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Fauci’s Wife Shared ‘Middle Finger’ With Photog After Hubby’s Contempt Vote – Rand Paul Had the Perfect Response

Updated: GOVERNMENT

The imagery couldn’t have been more fitting if a Hollywood director had staged it. Hours after the Senate voted 8-5 to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress and refer his case to the Department of Justice, the man who once declared himself the embodiment of science was photographed outside his house taking out the trash. Sullen. Cameras everywhere. The whole thing.

His wife, Christine Grady, had an opinion about the attention. She expressed it from her car window. With one finger.

Rand Paul’s response was delivered instantly and is already achieving the status of political one-liners that get quoted for years: “Is that how you plead the Fifth in sign language?”

Seven words. Perfect.

The contrast between where Fauci was and where he is now deserves a moment of appreciation. In 2022 — his last year in government — the New York Times wrote a reverential farewell piece noting that his home office walls were covered in portraits of himself, drawn and painted by fans, including a piece by singer Joan Baez. He and Joan Baez were “pretty good friends,” he told the Times. When the portraits attracted attention, he blamed the “far right” for calling him an egomaniac. He wasn’t keeping the portraits because he wanted them, he explained. He just couldn’t disrespect his fans by throwing their artwork away.

That was then. Now he’s taking out the trash while his wife flips off photographers and his lawyer calls contempt votes “crude political stunts.”

The DOJ referral is real. The contempt resolution passed. The Florida state investigation is active. His phone data is with Senate Republicans. And the man who spent four years on television telling America he was “the science” won’t answer a single question about any of it.

Phil Magness captured it best: “For the first time ever in his life, Fauci doesn’t like cameras.”

He loved them when they were showing up to celebrate him. He loved them when Time magazine was putting him on the cover. He loved them when he was doing late-night television appearances and being compared to a rock star by journalists who had abandoned every professional standard they once claimed to hold.

He is considerably less enthusiastic now that the cameras are catching him taking out the garbage while a Senate committee refers him to the Justice Department for contempt.

Christine Grady is a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health. Her professional specialty is medical ethics. She expressed those ethics with one finger in a car window Thursday evening.

The DOJ still gets to decide whether to pursue the contempt action regardless of how the Fauci household feels about cameras. State investigators in Florida don’t require the Grady family’s cooperation. The phone data doesn’t care.

Rand Paul’s question was rhetorical. The accountability is not.