Legal experts led the criticism of President Donald Trump’s White House on Friday after it confirmed it would not allow Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify before a House panel on the United States’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic next week.
White House spokesman Judd Deere claimed in a statement that the appearance of the infectious disease expert, who is a prominent member of Trump’s coronavirus task force, on Wednesday, May 6, would be “counterproductive.”
Instead, Fauci is expected to testify at a Senate Health Committee hearing the following week, on May 12, reported NBC News. The House is controlled by the Democrats, while the Senate has a Republican majority.
Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe described the move as “outrageous.”
Maya Wiley, who served as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s chief counsel, called it “unconstitutional.”
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner called it “a pathetic, transparent attempt to keep a lid on Trump’s incompetence” and widely criticized handling of the pandemic, which has now killed more than 64,000 people nationwide.
Conservative commentator Bill Kristol, veteran journalist Dan Rather and activist and actor Alyssa Milano also chimed in with criticism:
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