Fox News pushed falsehood that the Inflation Reduction Act adds 87,000 new IRS employees more than 200 times

MATT GERTZ/Media Matters

 Fox News has promoted the false claim that the Inflation Reduction Act adds 87,000 employees to the Internal Revenue Service at least 203 times since Senate Democrats announced the bill’s framework on August 5, according to a Media Matters review of the network’s programming. That false talking point fuels Fox’s incendiary smear that President Joe Biden is turning the IRS into a “new Gestapo” that will “hunt down and kill middle-class taxpayers.”

The IRA, which Biden signed into law on August 16, includes $80 billion over the next decade in additional funding for the IRS. A portion of those funds would support tougher tax enforcement targeted at Americans making more than $400,000, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would raise $204 billion. The net gain of $124 billion, along with prescription drug pricing reform and tax increases on billion-dollar corporations, helps the bill fund investments in clean energy and health care while also reducing the deficit by over $300 billion over 10 years. 

Republicans and their right-wing media supporters oppose increased funding for the IRS; they prefer to hobble tax enforcement so that wealthy people can continue to cheat on their taxes with impunity. GOP politicians spent years defunding the tax police and have focused their IRA criticism on this provision, deceptively warning that the bill creates a “new army of 87,000 IRS agents” who “will be coming for you,” in the words of House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). 

Fox has played a key role in stoking right-wing ire against the IRS, including by spreading the false claim that the bill would lead to the hiring of 87,000 employees at least 203 times. The talking point has been commonplace both on “news side” programs like The Faulkner Focus (20 instances), America’s Newsroom (15), and America Reports (12), and on “opinion side” shows like Fox & Friends First (23 instances), Fox & Friends (16), The Ingraham Angle (15), Tucker Carlson Tonight (12), and Hannity (10). The purported 87,000 new hires were specifically described as “agents” at least 169 times.  

But it is false to claim that the IRA provides for 87,000 IRS hires, agents or not. The IRS has not announced any hiring plans in response to the IRA — the figure comes from a separate Treasury Department proposal from 2021 detailing what the IRS could do with additional funding, which predates that bill. That proposal includes 87,000 new hires across all positions, including secretarial and IT staff, not strictly auditors or “agents.” GOP-driven budget cuts in recent years have reduced the IRS headcount to near-1974 levels, and the hiring plan is meant to address a major loss of employees to retirement and “simply maintain current levels,” according to PolitiFact.

Fox has also regularly promoted the wildly inflammatory and false claim that the new IRS hires would all be armed, doing so at least 40 times over the same period, 9 of which came on Fox star Tucker Carlson’s program. That’s a conflation of a separate talking point the right has used to fearmonger about the IRS. In fact, as the network’s White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich has noted on Twitter, only a tiny fraction of the service’s employees belong to the Criminal Investigation division, a century-old unit whose special agents carry firearms because they handle dangerous cases involving crimes like public corruption, narcotics, and money laundering.

These Fox falsehoods are part of a wave of right-wing demagoguery targeting the IRS. As I noted last week after Carlson alleged that the Biden administration is hiring “87,000 armed IRS agents to make sure you obey”:

Carlson’s falsehood follows a week of unhinged demagoguery from Fox and others in the right-wing media that links the new IRS funding with the Mar-a-Lago search as dark signs that the Biden administration has weaponized the government against Americans. Fox pundits have described the potential wave of IRS hiring as an “economic, financial militia against regular people” deployed by those who “want to control you”; a “new army” that will “hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers”; a “new Gestapo” Biden will use in an “abusive, corrupt manner”; “a Praetorian Guard that will be unleashed again” to “grab all the cash they can by any means necessary”; and “part of an orchestrated campaign to target Americans and have the federal government be at war with those Americans.”

The virulence of the right-wing attacks on the IRS has triggered concerns that its employees may be subject to violence. On Tuesday, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig announced “a full security review of its facilities nationwide” in light of staff safety concerns, The Washington Post reported. Rettig, a Trump appointee, suggested that Republican criticisms of the service are fueling far-right extremism and threats.

