Tech titan Elon Musk, who has been advising President-elect Donald Trump, doubled down on his calls to prosecute former chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“My pronouns are still prosecute/Fauci,” Musk wrote on X on Tuesday.
The post was a reply to a pro-Trump account with the handle “Insurrection Barbie.”
“Fauci retired from the federal bureaucracy as the highest paid government employee, with a $480,654 salary. His pension is estimated to cost 355,000 per year. His net worth is 11 million dollars. Not bad for a “public” servant,” Insurrection Barbie wrote.
“So it’s stunning that in addition to all of that, we spent $15 million on his security for the past two years. That’s $15 million dollars that nobody asked us if we wanted to fork over to America’s richest bureaucrat. Let’s not forget the royalties he made from the vaccine manufacturers for pushing that shot. How much was that again? Like 5 million dollars?” the post said.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder had called for Fauci’s prosecution in a similar post two years ago, saying Fauci “lied to Congress” and funded “research that killed millions of people.”
In early 2023, Fauci called Musk’s claims against him “insanity.”
“Prosecute me for what? What are they talking about? I wish I could figure out what the heck they’re talking about. I think they’re just going off the deep end,” Fauci said.
Musk – the richest person in the world with a net worth of $320.2 billion, according to Forbes – has a years-long history of attacking Fauci over his handling of the pandemic.
In 2020, he called panic over the pandemic “dumb.” After his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in 2022, Musk ended the platform’s ban on questioning the origins of COVID-19.
Fauci stepped down from his White House position and as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the end of 2022.
In June, he testified before a House panel investigating the virus’ origins.
Republican lawmakers grilled Fauci on claims that he funded research that created more dangerous, transmissible strains of the virus in a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected. Representatives also questioned whether Fauci was involved in a lab leak cover-up.
Fauci said the accusations were “absolutely false and simply preposterous.”
Musk has been one of President-elect Donald Trump’s biggest backers during this year’s race for the White House.
He donated more than $100 million to a pro-Trump PAC, rallied on Trump’s behalf in key swing states and swayed Americans to vote early with a $1 million-a-day sweepstakes.
Trump has committed to a pitch from Musk to create a government efficiency commission – and allow the billionaire to take the helm.
Last month, Musk said he would use a government position to eliminate regulatory blocks to approving fully autonomous EVs – one of the main challenges his company faces.
He also claimed he could save the government at least $2 trillion from the federal budget.