Original Broadcaster Captioning (Enhanced). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:19It is illegal to obstruct the work of the United States
00:00:21Congress. So when Anthony Fauci repeatedly says this to a group
00:00:26of senators, I will invoke my right under
00:00:29the 5th Amendment of the Constitution
00:00:32to refrain from answering your questions. And says that 111
00:00:36times over the course of several hours. Refusing to
00:00:39answer every question he was asked last week. Well,
00:00:42nothing says honestly like taking the 5th on Doc.
00:00:47Let's try something. What day of the week is it today?
00:00:51What colour tie you're wearing? What colour is the carpet in
00:00:54front of you? On the advice of counsel,
00:00:56I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights
00:00:59under the 5th Amendment to the Constitution
00:01:02forward. But is it illegal? There will be repercussions to
00:01:06your refusal to testify today. This is about contempt,
00:01:09contempt for this body and contempt for the American
00:01:12people. Some breaking news this morning. The Senate Homeland
00:01:15Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has voted to
00:01:19hold Doctor Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress.
00:01:22Republicans under Donald Trump have declared fresh war on the
00:01:26man who basically overnight was suddenly the most influential
00:01:29and prominent public health voice during the pandemic.
00:01:32Now he won't tell them a thing.
00:01:36How long can you keep that up? Who the **** do you think you
00:01:39were for doing that?
00:01:45Many Republicans and their supporters do not like Anthony
00:01:49Fauci, but few have so consistently
00:01:51made an enemy of him over such a long period of time as Rand
00:01:55Paul. Instead of an apology, you have for years avoided
00:01:58responsibility. You did not tell the American people the
00:02:02full story. Rand Paul is the Republican chair of a Senate
00:02:06Homeland Security Committee that subpoenaed Anthony Fauci
00:02:09to testify just last week.
00:02:11Ever. I would say 2 main questions that even all these
00:02:16years after the pandemic, he still feels are unanswered.
00:02:20One, did Fauci try to push this idea
00:02:23that COVID couldn't have come from a Chinese lab even when he
00:02:28thought maybe it did? And two, did Fauci lie about whether the
00:02:32US gave money to create this virus that would ultimately
00:02:37kill more than a million Americans?
00:02:39Fauci denies these claims, and
00:02:42here was one of the only things he said at his hearing last
00:02:46week. The sole reason he is calling me before this
00:02:49committee is to get me to say something,
00:02:53anything, that could vindicate his
00:02:56repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, quote,
00:03:02behind bars, UN quote. Any reasonable person
00:03:06who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily
00:03:12come to the same conclusion.
00:03:16And so it began. Can you explain to the committee why
00:03:19you chose to fund this dangerous research in China?
00:03:25On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to
00:03:28answer. Doctor Fauci, did the CIA ever transfer funds to NIH under an interagency agreement?
00:03:34Doctor Fauci where the scientist at the Wuhan
00:03:37Institute of Virology capable of inserting a few and cleavage
00:03:40site into a coronavirus lab Investigators today ever appear
00:03:44in these labs to make sure they were safe labs
00:03:50On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline and you
00:03:54get the idea. The Republicans are accusing Dr. Fauci of being
00:03:58in contempt of Congress because he refused to answer questions
00:04:02and he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege. And the
00:04:06Republicans are saying you can't do that because you've
00:04:10been given a pardon by President Biden,
00:04:13which covers your culpability and you are not allowed to
00:04:17invoke the 5th. Ordinarily,
00:04:19an American's Fifth Amendment right is to remain silent to
00:04:22avoid self incrimination. And you can do that by not
00:04:26answering questions. Except Republicans say, hang on,
00:04:29Joe Biden when he was president gave you a preemptive pardon.
00:04:33Breaking news, President Joe Biden announcing
00:04:36pardons in his final hours before Donald Trump takes
00:04:39office. Biden announcing the pardon of Doctor Anthony Fauci
00:04:45soon to prosecution, meaning you can't invoke the
00:04:48right to remain silent since there's no chance of self
00:04:51incrimination. Since there's no chance of prosecution. You
00:04:55don't have any rights under the 5th Amendment because you've
00:04:59been pardoned, as you very well know. So to
00:05:01avoid questioning in this way. This, they say,
00:05:04is contempt punishable by a fine of up to $100,
00:05:07000 and or up to a year in jail. We are voting on whether a
00:05:11witness who has received the benefit of a sweeping federal
00:05:14pardon
00:05:16can be ordered by this committee to answer questions
00:05:19and then defy that order without consequence. So that's
00:05:23why and how Fauci is under legal threat today. But the
00:05:27bigger question is the bigger threat beyond today.