That isn’t giving Fox hosts a reason for pause. On Tuesday, Laura Ingraham once again falsely claimed that the IRA funds “87,000 IRS agents,” and described Rettig’s statement as “preemptive action against its critics” by the Biden administration.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms “Internal Revenue Service,” “IRS,” “Inflation Reduction Act,” or “IRA” or any variation of the phrase “tax enforcement” within close proximity of any of the terms “hire,” “employee,” “personnel,” “agent,” “armed,” “87,000,” “87000,” “87 thousand,” “eighty-seven thousand,” “80 billion,” or “eighty billion” from August 5, 2022, through August 23, 2022.

We counted segments, which we defined as instances when the Internal Revenue Service funding provision of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) was the stated topic of discussion or instances when we found significant discussion of the provision. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in the multitopic segment discussed the provision with one another. We also included passing mentions, which we defined as instances when a speaker mentioned the provision in a segment about another topic without another speaker engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the provision scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We then reviewed all segments, mentions, and teasers for any claims suggesting that the IRA funding for the IRS would result in the hiring of 87,000 new employees. Within those claims, we also noted when speakers described the employees as “agents” or “armed.”

We split Fox programs into “news” and “opinion” sides. We defined “news” programs as those with anchors, such as Bret Baier or Martha MacCallum, at the helm, while we defined “opinion” programs as those with hosts, such as Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham. We used the designations from each anchor or host’s author page on FoxNews.com. We also considered the format of the program; we defined those using a panel format, such as Outnumbered and The Five, as opinion programs.

Right-wing media erroneously claim Biden “facilitated” search of Mar-a-Lago

 CYDNEY HARGIS & CHARIS HOARD/Media Matters

In their latest attempt to dismiss the hundreds of classified documents found at Mar-a-Largo, right-wing media coalesced around a bogus claim that President Joe Biden “facilitated” the search by rejecting former President Donald Trump’s executive privilege. 

On August 8, the FBI executed a judge-approved search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as part of an investigation into possible mishandling of classified documents. Earlier this year, reports surfaced that the National Archives and Records Administration had retrieved 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago in January, some of which contained classified materials. 

According to a recent report from The New York Times, over 300 classified documents have been seized from Trump’s Florida property over the course of three searches since January. Trump has since filed a motion asking for a special master to review the documents seized by the FBI, which would block the Department of Justice from further reviewing the documents until that third-party arbitrator is appointed, and return any property not within the scope of the search warrant. If a federal judge approves Trump’s request, it could delay a federal criminal investigation into whether Trump violated the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act. 

The August 8 search came after months of reported resistance from the Trump team; according to a May 10 letter from U.S. Acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran released this week, Trump tried to delay the FBI’s review of the retrieved records and his lawyers consistently asked for more time to determine if the records included documents they considered protected by executive privilege. In the letter, Steidel Wall wrote that government lawyers determined that executive privilege rests with the current president, not a former one, and that Biden “defers to [her] determination” whether the FBI could view the records. After consulting with the Department of Justice, she ultimately decided not to honor Trump's claim of executive privilege, which allowed the FBI to begin viewing the documents. 

On Monday, August 22, conservative journalist and Trump liaison to the National Archives John Solomon published the Steidel Wall-Corcoran letter on his website Just the News in an attempt to prove that the Biden White House sparked the investigation by choosing to waive executive privilege. Despite zero evidence, right-wing media ran with the report and accused Biden of “siccing the FBI” on his political opposition.

Legal experts dispute Trump’s claims, and historical context confirms executive privilege can be revoked 

Conservative media have repeatedly framed rejecting Trump's claim of executive privilege as an extreme step that ignited the FBI's search of his Florida residence. This view ignores the fact that the former president was under investigation for mishandling classified documents for months prior to Steidel Wall's decision, that the current administration is well within its right to reject claims of executive privilege, and that the Biden administration is not the only one to have done it. 

