Tuberville Vows to Haul Fauci Into Court 'Every Day' — And Biden's Pardon Can't Stop Him

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The pardon President Biden signed for Dr. Anthony Fauci has a boundary written into the Constitution itself, and Republicans in two states have spent the week walking right up to it.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who is running for governor in November, said he would pursue Fauci in state court repeatedly if elected. A presidential pardon extinguishes federal liability. It does not touch a state charge, and it never has.

Florida moves first

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier confirmed his office is examining "any and all potential violations of Florida law," with the inquiry centered on what Fauci knew about the pandemic response and whether the public was misled.

Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, himself a candidate for governor, endorsed the investigation in personal terms, describing a choice forced on him during the mandate era: "I had to make a choice of getting my prosthetic care and having a leg to walk on versus taking an immunization that I didn't want."

Gov. Ron DeSantis has been blunter, calling Fauci "the most destructive bureaucrat in the history of the United States of America."

The federalism problem Democrats didn't plan for

The preemptive pardon was engineered to close the book. Instead it opened fifty of them. By removing federal jeopardy while leaving state jeopardy intact, the pardon created exactly the patchwork its architects were trying to avoid — and handed every ambitious state attorney general in the country a live file.

"Nobody in that White House counsel's office was thinking about Tallahassee," a former Justice Department official told Idiocracy News. "They were thinking about Washington, and Washington was the only place the pardon worked."

In California, Republican gubernatorial nominee Steve Hilton has proposed a COVID Accountability Commission to examine both Fauci and the state officials who implemented pandemic policy — a reminder that the accounting is not confined to red states.

What it means politically

Three separate strategists described the state-level push as the most durable form of accountability available, precisely because it does not depend on a single Justice Department's appetite. Fifty jurisdictions means fifty chances, and a federal pardon is a shield against exactly none of them.

It also means the story does not end with a news cycle. Investigations of this kind move on the timescale of subpoenas and grand juries, which is to say slowly, publicly, and through a midterm.

What's next

Uthmeier's office has not said whether it will convene a grand jury. Tuberville's threat is contingent on a November result that polling suggests is likely but not settled.

Fauci faces no criminal charges in any jurisdiction and denies wrongdoing. That remains true. What has changed is the number of places where the question can now be asked under oath — and the fact that in none of them does a signature from Joe Biden end the conversation.