Anthony Fauci, the top COVID-19 advisor to United States President Joe Biden, took on Texas Senator Ted Cruz and blasted him for suggesting that Fauci should be probed for his statements on the pandemic. The jab included a reference to the January 6 riots. 

“I should be prosecuted? What happened on January 6, senator?” Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’.

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It was a reference to the violent storming of the United States Capitol complex by supporters of then-President Donald Trump that was stoked as Cruz helped lead GOP objections to Congress’ certifying the 2020 Presidential election results.  

Multiple lawmakers from the Republican party, including Cruz and Kentucky’s Rand Paul, alleged that Fauci presented lies to the United States Congress when he denied that the National Institutes of Health funded the “gain of function” research at a virology lab in China’s Wuhan.

The research included boosting a virus in a lab to learn more about the impact it would have in the real world, according to reports from Associated Press. 

United States Attorney General Merrick Garland was requested to appoint a special prosecutor to probe the statements delivered by Fauci in May this year.

The two Republican lawmakers say a letter from NIH to Congress contradicts what Fauci said. However, no clear evidence or scientific consensus exists that “gain of function” research was funded by the health research department, and there is no link of American-funded research to the emergence of COVID-19.

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NIH has repeatedly maintained that its funding did not go to such research involving boosting the infectivity and lethality of a pathogen, according to reports from Associated Press.

Fauci, while speaking to CBS, was asked if he is being used as a scapegoat to divert attention from the former President, he said, “of course, you have to be asleep not to figure that one out.”