• National security lawyer Bradley Moss: “Ironically, Trump’s media guy shows how NARA was bending over backwards for Trump before it finally gave the FBI access to the classified records.” [Twitter, 8/23/22]  
• Executive privilege is for the benefit of the republic, not the individual. According to forum Just Security, which provides legal analysis and is based out of the New York University Law School, the 1977 Supreme Court case Nixon v. GSA made it clear that executive privilege is “a governmental privilege, not a personal privilege.” Executive privilege, therefore, can be waived by the current president, even if it is asserted by the former president, especially when such a veto would benefit the enforcement of existing laws and statutes — such as the ones at question in the ongoing FBI investigation. [Just Security, 11/4/21]
• The Supreme Court ruled that executive privilege is not unlimited, even for a sitting president. In the 1974 case United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court found that the current president’s communications with advisers pertaining to “the process of shaping policies and making decisions” were privileged. However, that privilege yielded to a special prosecutor's need to obtain evidence as part of a criminal investigation. [Time, 10/8/21]
• Biden is not the only president to reject a former president’s claims of executive privilege. Former President George W. Bush invoked executive privilege over White House documents related to the CIA’s advanced interrogation techniques. However, in 2014, former President Barack Obama rejected the privilege claim and released the documents as part of an ongoing court case. [Just Security, 9/30/21]

Right-wing media still baselessly claim that Biden “facilitated” the FBI’s search

• Fox host Sean Hannity: “The Biden White House in fact actually facilitated the DOJ’s probe against” Trump. During the August 23 edition of his Fox News show, Hannity cited Solomon’s article to claim that the White House “facilitated” the search at Mar-a-Lago by waiving Trump’s claim of executive privilege. Hannity said that in doing so, the Biden administration “was actively paving the way for the FBI’s investigation into documents from Trump’s time as president that Trump had every legal right to possess.” [Fox News, Hannity, 8/23/22]
• Fox’s Tucker Carlson: “If you have a political opponent, you just imprison him.” During the August 23 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, host Tucker Carlson implied the Solomon report confirmed what he knew all along — that the Biden administration coordinated with the DOJ on the criminal probe into Trump. Carlson concluded that Trump is running for president in 2024 and “they want to stop him. It’s what you do in the third world. If you have a political opponent, you just imprison him.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/23/22]
• Fox’s Jesse Watters: “Joe Biden has now been directly implicated in the raid on Mar-a-Lago.” Fox host Jesse Watters cited Solomon’s article during the August 23 edition of his show, Jesse Watters Primetime, to try claiming the president was “implicated in the raid” in Florida. Watters asserted that because Biden waived Trump’s claim of executive privilege, “that set the raid in motion.” Watters went on to say that “Biden’s White House had the chance to calm things down, but instead they set fire to Trump’s executive privilege and triggered a raid on his house.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/23/22]
• Hannity: Biden personally intervened “to undermine President Trump’s claims of executive privilege.” During the August 23 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show, Hannity baselessly claimed that John Solomon’s documents conclusively prove that Biden pushed his Department of Justice to “investigate records stored at” Mar-a-Lago with “President Biden personally intervening to undermine President Trump’s claims of executive privilege.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 8/23/22]
• Hannity asked Solomon if the DOJ’s “ultimate goal” is to arrest and charge Trump. During that same episode, Hannity conducted an interview with Solomon, asking if the Biden administration’s “ultimate goal here is to arrest Donald Trump and charge Donald Trump.” Solomon replied that there isn’t enough evidence to know yet, but laid out a timeline that implied the administration waived Trump’s executive privilege in order to “[raid] his home.” Hannity responded that the people running this investigation are “the same liars that have been there since the day he came down the escalator.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 8/23/22]
• Solomon: “Joe Biden himself was at the ignition point of this investigation.” During the August 23 edition of War Room: Pandemic, Solomon told host Steve Bannon that Biden “was at the ignition point of this investigation.” He went on to baselessly claim that Biden was “involved in siccing the FBI on his — on the leader of the political opposition party.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room: Pandemic, 8/23/22]
• Mark Levin: “I knew it; Biden knew, the White House knew, they’re all behind it.” On his show Monday night, Mark Levin spoke about Solomon’s article, saying that “the memos provide the most definitive evidence to date of the current White House’s effort to facilitate a criminal probe of" Trump. He continued to dramatize the extent of the White House’s involvement, such as “eliminating one of the legal defenses that Trump might use to fight the FBI over access to his documents,” referring to the Biden administration’s denial of Trump’s claim on executive privilege. [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 8/22/22]
• Trump: “They Knew Everything.” In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, the former president stated that he was told the White House “[was] NOT INVOLVED. … & that they didn’t know anything at all about the Break-In of Mar-a-Lago.” Trump also praised the “great reporting” of Solomon, saying that Solomon’s reporting on the subpoena documents revealed how the Biden administration in fact “led the charge” on the searches of Mar-a-Lago. [The Gateway Pundit, 8/23/22]
• The Daily Caller claimed the White House “was involved with the DOJ probe” into classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The Daily Caller relied entirely on Solomon’s reporting in an August 23 article that claimed Biden was involved in the FBI search. The Daily Caller went on to write that waiving executive privilege “effectively eliminated a legal defense” for Trump. [The Daily Caller, 8/23/22]

