Fauci’s Pardon: ‘It’s Really a Shame,’ Public Health Officials Say

Members of the public health community are relieved that the pardoning of Anthony Fauci, MD, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), protects him against inappropriate legal battles — but they’re disappointed it had to come to this, they told MedPage Today.

“It speaks to the corrosive impact of misinformation … on the well-being and safety of a man who has done nothing but work to save lives his whole professional career,” Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told MedPage Today. “It’s a disservice to Dr. Fauci that they felt this was necessary.”

“It’s really a shame, and I hope that we can very quickly evolve back to a world where facts matter and we can de-escalate these threats,” Benjamin said, noting that Fauci “had to have security with him just about everywhere he went” — something that shouldn’t be necessary “for a guy who works in a research lab and was a darling [to both] political parties for many years.”

Angela Rasmussen, PhD, an American virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada whose social media posts were closely watched during the COVID pandemic, said this in a post on X: “Never thought I would see the day when Tony Fauci, a lifelong public servant who built NIAID into the global standard for supporting infectious disease research under both parties’ rule, would require a preemptive pardon to protect him from political persecution. Yet here we are.”

Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH, author of the epidemiology and public health newsletter “Your Local Epidemiologist,” said efforts to blame individuals for problems with the U.S. COVID response have “been accomplished in a targeted, organized fashion.”

“It’s time that institutions find courage and stand up for those of us on the front line,” Jetelina told MedPage Today in an email.

Benjamin echoed that sentiment, noting that Biden’s move helps support “people in the healthcare world who continue to try to speak truth to power” and who feel threatened simply for doing their job.

Physicians know all too well that “when someone makes an accusation against you — whether you’ve done anything wrong or not — it can take both a fiscal and an emotional toll on you and your family,” Benjamin said. “Hopefully this will dissuade people from making false accusations.”

It did not, however, stop commenters on X from remarking that Fauci’s acceptance of the pardon implies an acknowledgement of guilt. Nor did it stop Sen. Rand Paul, MD, (R-Ky.) from claiming on X that “if there was ever any doubt as to who bears responsibility for the COVID pandemic, Biden’s pardon of Fauci forever seals the deal.”

Indeed, Children’s Health Defense — an advocacy group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that has focused on childhood vaccines — said in a statement it was “profoundly disappointed” by the preemptive pardon, noting that it won’t stop other federal investigations, including one by Paul, the new chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

In announcing the pardon, former President Joe Biden cited “exceptional circumstances,” noting that “I cannot in good conscience do nothing. Baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.”

Biden also noted that issuing pardons “should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”

In a statement, Fauci also emphasized that he “committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me. The fact is, however, that the mere articulation of these baseless threats, and the potential that they will be acted upon, create immeasurable and intolerable distress for me and my family.”

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