00:05:35If you're someone who sees Anthony Fauci as dangerous as a
00:05:40villain, the first question you have is
00:05:42a very serious charge. Why peddle the lie that COVID made
00:05:47a natural jump from animals to humans? Publicly,
00:05:50Anthony Fauci promoted the theory that the virus arose
00:05:54naturally, while privately he was well
00:05:57aware of a mountain of evidence suggesting the virus originated
00:06:01in the lab. They point to Fauci's own diary entries
00:06:05written in the earliest days of the pandemic,
00:06:08like this one from January 26th, 2020. So this is before the
00:06:12World Health Organization is even willing to call this an
00:06:16international public health emergency,
00:06:18never mind an actual pandemic, which would come months later.
00:06:22Fauci writes about the wet market origin theory. Now we
00:06:26know the market was not the source. It was the amplifier.
00:06:29And just five days later, he writes how his colleagues
00:06:33studying the coronavirus itself believe mutations
00:06:36in its makeup could not have occurred naturally. And they
00:06:40raised the possibility that these features were
00:06:43deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or
00:06:47deliberately released by a crazy person in the lab.
00:06:51Republicans like Rand Paul say this is evidence that Fauci and
00:06:55his colleagues were privately entertaining this lab leak
00:06:59theory while denying it in public.
00:07:02Fauci says that's not quite right,
00:07:04but he's often leaned one way but never lied. We keep a
00:07:08completely open mind as to what the origin is. Having said that,
00:07:13if you look at the examination by highly qualified
00:07:16international scientists with no political agendas,
00:07:20they've published in peer reviewed journals,
00:07:23the best of the peer reviewed journals,
00:07:26that the evidence is quite strong that this is a natural
00:07:30occurrence. Fauci has said
00:07:32his objection was always only against people who said the lab
00:07:36leak theory was unequivocally true when they just had no way
00:07:40of knowing, and that when people accuse him
00:07:43of a cover up pointing at positions like this published
00:07:47in May of 2020, they're really just
00:07:49misrepresenting his position as being entirely 1 sided. In
00:07:53reality though, opinion on the true origin of
00:07:56COVID-19 is split. Early on the prevailing theory was that this
00:08:00was most likely a case of natural
00:08:02animal to human transmission at a seafood market in Wuhan,
00:08:06China, and for years the US
00:08:08intelligence community was unsure from this government
00:08:12report. In 2023, at least five intelligence
00:08:15agencies believed this was just a case of the virus evolving
00:08:19from infecting animals to infecting humans. But the
00:08:22Department of Energy and the FBI leaned towards the lab
00:08:26league theory. The CIA decided inconclusive,
00:08:29though later on it would lean more towards COVID origin
00:08:33being
00:08:34in a lab. The World Health Organization not so sure. The
00:08:37work to understand the origins of SARS Co V2 remains
00:08:41unfinished. The origins of SARS Co V2 and how it entered the
00:08:45human population will remain inconclusive. Despite all this,
00:08:49Republicans insist a Fauci cover up makes sense because
00:08:53American taxpayer money under Fauci's leadership funded some
00:08:57of the work going on in that lab in Wuhan. The decision to
00:09:02fund dangerous gain of function
00:09:04researching Wuhan, China will likely go down in
00:09:07history as perhaps one of the worst public health decisions.
00:09:10I hope today Doctor Fauci will come clean. Admit that the risk
00:09:14of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits.