FBI found 184 classified documents in boxes returned by Trump, redacted affidavit says, prompting search

By Rebecca Shabad, Ryan J. Reilly and Ken Dilanian/NBC News

WASHINGTON — A redacted copy of the FBI affidavit used to justify the Aug. 8 search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate was unsealed Friday, revealing details of the federal government's efforts to recover classified documents, including top-secret information.

The 36-page affidavit, much of which was heavily redacted, said that in mid-May, FBI agents conducted a preliminary review of the contents of 15 boxes Trump returned to the National Archives from his Florida property in January, and "identified documents with classification markings in fourteen of the FIFTEEN BOXES."

The affidavit said that agents found 184 unique documents that had classification markings. It stated that 25 documents were marked as "TOP SECRET," 67 documents marked as "confidential" and 92 marked "secret." According to the affidavit, agents observed markings denoting various control systems designed to protect various types of sensitive information, including markings that designate intelligence gathered by "clandestine human sources," such as a report by a CIA officer or someone who works for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The release of the FBI affidavit came after U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ruled Thursday that the document could be unsealed after the Department of Justice submitted proposed redactions.

Reinhart approved the warrant that allowed federal agents to search Trump’s Florida property Aug. 8 after determining that the affidavit provided probable cause. He reiterated earlier this week that he found “probable cause that evidence of multiple federal crimes would be found” at Mar-a-Lago and that he “was — and am — satisfied that the facts sworn by the affiant are reliable.”

The affidavit contains substantial redactions in its section on providing probable cause for the August search, which is about 20 pages. One almost completely blacked-out section is titled, “There is Probable Cause to Believe That Documents Containing Classified [National Defense Information] and Presidential Records Remain at the Premises.”

Ultimately, FBI agents removed 11 additional sets of classified documents, including some labeled secret and top secret, during the Aug. 8 search, according to the property receipt of items that were recovered. There were also papers described as “SCI” documents, which stands for highly classified “sensitive compartmented information.”

The Justice Department had argued against releasing the affidavit. The document itself says that any “premature disclosure” of the affidavit and other related documents could "have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence (stored electronically and otherwise), change patterns of behavior, and notify criminal confederates.”

The affidavit noted that based on the federal investigation, the government believed that the storage room where boxes of presidential records were kept at Mar-a-Lago, as well as Trump's suite, his office and other spaces "within the premises are not currently authorized locations for the storage of classified information."

In June, Justice Department lawyers sent Trump's attorneys a letter that reiterated that Mar-a-Lago couldn't be used to store classified information, according to the affidavit. The Justice Department asked in the letter that the room where the documents were stored "be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice." 

New documents shed light on vast right-wing plan to disrupt democracy

 Travis Gettys Via Raw Story

Newly revealed documents shed light on a secretive right-wing group, its well-connected members and extensive efforts undertaken to overturn Donald Trump's election loss.

