TMZ’s Reaction to the Murder of Charlie Kirk Resurfaces Amid Harvey Levin’s Heartbreak Over the Fauci Senate Grilling

TMZ honcho Harvey Levin was among the first to report on Charlie Kirk's assassination last September.

The reaction from his staff caught live on air caused immediate outrage.

Now the Internet can’t believe the shocking contrast as the same TV host just had a blubbering meltdown over Anthony Fauci humiliating himself during an explosive Senate grilling this past week.

Levin's Two Reactions Don't Match

Last September, TMZ staff were caught laughing and clapping on a livestream in the middle of announcing that Charlie Kirk had been shot to death.

Levin appeared on camera almost immediately, visibly shaken, insisting the outburst came from an unrelated car chase playing on a screen elsewhere in the building.

"No one was laughing at the Charlie Kirk tragedy," Levin told viewers that day.

That was background noise picked up on an open livestream, and Levin still rushed out an apology within hours.

Compare that to what Levin did this week, and the double standard writes itself.

This time Levin grabbed a camera on his own initiative to defend a man who wrote in his own diary that his private views on COVID clashed with what he told the public.

Fauci wasn't laughing in the background of someone else's tragedy – he built this one from the inside, then refused to answer for it under oath.

Fauci Took the Fifth 111 Times as Levin Cried Witch Hunt

Rand Paul hauled Fauci in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday to answer for gain-of-function funding, the Wuhan lab and nearly four decades of taxpayer-funded virology decisions.

Fauci answered with silence.

He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights 111 times, refusing even to confirm basic facts about his own testimony.

Paul promised a contempt vote for next week over Fauci's refusal to testify.

Fauci's own attorney interrupted the proceedings so many times that Capitol Police physically removed him from the room.

Senator Josh Hawley summed it up for the cameras: "Nothing says honesty like taking the Fifth, huh, doc?"

Levin insisted, "We are in a Senator Joseph McCarthy climate."

He praised Fauci as a devoted government scientist who saved countless lives and claimed the hearing existed for one reason only – to land Fauci in a jail cell.

Levin is an entertainment reporter, not a legal analyst, and it showed.

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Over at MS NOW, host Stephanie Ruhle had her own meltdown, telling viewers the hearing left her heartbroken.

Her correspondent Vaughn Hillyard went further, accusing Republicans of rewriting history for daring to ask a man who ran the nation's pandemic response to answer for it under oath.

Legal Experts Say Fauci's Own Pardon Guts His Fifth Amendment Defense

Here is the problem for Levin and Ruhle – Fauci already has a pardon.

Joe Biden issued him a sweeping preemptive pardon on his way out of the White House specifically to head off prosecution.

Constitutional attorney Ross Garber said that pardon guts the very defense Fauci used Wednesday, arguing a person who cannot be prosecuted has no reasonable fear of prosecution and therefore no valid Fifth Amendment claim.

Legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky told the Washington Examiner that Fauci can still be charged for lying today, pardon or not.

"He's being prosecuted for lying to the committee now," von Spakovsky said.

Von Spakovsky also noted a presidential pardon covers federal crimes only, leaving state prosecutors free to act if the statute of limitations allows it.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh reached the same bottom line in a 2024 analysis – once no government, state or federal, could realistically bring a case, the Fifth Amendment protection stops applying.

Paul made his own view of the obstruction clear at the hearing itself: "It's against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress."

None of that stopped Fauci from using his opening statement to accuse Paul of an unhealthy obsession with prosecuting him and to attack the senator's conduct as slanderous.

Fauci also declined to answer questions about a pulmonary infarction disclosed in his own diary, and he stayed silent when Ron Johnson pressed him on it.

The Pattern Democrats and Their Media Allies Refuse to Break

Fauci testified or briefed Congress more than 200 times over 38 years running the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

He chose silence the one time his own record was on the table under oath, with a pardon already in his pocket.

Harvey Levin and Stephanie Ruhle never bothered to check whether that pardon actually covers what Fauci refused to discuss – they just decided Rand Paul was the villain and said so on air.

Paul's contempt vote is scheduled for next week, and if it succeeds, the Justice Department will have to decide whether Fauci's pardon actually means what his media defenders think it means.

Sources:

• Emily Kopp, "Anthony Fauci Pleads The Fifth During Highly Anticipated Hearing," Daily Caller, July 29, 2026.
• Leena Nasir, "TMZ's Harvey Levin Fiercely Defends Fauci, Calling Senate Hearing A 'Witch Hunt,'" Daily Caller, July 29, 2026.
• Leena Nasir, "TMZ Apologizes For 'Tone Deaf Laughter' Amid Charlie Kirk Assassination Coverage," Daily Caller, September 2025.
• "Legal experts weigh Fauci's Fifth Amendment claim after pardon," Fox News, July 29, 2026.
• "Fauci's Fifth Amendment answers may test Biden pardon as GOP eyes contempt," Washington Examiner, July 29, 2026.
• "'Silence is admission': Legal analysts explain case for prosecuting Fauci despite Biden's pardon," Just The News, July 29, 2026.
• "MS NOW's Ruhle: Fauci Hearing Breaks My Heart – 'I Can't Believe We're Relitigating This,'" Breitbart, July 29, 2026.