00:09:18Ask forgiveness. Now. At the risk of going down all the
00:09:22rabbit holes, I will answer this. Did Fauci's
00:09:25National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases fund
00:09:30coronavirus research in Wuhan? Yes,
00:09:32it did. This is not disputed. A US nonprofit called Ecohealth
00:09:37managed to secure, over a period of about 10 years,
00:09:41a series of seven grants from NIAID totaling more than $4
00:09:45million, studying very specifically
00:09:48the question of bats transmitting coronaviruses to
00:09:52humans in China. A portion of this money, about $600 000,
00:09:56did go to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. But the
00:10:00harder question to answer is whether that research funded an
00:10:05explicit attempt to make one of these coronaviruses better at
00:10:09infecting humans. When you hear people talking about gain of
00:10:13function research, that's what they're talking
00:10:17about. The NIH has not ever and does not now
00:10:20fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute. Fauci
00:10:24has long maintained that US funded research in China did
00:10:29not produce anything genetically close enough to be
00:10:33the direct cause of the pandemic. But again,
00:10:36the Republican charge here is immense,
00:10:39which is that if the US government under Fauci's
00:10:42leadership had not helped China in its research,
00:10:46the global pandemic might never have happened to begin with.
00:10:51You've never admitted that it could have been a mistake
00:10:54funding this research in China. No scientist is above scrutiny.
00:11:02So here's the thing, I'm not explaining and
00:11:05reopening this whole who caused the pandemic debate to try to
00:11:09come to some sort of conclusion on the matter. I raised it only
00:11:13to show you how high the stakes are and how serious some
00:11:17elements of this Trump administration are about
00:11:20prosecuting Anthony Fauci, pardon or no part. It's very
00:11:24clear from statements that were made by Republicans during the
00:11:28hearings and
00:11:29after and outside of those hearings that they intend to
00:11:33use him as a poster child for what took place in the United
00:11:37States during the COVID era, this possibility that vengeful
00:11:42Republicans will find some way anyway to prosecute Fauci
00:11:46despite his pardon. Senator Paul,
00:11:48you do not know what you are talking about,
00:11:51quite frankly. And I want to say that officially you do not
00:11:56know what you are talking about. And if anybody is lying,
00:12:00dear Senator, it is you. This is what powers
00:12:03Fauci's Fifth Amendment defence. Because while the pardon would
00:12:08appear to protect him from any of his public actions over a
00:12:13fairly wide 10 year. It doesn't extend to anything he might say
00:12:18or admit to now. And sure enough,
00:12:20prosecutors in Trump friendly parts of the country at the
00:12:25state level, from Alabama to Florida,
00:12:28another red state, and Louisiana,
00:12:31there is an increasing tide of legal action building against
00:12:36Fauci. So when summoned before Congress,
00:12:39he shuts down. But for how long he can continue that strategy
00:12:45depends entirely on how determined this administration
00:12:49is to make him pay.
00:12:58Stream anytime. CBC News.
00:15:03Trump is about to lose one of his fiercest fighters. It's
00:15:05very easy to speak truth from this podium when you have a
00:15:09president who is implementing policies that are wildly
00:15:12popular with the American people. Caroline Levitt is
00:15:14stepping down as White House press secretary,
00:15:17leaving the US president without a key member of his
00:15:20inner circle as the administration navigates its
00:15:23lowest approval ratings, a costly war in the Middle East
00:15:26and midterm elections right around the corner.
00:15:30Vital to it. One of the more influential press secretaries
00:15:33that I can remember, Levitt was the youngest person
00:15:36ever to take the job at 27. And there were big changes right
00:15:40out the gate between this administration and the media.
00:15:43The White House would now decide which outlets made-up
00:15:46the presidential press pool. That's the small group of
00:15:50reporters that follow the president basically everywhere
00:15:53he goes. And for decades, the makeup of that pool has
00:15:56been determined independently by the White House
00:15:59Correspondents Association.
00:16:01The Associated Press was blocked from Air Force One and
00:16:04the Oval Office after they refused to adopt Trump's
00:16:07renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And
00:16:11White House reporters were no longer given free access to
00:16:14part of the press office where Levitt worked after the
00:16:17administration raised security concerns. On the one hand,
00:16:20he's utterly transparent because he's before the cameras
00:16:24all the time. On the other hand, they are controlling more than
00:16:27ever before who's in the room, Who?
00:16:29Who is in the press pool when you go meet in the Oval Office,
00:16:33get to ask the president a question. But limiting access
00:16:36for some also meant expanding and creating access for others.
00:16:40Leavitt announced a new media section in the press briefing
00:16:43room giving non traditional and often more conservative
00:16:47journalists, podcasters and influencers and
00:16:49opportunity to cover the White House. For some,
00:16:52these changes meant injecting a little more balance into a
00:16:55media landscape that felt skewed and unrepresentative.