The Center for Media and Democracy has published the agenda for a recent CNPCouncil for National Policy meeting, in late February, and the watchdog journalists at Documented has obtained the membership roster and the most recent tax filings for the nonprofit organization, and those newly released materials show CNP's role in disrupting U.S. democracy, reported The New Republic.

"CNP archives illustrate the extensive planning its members undertook to discredit the 2020 election results, undermine local election officials, and incite the protest on January 6, 2021," the magazine reported. "The House select committee on January 6 has subpoenaed CNP election expert Cleta Mitchell, and the panel is also examining 29 texts exchanged between then–White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas (a board member of the CNP’s lobbying arm) in support of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election."

CNP has spawned numerous shadowy offshoots that frequently change their names or vanish, such as the Conservative Partnership Institute, which got $1 million from Trump's "Save America" PAC and counts Mark Meadows as senior partner, and Ginni Thomas ally Cleta Mitchell runs the "Election Integrity Network" under its umbrella.

The February meeting elected a new slate of CNP officers, including new president Tom Fitton, who heads the conservative Judicial Watch; vice president Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who oversaw the key state's troubled 2004 election; secretary Jenny Beth Martin, who took part in the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally; board members Jerry Boykin, a retired Army general and infamous Islamophobe, and Chad Connelly, the national director of faith engagement for the Republican National Committee from 2013 to 2016.

The group also added about two dozen medical professionals, including Jan. 6 and anti-vaxxer Simone Gold, and James Todaro, part of America's Frontline Doctors campaign, which was orchestrated by the CNP and the 2020 Trump campaign to spread coronavirus misinformation.

Founding members Richard Viguerie and Morton Blackwell still play a role in CNP, whose February meeting highlighted a COVID initiative led by Gold and efforts to strengthen ties to the Koch Network and other relationship with other longstanding partners, and Rachel Bovard, CPI's senior director of policy, joined the board of directors at CNP Action in her first year as a member, which signals that offshoot group's importance to the project.

"The Conservative Partnership Institute was recently cited in an Axios report as a prime architect for “Trump 2025,” Trump’s plans for demolishing the federal government should he win a second term," reported The New Republic. "However, Mike Pence became a “dues-paying member” of the CNP this year as well, and there can be little doubt that there are active conversations with Ron DeSantis. The CNP’s leaders have made it clear that their objective is not the personality, it’s the outcome."

DOJ worried Trump's 'criminal confederates' might flee or tamper with evidence in Mar-A-Lago case

 Travis Gettys via Raw Story

The Department of Justice wanted to keep the Mar-A-Lago affidavit sealed because investigators were concerned about tipping off additional suspects in the case.

A federal judge ordered the affidavit supporting the search warrant to be unsealed, with redactions of sensitive material, and the document showed that investigators were concerned about revealing the scope of their probe and their sources of evidence, arguing that witnesses could be threatened and their work could be obstructed.

"It is respectfully requested that this Court issue an order sealing, until further order of the Court, all papers submitted in support of this application, including the application and search warrant," said the FBI agent who signed the affidavit. "I believe that sealing this document is necessary because the items and information to be seized are relevant to an ongoing investigation and the FBI has not yet identified all potential criminal confederates nor located all evidence related to its investigation."

RELATED: Read the redacted FBI affidavit that resulted in Mar-a-Lago search warrant

They cited concerns about notifying those "potential criminal confederates" that their involvement was under investigation, which could give them a chance to interfere with the probe.

"Premature disclosure of the contents of this affidavit and related documents may have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence (stored electronically and otherwise), change patterns of behavior, and notify criminal confederates," the affiant wrote.

Republican CNN contributors promote anti-LGBTQ Libs of TikTok account

 SOPHIE LAWTON via Media Matters

On CNN, conservative contributors Scott Jennings and Margaret Hoover recently voiced support for the anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok. 

