'Moron' moment boomerangs on Fauci as GOP senator introduces bill targeting top doc's finances

Kansas GOP Senator Roger Marshall is planning to introduce the "FAUCI Act" following an uncomfortable back-and-forth with the NIAID director at a Senate hearing earlier this week.

The Financial Accountability for Uniquely Compensated Individuals Act will, if passed, will require the website of the Office of Government Ethics to provide the financial records of government administrators like Fauci, in addition to a list of government officials whose financial records have not been publicly disclosed.

Marshall introduced the idea following a moment during Fauci’s testimony when the doctor was caught on a hot mic calling the Kansas senator a "moron" for asking about his financial records.

"Yes or no, would you be willing to submit to Congress and the public financial disclosures that includes your past and current investments? Our office cannot find them," Marshall asked Fauci on Tuesday.

"My financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been so for the last 37 years or so. All you  have to do is ask for it ... You’re so misinformed, it’s extraordinary," Fauci responded.

Liz Essley Whyte, a reporter with the Center for Public Integrity – a journalism nonprofit – found that it is possible to find copies of Fauci’s financial disclosures, though not as easy as the White House Chief Medical Adviser to the president made it sound. Whyte wrote that her quest to get her hands on Fauci’s 2019 disclosure forms was something of a goose chase around various government offices.

"The NIH also chose to give the disclosure to me under the Freedom of Information Act, which they didn’t need to do and caused the document to be partially redacted," she wrote.