00:16:59For others, it felt a lot like Trump
00:17:01controlling Who talks about Trump? Levitt would push back,
00:17:04often describing Trump as the most transparent, transparent,
00:17:08the most transparent ever, the most transparent
00:17:11administration in history, a president who would sit down
00:17:14for an interview with Joe Rogan one day and NBC's Meet the
00:17:18Press the next. The Trump White House will speak to all media
00:17:21outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media who
00:17:25are seated in this room. Levitt has been in Trump's orbit since
00:17:282018. She served as assistant press secretary during Trump's
00:17:32first term and worked on his 2024 reelection campaign
00:17:35before becoming press secretary. Trump has described her as one
00:17:40of his most trusted aides. We even brought our superstar
00:17:44today, Caroline. Caroline be replaced
00:17:48to you, Sir.
00:17:51I think that if Donald Trump could clone Caroline Levitt,
00:17:54he would be happy to do so. She fought back hard,
00:17:57she supported him. She was incredibly loyal,
00:17:59and she stayed on message. We have a a saying in politics
00:18:02that if you're explaining, you're losing. Instead,
00:18:05she just got behind whatever the president had said most
00:18:09recently. It's impossible to look back on Levitt's time as
00:18:12press secretary without thinking about her combative
00:18:15approach with journalists, at least in front of the
00:18:18cameras, often attacking them personally during press briefings.
00:18:21Of course the president supports peaceful protests.
00:18:24What a stupid question is. You're a left wing hack. You're
00:18:26not a reporter. You're posing in this room as a journalist.
00:18:29You shouldn't even be sitting in that seat. Is there any
00:18:31evidence on that? That you,
00:18:33you're a reporter, you should find out Levitt
00:18:36style. It was very tough. And she would really go after
00:18:39journalists and, you know, insult them and berate them the
00:18:42way that Donald Trump likes to do. Trump applauded this more
00:18:46than once. He's described Levitt as having lips like a
00:18:49machine gun. She gets up there with that beautiful face and
00:18:52those lips that don't stop the pop up like,
00:18:55like a little machine gun. Levitt says she's leaving the
00:18:58role to spend more time with family. She gave birth to her
00:19:01second child in May, returning to her post only
00:19:04couple months later. Levitt says she will remain a top
00:19:07outside adviser to the president. And who will replace
00:19:10Trump's superstar? At least for now, there's no clear top choice.
00:24:38Wanna get the most out of CBC News?
00:24:39Use the app or CBC news.ca for live breaking news on the
00:24:43stories that matter to you. Walk us through this. Whether
00:24:46you're an information hound or you're playing catch up,
00:24:50we've got the news you want your way. So where does that
00:24:53leave things with real time updates on major events as they
00:24:57happen? What's the reaction been?
00:24:59CBC News keeps you connected. A potential attack forwarded.
00:25:02Whether it's local, national or around the world,
00:25:05turn to CBC News.
00:29:18Hi there Canada.
00:29:22The funny, not so funny thing about the
00:29:25world right now is the thing you maybe didn't see coming.
00:29:30My favorite word? Tariff. Minimum 10% tariff on
00:29:34all imports. We're already hearing about layoffs. He is
00:29:38trying to break us.
00:29:41So you have questions. How should Canadians be preparing
00:29:45for that next trip? How seriously are you taking
00:29:48this threat? How is Hamilton bracing for
00:29:50tariff impact? And while your elbows have been
00:29:53up, elbows up, for us it's the sleeves rolled
00:29:56up. Because you need answers.
00:30:00Our journalists countrywide and all over the world are on the
00:30:04case. Canada, we got you and we are right
00:30:08there, right beside you trying to make
00:30:11sense of it with you.
00:30:29where families continue to be torn apart by violence
00:30:32including two recent murders
00:30:34and a shooting at the historic Mile Zero Hotel.
00:30:37Who's going to clean up this town? You know, that's a good question.
00:30:41I'm very fearful for the future of this area. We investigate the violence
00:30:45to learn more about who is killing who and why.
00:30:49Why are so many people getting murdered in Dawson Creek?
00:30:52Because the drugs are rampant. Fucking rampant.