Libs of TikTok is a right-wing Twitter account run by Chaya Raichik that targets educators and businesses that support LGBTQ rights, inspiring harassment from followers. Raichik has expanded the Libs of TikTok brand to Facebook, Instagram, and a personal Substack account, though Facebook reportedly suspended the account for less than 24 hours last week after it led an anti-trans campaign against Boston Children’s Hospital.  

On August 17, conservative political commentator Margaret Hoover boosted the account, saying that “gets traction because it's in response to, you know, a changing of the curriculum to diminish some of the core themes of American civics education and that is, that is actually a real thing.” Hoover went on to suggest parents are supportive of Libs of TikTok because their kids aren’t learning enough about the Constitution.

On August 18, after a panel of parents discussed their anxieties about their children returning to school in the fall, conservative commentator Scott Jennings referenced a parent comment about Libs of TikTok, saying, “They’ve gotten quite famous posting videos of people from schools.” Democratic strategist Maria Cardona called out the misinformation and disinformation around online videos in classrooms and argued against Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” law. Jennings replied, “You can't deny, there have been some anecdotes, some examples, of teachers who have tried to inject some of these things.” 

Anchor Alisyn Camerota and Cardona were quick to call out Jennings for citing Libs of TikTok, with Camerota saying, “You can’t use that as your source.”

Right-wing media promise to harass Anthony Fauci in retirement if Republicans win back control of Congress

 ERIC KLEEFELD, BUSHRA SULTANA & SHELBY JAMERSON via Media Matters

 When presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci announced h

is plans to retire in December after five decades of public service, right-wing media personalities predictably attacked him, calling him a “sociopathic liar and political hack” who “needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.” 

On Monday, Fauci announced he intends to step down as President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser and as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In response, right-wing media mounted a public onslaught, claiming that Fauci is stepping down to avoid investigations if Republicans take control of Congress in November, directing the GOP to investigate Fauci if the party should take control, proclaiming Fauci should face criminal charges and be sent to prison, and generally attacking his character.

Even Fox anchor Neil Cavuto, who had previously served as a seeming voice of reason and who has previously interviewed Fauci at the network, pressed the retiring public servant about whether his retirement was really just “a way to avoid Republican investigators.”

Right-wing media, especially Fox News, have been maligning Fauci since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted, then-President Donald Trump’s “media supporters could not or would not try to directly challenge the president,” whose administration’s response included recommendations of stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures, “and settled instead on targeting Fauci, who was a face of the administration’s response.” The smear campaign against Fauci didn’t stop; over a roughly 10-month period in 2021, Fox News personalities attacked him over 400 times.
 
Fauci may plan to retire at the end of the year, but the right-wing echo chamber is prepared to hound him for years to come if given the opportunity.

Claims that Fauci is stepping down to avoid oversight

• Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson speculated that Fauci may have resigned because he thinks the Republicans are going to take over Congress in the midterm elections and does not want to be investigated by them. “So it's possible that Tony Fauci might want to resign before he has to explain all of that to a new Congress,” Carlson said. “He might want to get out of town now and move to, say, Cambridge, find a safe place to hide before the reckoning. Just a thought. Because honestly, there's a lot to answer for.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]
• Fox prime-time host Laura Ingraham speculated that “Fauci thinks this retirement would save him from a congressional investigation or a subpoena.” She then interviewed Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who said congressional Republicans would want to investigate Fauci based on the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus was human-made. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing radio host Buck Sexton claimed, “Sociopathic liar and political hack Fauci is making a run for it before Republicans can take over the House.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing radio host Dana Loesch claimed Fauci “doesn't want that GOP-controlled House oversight.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Fox prime-time host Jesse Watters claimed that Fauci “seems to think stepping down before Republicans take the House will get him off scot-free.” Watters made this pronouncement just hours after Fauci appeared on Fox and told Neil Cavuto that he would not avoid appearing before Congress. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/23/22]
• The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam: “BREAKING: Fauci to step down right before Republicans are expected to take control of Congress and commence investigations into his funding of the Wuhan Lab and pandemic response.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Conservative pundit Mercedes Schlapp claimed “it's no coincidence” that Fauci announced he will step down in December, noting that it “is right after Republicans will take back the House and immediately plan oversight into our pandemic response and his funding of gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Calls for congressional Republicans to investigate Fauci 

• Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity declared that “Fauci still needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.” He then interviewed Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who predicted that if there is a Republican-controlled Congress, it would subpoena Fauci to testify next year. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/22/22]
• Fox’s “news side” presented a more respectable face for the right’s determination to investigate Fauci. Fox contributor Marc Thiessen discussed the need for an “after-action study” of the nation’s COVID-19 response, while blaming Fauci for various aspects of both the pandemic response and its economic consequences. Concluding the segment, co-anchor Bill Hemmer said that in “2023, I think we’ll see him again.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]
• Fox anchor Sandra Smith asked Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS): “What do you want to see happen as far as holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his actions during this pandemic?” Marshall then repeatedly and falsely accused Fauci of covering up the supposed creation of COVID-19 in a lab, statements which Smith did not challenge. [Fox News, America Reports, 8/23/22; FactCheck.org, 5/19/22]
• Former White House adviser Peter Navarro said on Newsmax that the government should to “take that SOB’s passport” so Fauci cannot flee a Republican-led congressional investigation. Navarro himself was recently indicted for a charge of contempt of Congress over his refusal to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. [Newsmax, Eric Bolling: The Balance, 8/22/22; NPR, 6/4/22]

Calls for Fauci’s to face criminal charges and/or prison

• “Stop the Steal” organizer Alex Bruesewitz wrote that Fauci “should be investigated, and quite frankly arrested, for what he put our country through.” [Twitter, 8/22/22; Media Matters, 7/27/22]
• Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk declared that Fauci “belongs in prison.” He continued, “Seize the passports. Freeze his pension, distribute it to his victims. Lawyer up. Time to hold him accountable for the last 3 years.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing radio host Clay Travis wrote that Fauci “belongs in prison,” claiming he is the “most destructive bureaucrat in United States history.” Travis also said Fauci’s “‘leadership’ on covid will — in the decades ahead — come to be seen as one of the greatest and most destructive failures in our nation’s history.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing podcasters Diamond & Silk: “Fauci doesn't need to just step down, he should be arrested for Crimes Against Humanity!” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Attacks on Fauci’s character

• In his opening monologue, Fox's Carlson said, “On some level, even Tony Fauci knows that Tony Fauci is in fact a dangerous fraud.” Carlson further elaborated that Fauci “has done things that in most countries at most times in history would be understood perfectly clearly to be very serious crimes.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]
• Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy called Fauci an “authoritarian monster.” She claimed Fauci “led our country on a Chinese-style approach instead of an American-style where we look at science.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/23/22]
• Washington Examiner’s Haisten Willis described Fauci as someone some people “feel is … self-promoting, unaccountable, and even liable for helping start the pandemic.” [Washington Examiner, 8/22/22]
• Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen: “Never has anybody been so wrong about so much for so long and been so lionized as Anthony Fauci.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]
• Sean Duffy, Fox News contributor and former member of Congress, repeatedly accused Fauci of having “Chinese” principles instead of American ones in his supposed use of the power of government. [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 8/23/22]
• Fox News’ Katie Pavlich said it is “sickening” the way Fauci supposedly let “power and fame” go to his head. Pavlich tweeted, “In March 2020 Fauci actually told the truth about who Wuhan coronavirus was deadly for, the elderly and those with comorbidities. He said it was ‘very clear.’ He also said drug store masks don’t work. Then, he got a taste of power and fame he just couldn’t let go. Sickening.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz on Fauci: “His half-century of ‘public service’ was a disaster for us. His handling of covid should be studied in the future as a blueprint of what not to do.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
• Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro called Fauci “a true douchebag.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 08/23/22]
• Right-wing media gadfly Benny Johnson called Fauci “the most evil and malevolent character in my lifetime.” [The Benny Show, via YouTube, 8/23/22]