U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has criminally referred Dr. Anthony Fauci to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). 

Paul revealed that he did so in a message that he posted to Twitter on Saturday, July 29.

Fauci, of course, is the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who gained notoriety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paul - one of Fauci's chief congressional critics - alleges that Fauci, while under oath, lied to Congress. And, Paul says that he now has the evidence to prove it.

This directly contradicts everything he said in committee hearing to me, denying absolutely that they funded any gain of function, and it’s absolutely a lie. That’s why I sent an official criminal referral to the DOJ. https://t.co/Y191SmMiIr

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 29, 2023

The email that Paul included in the above tweet is from February 2020. It is from Fauci to then-Inspector General of the Health and Human Services Department Garrett Grisby.

In the email, Fauci appears to essentially memorialize a phone conversation that he had with "highly credible scientists."

Fauci writes:

[A group of scientists] were concerned about the fact that upon viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus tht would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.

Fauci, significantly, adds:

The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, the the outbreak origintaed in Wuhan.

Paul alleges that the information contained in this email "directly contradicts everything" that Fauci had told him during a Senate committee hearing. Paul did not elaborate.

But, Paul did say that he has now criminally referred Fauci to the DOJ.

Lying to Congress is a federal crime. But, Congress, itself, has no ability to enforce the law. It can only make referrals to the executive branch, which will then decide whether or not to proceed with prosecution.

Considering that the executive branch - and thus the DOJ - is currently in the hands of President Joe Biden and the Democrat, it seems unlikely that the DOJ will prosecute Fauci.

But, this not going to stop Paul from pursuing Fauci, as he did throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.