(Joe Mueller, The Center Square) A 359-page transcript of the deposition of Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, was released Monday by the two attorneys general who filed a lawsuit alleging government collusion with social media companies.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and several Biden administration officials were named in an 86-page lawsuit filed by Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November, and Louisiana’s Jeff Landry.
The deposition shows attorney John Sauer of Schmitt’s office conducted the questioning. The deposition contained 63 exhibits, including confidential emails and media reports. The deposition began at 8:08 a.m. on Nov. 23 and ended at 5:01 p.m.
Sauer asked if Fauci was on a first-name basis with somebody at Twitter.
“Well, right now, no, but when my daughter worked at Twitter, I was on a first-name basis with her,” Fauci said.
Sauer asked for Fauci’s opinion “about whether people should be allowed to post on social media opinions” that might be dangerous or lead to a loss of life.
“You know, again, you say allowed, I don’t know what the legal or other First Amendment issues are associated with that,” Fauci said. “That’s not my lane or my area of expertise. As a physician and a scientist and a public health person, I’m very sensitive to the fact that disinformation, including some of the disinformation that we discussed that, for example, has people avoid lifesaving interventions, is dangerous to health.
“… how you counter that I think is open to question. My way of countering false information, and I’ve been on the record multiple times as saying that … my approach is to try to … flood the system with the correct information as opposed to interfering with other people’s ability to say what they want to say. And I’ve said, I think, if you, in your investigations and your discovery, you looked into how many times I’ve often said the best way to counter misinformation and disinformation is to flood the system with correct information.”
A media release from Schmitt’s office announcing the distribution of the deposition stated Fauci said, “I don’t recall” 174 times when asked about emails he sent, interviews and other important information.
“Missouri and Louisiana are leading the way in exposing how the federal government and the Biden Administration worked with social media to censor speech,” Schmitt said in a statement. “In our deposition with Dr. Fauci, it became clear that when Dr. Fauci speaks, social media censors. I encourage everyone to read the deposition transcript and see exactly how Dr. Fauci operates, and exactly how the COVID tyranny that ruined lives and destroyed businesses was born.”
Adam Kirschner, a lawyer for the Department of Justice, objected 183 times to questions of Fauci and criticized the presentation of several documents as one exhibit.
“I wanted to make a standing objection that these documents that are being marked as exhibits are merging a lot of documents together …” Kirschner said. “I object to the extent that this is mischaracterizing the record by putting documents together that may or may not be together, and I just want to say there’s been several exhibits along these lines.”
