Hatch Act Complaint Charges NIAID Director Anthony Fauci With Illegal Activism
- June 30, 2021
Tristan Justice, The Federalist
A new complaint charges National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci with violations of the Hatch Act, a 1939 law prohibiting civil service employees from overt political activism.
The complaint, filed by the government transparency nonprofit Protect the Public’s Trust on Wednesday, focuses on statements Fauci made in the days preceding the November election.
“The COVID-19 issues was of paramount concern for voters entering the 2020 general election,” the group wrote, highlighting an August poll from the Pew Research Center that found “62 percent of voters say[ing] the outbreak will be a very important factor in their decision about who to support in the fall.” The election, meanwhile, was decided by fewer than 43,000 votes across three tipping-point states.
Yet on Oct. 30, Fauci gave an interview with the Washington Post in which the NIAID director, comfortable in his media-manufactured image as the preeminent authority on COVID-19, “intimated that the state of the nation’s public health outlook could be directly linked to the two candidates’ diverse approaches,” according to the complaint.