Defending himself against Senator Rand Paul's unrelenting and false attacks in a Senate Health Committee hearing on Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci told the Kentucky conspiracy-theory wielding Republican his attacks led to a heavily-armed man driving cross country to Washington, D.C. on a mission, the gunman said, "to kill Dr. Fauci."

Fauci accused Paul of using the "catastrophic epidemic for your political gain."

After multiple and unyielding attacks from Sen. Paul, Fauci was forced to defend himself, telling committee members, "the last time we had a committee or the time before, he was accusing me of being responsible for the death of four to five million people, which is really irresponsible."

"And I say, 'why is he doing that?' There are two reasons why that's really bad. The first is it distracts from what we're all trying to do here today, is get our arms around the epidemic and the pandemic that we're dealing with, not something imaginary."

"Number two, what happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue, is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there, and I have the life – threats upon my life, harassments of my family and my children with obscene phone calls, because people are lying about me. Now, you know, I guess you could say, 'well, that's the way it goes. I can take the hit.'"

"Well, it makes a difference because as some of you may know, just about three or four weeks ago, on December 21, a person was arrested, who was on their way from Sacramento, to Washington, D.C. at a speed stop in Iowa. And they asked – the police asked him where he was going, and he was going to Washington D.C. to kill Dr. Fauci. And they found in his car, an AR-15 and multiple magazines of ammunition, because he thinks that maybe I'm killing people. So I asked myself, 'Why would Senator want to do this?' So go to Rand Paul website, and you see 'Fire Dr. Fauci' with a little box that says 'contribute here.' You can do $5, $10, $20 $100. So you are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain."

Watch:

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet