DR ALLEN MENDENHALL 8-10-26
Transcript
26 segmentsWhat does one trip to Israel do? One trip changes people's faith, their identity, their perspective. One trip changes the response when people chant from the river to the sea. One trip changes how people see right and wrong. One trip changes the idea of home. One trip changes everything. And one donation is all it takes. What does one trip to Israel do? One trip changes people's faith, their identity, their perspective. One trip changes the response when people chant from the river to the sea. One trip changes how people see right and wrong. One trip changes the idea of home. One trip changes everything. And one donation is all it takes. Mike Drop, hosted by former Navy SEAL, Mike Ridland. What is your take? Was it what you expected? Oh, it was the best thing ever. It was something I always wanted to do. If you show me a clear goal, I'm like, okay, I can do that. Master Chief. He's like, you realize there's about 1% chance that you're making a 3%. That's all I need Master Chief. My platoon went home early, and I just went up to my chief, and I was like, I'm not going home. Turns out I'm staying. That's when we go to war. Yeah, I was like, okay, I could get used to this. Mike Drop, follow and listen on your favorite platform. Hey, good Monday morning to you. Welcome back to First News. 10th day of August. It is 19 minutes in front of 9 o'clock. So last week, a Senate committee voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress. Now joining us to explain some of this and legalities behind it is Dr. Allen Mendenhall, who's a research fellow in the Roe Institute and a senior advisor for the free enterprise initiative all with the Heritage Foundation. Dr. Mendenhall, good morning. I appreciate you joining us today. Good morning. Thanks for having me. So, Dr. I think one of the biggest questions for people who watch Dr. Anthony Fauci take the fifth 111 times at his testimony is wondering why he would do that knowing that he's holding a pardon from President Biden. Is there an easy answer as to why he won't say what he knows in regards to COVID? Well, Biden pardoned Anthony Fauci for federal crimes from 2014 to 2025. So the pardon removes the risk of federal prosecution for those actions. And I guess what he's worried about is perjury or any kind of new crimes that might be committed. At least that's what his attorneys are worried about. So in refusing to answer, now, however, he's opened himself up to these contempt charges because the Republicans are saying, look, we legally subpoenaed this guy. He appeared before Congress. He couldn't be incriminated for any of these crimes, so why would he invoke the fifth for things if there's no risk of self-incrimination? He was ordered to answer questions. He refused, so since he refused to willfully cooperate, now we're going to subject him to contempt charges. And that's what happened with the Senate Homeland Security. It has 15 members. You just had to have a majority. You had to have eight to refer those contempt charges. which normally would actually go to the full Senate, but they referred them to the DOJ. I thought maybe John Fetterman of the Democrats might come over and join the Republicans. It didn't matter. You had the eight of the firm. And so now it will be up to the Department of Justice to determine whether to seek criminal charges.
If the Department of Justice does go after criminal charges, I mean, what could those consequences be for Dr. Anthony Fauci? And does that, going back, I know you kind of covered this, but does that circumvent the pardon that he has? Well, it will be actually just mostly just a slap on the wrist because these criminal contempt charges are misdemeanor charges. They carry a minimum of a one month term in jail and a maximum of 12 months. And the most he could get fined for is $100,000. Remember, this is exactly what Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were convicted of. And they got four months in prison and a $65,000 fine. And to me, if Anthony Fauci were to get that, it would just... the, pale in comparison to what he did to people. When you think about it, like lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing, mass mandates, travel restrictions, school closures, business closures, coerced isolation, restrictions on worship and forced vaccines. I mean, I could just, I could go on and on. Yeah. You know, not that he just unilaterally did all this, but he was the face of it and he put in motion. all the activity that was necessary to make those things happen. And now we know from his diaries that he was lying. He was saying one thing in public and another thing in private. Yeah. you know, getting awards to the tune of, you know, millions of dollars, and also that he could be Zoom buddies with Julia John Roberts and all these celebrities. And, you know, it's just, it's a disgusting kind of story. I want to ask you about these awards that he was winning. I think it was Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri who brought it up in the hearing. But is it illegal for Dr. Anthony Fauci to use his staff and also use taxpayer money to apply for these, you know, these were awards, but they came with big time cash prizes. And then he personally. personally pockets a lot of the money out of these cash prizes. Is that illegal for him to do? Well, the short answer is maybe. And what I think we're going to see because he's had that pardon through that period, 2014-2025, is we're going to see... state attorneys general looking into that question, among other questions, because the federal pardon, the presidential pardon only covers federal crimes. It doesn't protect against state criminal investigations. So I live in Alabama, and our attorney general, Steve Marshall, is investigating whether Anthony Fauci could be held accountable under Alabama law. And, of course, Florida is leading the charge. They haven't just announced an investigation, but they've actually already issued a subpoena. But, you know, other states are looking at it, too, Louisiana, Oklahoma, West Virginia. So I would be interested in seeing what these investigations lead to. Because, again, we don't know necessarily what these attorney generals are looking for. And there are some things that they'll have to overcome statute of limitations and kind of immunity issues and things like that.
