Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) called for a “COVID reckoning,” saying officials involved in the government’s pandemic response must be exposed and held accountable.
“I think it’s crucial that we have a COVID reckoning,” Johnson said during the Fight Club Roundtable hosted by Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle. “These people need to be held accountable.”
Johnson said public exposure may be the most significant form of accountability because criminal prosecutions would be difficult. He accused officials of avoiding written records and destroying emails that could have documented their actions.
“They didn’t leave much of a trail,” Johnson said. “They learned how to destroy emails. They didn’t memorialize things in emails. They’re not that stupid. So it’s going to be difficult.”
Johnson said his staff is reviewing roughly one million pages of material and continues to uncover information from new devices. He said investigators are organizing the records rather than releasing them all at once.
“We keep finding more things, trying to reveal that and expose it in an organized fashion so it actually makes sense to people rather than just dumping it on the public,” he said.
Johnson added that investigators must withhold some documents while interviewing witnesses so those involved do not know what evidence the committee has obtained.
“That’s not a way to conduct a serious investigation,” Johnson said of releasing every document immediately.
The Wisconsin Republican then turned his attention to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I want to make sure that Anthony Fauci’s reputation is completely destroyed, that people actually understand what a truly monstrous individual he was,” Johnson said.
Johnson accused Fauci of helping fund gain-of-function research that may have contributed to the pandemic and then covering up the origins of COVID-19. He also criticized Fauci’s role in promoting the COVID vaccines, which he called a “deadly injection”:
What he did — funding gain-of-function research — probably contributed to the pandemic. Then he covered it all up and pushed a deadly injection on the global population. Nobody knows how destructive that injection will be in the long term. This is a bad guy. I think his appearance before the Homeland Security Committee was a very bad day for him.
“He is being held accountable through the destruction of his ‘Saint Fauci’ reputation, even though Democrats and the media still want to put him on that pedestal. But I think more Americans’ eyes are open to what a monster he truly was,” said Johnson.
