything to do with it, I will lock him up. He belongs in prison.”
Green also attacked President Biden and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during her speech.
“I’ll never forget when the Biden administration and Nancy Pelosi, as speaker of the House, brought in nearly 30,000 National Guardsmen and turned our Capitol complex into a military base,” she told the audience. “They masked schoolchildren. They shut down schools. They closed beaches. They silenced your speech.”
Biden was not president at the time. The Trump administration, at the request of Congressional leaders, including Republican leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), deployed the National Guard to secure the Capitol after supporters of Trump led an insurrection in the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden as president.
Greene has been accused of helping some of those insurrectionists by providing them with tours before January 6, 2021.
After taking over on January 20, 2021, Biden’s administration instituted a mask mandate on public transportation but did not impose a federal mask mandate.
Fauci has been a frequent target for conservatives who claim his advocacy for masking and social distance restricted freedoms and was ineffective, and have accused him of covering up the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic called Fauci to testify at a heated hearing earlier this month, where Republicans accused Fauci of attempting to skirt federal Freedom of Information Act requests by using a private email server. Fauci denied the accusation.
At the hearing, Greene marked the most contentious moment of the hearing, with Democrats quickly calling for points of order after she refused to recognize Fauci as a doctor.
“Mr. Fauci, because you’re not doctor, you’re Mr. Fauci in my few minutes,” Greene said. “That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked, and he belongs in jail,” Greene responded.
Fauci is set to release a book on June 18, and according to excerpts obtained by the New York Times, Fauci detailed his experience with Trump and his career. According to the Times, Fauci has a book entitled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” in which he describes how Trump would alternate between telling him that he “loved” Fauci and then later screaming expletives at him.