But if they could find issues of fraud, of issues of conspiracy, issues of false statements, you know, that implicate the state law, Anthony Fauci is not protected by those. Right. Well, obviously, you know, and this is kind of, this may end up being a kind of speculation, but it does, do we know if when the Senate committee, when they invite Dr. Anthony Fauci or tell him that he needs to come and testify in front of them, Do we know if the committee thinks that he's going to take the fifth, or did they think that he was going to give answers during this? Because it almost becomes, if you know he's going to take the fifth, this becomes a big waste of time. But did they think he was going to actually answer questions in this committee hearing? I think they did because I remember seeing an interview with Rand Paul maybe a day or two beforehand. And he was being asked, what do you expect him to say? And he was. explaining what he expected Anthony Fauci to say. So I think he did expect Anthony Fauci to answer questions. And in fact, Anthony Fauci gave... Kind of an opening statement, and that's one thing the Republicans are saying, look, he waived his Fifth Amendment right when he did that. You know, that's an open question legally, whether that's, in fact, the case. But, you know, I think they were expecting him to answer questions. And really, it's disappointing because we really need to get truth. You know, the American people need to know the truth about COVID's origins. They need to know the truth about what public officials were saying behind closed doors, whether they were, in fact, willfully misleading the American public. You know, and this is for accountability. I mean, Anthony Fauci who talked about follow the science, follow science, celebrated science. Well, I can't think of anybody who has done more to undermine the integrity of science than him because now all of the public, all the credibility of science is is in question. And it's in large part because of his activity. Yeah. You're 100% right, Dr. Menon Hall. I mean, he has, he did a horrible thing to our society. And frankly, it even, you know, bled outside of our borders to other countries as well. And he led it. And I'll never forget, I think he was 2021 when he got up in front of the cameras and said, I am the science. And it was just like, you know, to have the thoughts in your head to put that out to the American people, that nothing is above me. I am the science. I think it speaks volumes about what type of person he is and what type of thinking he was going through. Of course, so you can find Dr. Mendenhall's work at heritage.org is the website for the Heritage Foundation. And also you can search Dr. Allen Mendenhall. And you'll find a lot of different places that he's putting publications up onto the web and out into the public that you can read. said, lives in Alabama. You still work at Troy University? Is that where you're at? No, I live in Auburn. I work exclusively for Heritage and just kind of go back and forth to D.C. And, but.
I get to be in D.C., but not of it. I get to live out here in Alabama, which is great. The best way of doing it. I just drove through Alabama. Spent some time at Orange Beach in the last couple of weeks. Oh, yeah. We love Orange Beach. Yeah, love it down there as well. But, Doctor, I appreciate the time this morning. Thank you for joining us for a few minutes, and hopefully we can do it again soon because I feel like we're kind of at the tip of the iceberg on this thing. Sounds good. Yeah, let's do it again. What does one trip to Israel do? One trip changes people's faith, their identity, their perspective. One trip changes the response when people chant from the river to the sea. One trip changes how people see right and wrong. One trip changes the idea of home. One trip changes everything. And one donation is all it takes.