Marjorie Taylor Greene refuses to reveal whether she’s had Covid vaccine as she launches bid to fire Fauci

The congresswoman incorrectly suggested HIPAA protects her from being asked if she has been vaccinated

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene refused to reveal whether she has taken the coronavirus vaccine, justifying her silence by misunderstanding the point of HIPAA.

The controversial congresswoman made her comments during a press conference announcing her “Fire Fauci Act”, which is meant to force Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, out of his job.

When reporters asked if she has taken the coronavirus vaccine, she said: "I stand with the Americans that want their privacy, and HIPAA gives us rights to privacy."

Ms Greene has previously used HIPAA, which requires healthcare providers to protect the privacy of their patients, as an argument against vaccine requirements at businesses or in government.

“Vax records, along with ALL medical records are private due to HIPPA rights,” Ms Greene tweeted, both misspelling and misunderstanding the law.

HIPAA only applies to healthcare providers. This prevents insurance companies or hospitals from using patient data for any non-medical reason.

It does not prevent businesses from asking a person their vaccine status.

Earlier in the press briefing, Ms Greene announced her plans for a bill to reduce Dr Fauci's salary to $0 and to require the Senate to confirm someone to fill his position.

Republican support for Ms Greene's legislation grew in the days after a trove of Dr Fauci's emails were obtained by news organisations via a FOIA request.

Conservative media ran with the emails, claiming they proved Dr Fauci had foreknowledge of the danger posed by the coronavirus.

In reality, the emails showed the opposite; Dr Fauci appeared unsure of whether "gain-of-function" research had been done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was scrambling to find out more.

When pressed by Republican lawmakers if the US, under his direction, had funded any "gain-of-function" research on the virus, Dr Fauci said there was no American money spent. He also noted he could not account for anything done at the lab by non-US researchers.

Prior to the release of the emails, Ms Greene had four co-sponsors for her bill. After the emails that number climbed to nine.

The latest cosponsors to join the bill are Congressmen Mo Brooks, Greg Steube, Buddy Carter, Bob Good and Matt Gaetz.

Despite the increased interest in her bill, the legislation is extremely unlikely to pass through the Democrat-controlled House and Senate.

In addition to her new legislation, Ms Greene has also been busy learning, at the age of 47, that the Holocaust was bad and comparing it to having to wearing a piece of cloth over one’s nose and mouth was insensitive.

She gave a press conference on Monday explaining that she visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC and then apologised for her wildly inaccurate analogies comparing patches used to identify Jews by Nazis to face masks worn to stop the spread of Covid.

“There are words that I have said, remarks that I’ve made that I know are offensive, and for that I’d like to apologize,” she said.