A trio of Republican attorneys general — Florida's James Uthmeier, Louisiana's Liz Murrill and West Virginia's John McCuskey — opened a joint investigation into former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci in an effort to hold Fauci accountable at the state level despite his federal pardon.
"Americans need to have confidence that the medical professionals that are giving them information during medical catastrophes like COVID, that that information is sound... Rebuilding that trust begins with holding accountable the people who caused it to be lost," McCuskey told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Uthmeier initially announced his office would launch an investigation into Fauci on July 29, shortly after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer any questions about his role in the COVID-19 pandemic response 111 times while testifying before a Senate committee.
"In light of recent reports exposed by Senator Rand Paul, we will investigate any and all potential violations of Florida law involving Anthony Fauci," Uthmeier previously told Fox News Digital.
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"Our inquiry will focus on what Fauci knew, when he knew it, and how he misled the American people. We will examine the physical and monetary harms to Floridians that may have resulted from his deceptions and determine whether his conduct exposes him to liability under state law," Uthmeier concluded.
On Aug. 5, Uthmeier officially subpoenaed Fauci for documents related to awards he won, any financial incentives related to his pandemic response recommendations, and "documents concerning vaccine efficacy and boosters, natural immunity, potential adverse events including myocarditis risks, messaging strategies, and communications with vaccine manufacturers."
Both McCuskey and Murrill have joined Uthmeier's investigation. They each explained to Fox News Digital how the partnership came about and why it was so important to them and to their constituents.
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"West Virginia and Florida and any other Republican states that want to work with us will be able to better overcome if we work together so that we can pool our resources and we can wade through a lot of this material," Murrill told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Murrill also revealed that her young son had an adverse reaction to a COVID-19 vaccine.
"My own son developed myocarditis from the Pfizer vaccine and was hospitalized in a pediatric ICU for a week," she told Fox News Digital.
McCuskey echoed similar sentiments.
"My plan here — and the reason that I jumped in — is to use the teamwork that the Republican Attorneys General Association gives us to work with General Murrill and James Uthmeier in Florida. I want my office to support them in any way that we can so that when these subpoenas come back and this investigation is completed, I can recommend to prosecutors here in West Virginia to take the same kind of actions that some of my AG colleagues can do on their own," McCuskey told Fox News Digital.
The West Virginia attorney general told Fox News Digital that pandemic restrictions forced his family retail store to shutter for four months, nearly bankrupting them.
"It is very hard to explain to somebody what it means to have built something that is essentially your entire livelihood and have the government tell you you're not allowed to open your doors," he told Fox News Digital.
"At the exact same time, my daughter, who was turning five, was prevented from going to kindergarten. My daughter is an incredibly loquacious and energetic child who loves being around other people. She loves school and she was so excited to get started. Instead, she spent her entire kindergarten year with me in the state auditor's office by herself doing online school. Every day, I had to watch her and my wife essentially cry because of the restrictions that these COVID mandates were causing," McCuskey added.
Former President Joe Biden, on his last day in office, doled out a sweeping federal pardon to Fauci which covered "ANY OFFENSES against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014" until the day it was issued.
The pardon, however, does not protect Fauci from state charges, Murrill explained.
"It doesn't shield him from state prosecution. The president doesn't have the power to issue a pardon for state crimes. It's that simple. The president only had the power to pardon him for what might be federal criminal activity," Murrill told Fox News Digital.
Murrill will be looking specifically into whether or not Fauci lied during a testimony she participated in when her state, along with Missouri, deposed him for Murthy v. Missouri, a case in which Missouri and Louisiana sued the government for allegedly collaborating with social media platforms to censor Americans' views related to COVID-19.
"We did discover in the very beginning of the case that the federal government was pressing its own narrative. Different agencies were taking down truthful speech under threats from the federal government. Dr. Fauci was very much involved in all of that, and we deposed him for seven hours during which he mostly said, 'I don't recall,'" Murrill told Fox News Digital.
"And so we then find out that there's a diary, and there are now going to be contemporaneous phone and text messages. I think that it already shows that he was lying. Of course, many of us thought he was lying anyway, but I think the public is now seeing the full extent of his lies and how he said one thing privately and then turned around and said other things publicly that directly contradicted what he was saying privately," she added.
In light of the revelations coming from Fauci's text messages and internal writings released by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., Murrill said she will be considering the viability of fraud and perjury charges against Fauci.
"Here, I think we'd be looking at: did he lie? And if he did lie, is it actionable under our state law? The pardon would not cover that. Perjury is a crime, and the statutory penalty for perjury is probably similar to that for obstruction of justice. It could be anywhere up to five years in prison," she told Fox News Digital.
McCuskey, for his part, said he does not have direct prosecution power due to a quirk in state law that grants that power to prosecuting attorneys in each of West Virginia's 55 counties. However, he said he is still using his position to investigate and provide citizens with information for any potential civil cases as well as arm his state's — and other states' — prosecutors with potential ammunition for criminal prosecution.
"The way that this would work here in West Virginia is that I would take the information gleaned from Florida and Louisiana — and there's almost no chance that information would be specific just to those two states — and go to any of the county-level prosecutors that we work with every single day and say, 'Hey, here's what we got. It's your job to handle these prosecutions. I'm going to hand you a ready-made prosecution against somebody that we think needs to be held accountable.' My office would then be able to help them in that prosecution in a whole bunch of ways," he explained to Fox News Digital.
McCuskey also told Fox News Digital that whether his office finds incriminating information or not, "it's important to make sure that if this happens again, we have learned every single lesson we can learn so that our response will be swifter, better for the American public, and free from the mistakes made during the crisis."
Uthmeier's subpoena gave Fauci until Aug. 31 to comply.