Clay Fuller has been a member of Congress since April 2026. Before that he was the district attorney for Georgia's Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, and before that a judge advocate in the Air Force. He is a lawyer who spent years in courtrooms.

Here is what he posted on July 30, 2026, about a private citizen:

"Americans died. Businesses were bankrupted. Families were destroyed. All because Anthony Fauci lied. Now, he's pleading the fifth. Prosecute him. Jail him. Make an example out of Fauci so this never happens again."

Read that last sentence again slowly. Make an example out of a named person is not a description of justice. It is a description of a show trial — a proceeding whose purpose is the message it sends, not the verdict it reaches.

And this was not a one-off. Over roughly two months, Fuller demanded that Fauci be imprisoned at least five separate times.

Five times in two months

• June 2, 2026, attached to a story about the EPA ending animal testing: "Our pets are safe thanks to President Trump and Lee Zeldin. Fauci should be in jail!"
• June 22, 2026, the entire post: "Fauci should be in jail."
• July 28, 2026: "Dr. Fauci should be writing his next journal entry from a prison cell."
• July 29, 2026: "Fauci should be in jail for the lies he perpetrated on the American people. His refusal to answer basic questions today is sickening, and he should be held in contempt!"
• July 30, 2026: the "make an example" post above.

The first one is worth sitting with. A federal agency announced it was phasing out animal testing, and a sitting congressman's reaction was that a specific 85-year-old man should be in prison. There is no connection between those two things. The prison line is just what he says.

The Fifth Amendment is not evidence

The July 29 and July 30 posts both key off the same event: Anthony Fauci appeared under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 100 times.

We wrote about that hearing. Senators asked him what day of the week it was and what color his tie was. One held up an old magazine cover. The chairman had Fauci's lawyer removed from the room by security.

Fuller's response was to treat the silence itself as the crime — "his refusal to answer basic questions today is sickening."

Every American who has ever watched a courtroom drama knows the rule Fuller is breaking here. In Griffin v. California, decided April 28, 1965, the Supreme Court held that the Fifth Amendment "forbids either comment by the prosecution on the accused's silence or instructions by the court that such silence is evidence of guilt." Juries are instructed on this. Prosecutors get convictions thrown out over it.

Clay Fuller knows this better than almost anyone else in Congress. He was a district attorney. His job, for years, was to prove cases without leaning on a defendant's silence, because leaning on it is not allowed.

He is doing it anyway, in public, for applause.

He is not the only one, and that is the problem

This has become a routine. Tommy Tuberville, running for governor of Alabama, said he would try to put Fauci in an Alabama prison if elected. Rich McCormick, another Georgia Republican, revived a bill to bar federal employees from government work if they refuse to answer questions from Congress — a rule the Supreme Court struck down in 1968.

Fuller's version is the bluntest of the three, because he skipped the bill and went straight to the sentence: prosecute him, jail him, make an example out of him.

Notice what's missing from all five posts. There is no allegation of a specific federal crime. There is no statute. There is no evidence offered. There is a man's name and a demand that he be imprisoned, repeated until it becomes background noise.

Lying to Congress is already a federal crime. So is contempt of Congress. Prosecutors have every tool they need for a witness who actually breaks the law, and Sen. Rand Paul said at the hearing that his committee would vote on holding Fauci in contempt — while admitting, "all I can do is recommend the prosecution. I can't initiate prosecution." Fuller isn't asking for any of that. He's asking for an example.

Meanwhile, in Northwest Georgia

Fuller represents Georgia's 14th District. He arrived in Congress after the votes that cut more than a trillion dollars from health care and food assistance — but he has publicly celebrated the law that did it, posting that the "One Big Beautiful Bill is paying off big."

Groceries, premiums, and rent in Northwest Georgia are what they are. What the district's congressman is producing, over and over, is a demand that one retired scientist be locked up.

A prosecutor who wants to make an example out of somebody has stopped thinking about the law and started thinking about the audience. We deserve better.

Source

Fuller's own posts on X, @Clay4MainStreet and @RepClayFuller, June–July 2026, linked individually above. Photo: Getty Images via Jewish Insider.