The House Oversight Committee chairman added, "Kids couldn't be in school because of the six-foot social distancing requirements that Dr. Fauci championed."

The contentious June 3 hearing marked the first time that Fauci publicly testified at a congressional hearing since his retirement from the federal government, which the public health expert, now 83, joined in the late 1960s.

During most of his years in government, Fauci was hardly a controversial figure on the right. In fact, he worked closely with several Republican administrations — including those of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. And the younger President Bush awarded Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 for his AIDS-related work.

But during the COVID-19 pandemic, many MAGA Republicans became deeply resentful of Fauci. The native New Yorker testified, on June 3, that he became the target of death threats.

Comer also attacked Fauci during an early June appearance on Newsmax TV — a cable news outlet that prides itself on being to the right of Fox News and Fox Business — and said he hopes there will be a criminal investigation of him.

Comer told Newsmax, "Hopefully, we can take his words today and continue to try to gather evidence and take steps to try to hold him in criminal wrongdoing because I believe that the majority of Americans realize that Dr. Fauci made costly mistakes, he's lied about them, and he's tried to cover it up."