Dr. Anthony Fauci faces potential contempt of Congress after invoking the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer questions from senators Wednesday about his conduct during the COVID-19 pandemic, how the virus emerged and whether the U.S. response — which he led — was justified.
Dr. Fauci cited his right to remain silent, saying he feared the hearing was an attempt to trap him into saying something that would lead to his prosecution. The hearing was called by Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“On the advice of counsel, I invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Dr. Fauci told the committee more than 100 times, refusing to answer any of the questions posed by either Democrats or Republicans.
Mr. Paul said he would hold a vote in committee next week to recommend that the Senate find Dr. Fauci in contempt.
Mr. Paul, a trained physician, has waged a years-long battle with Dr. Fauci — who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022 — over COVID-19’s origins and the potential dangers of the vaccines the U.S. rushed to approve for treatment.
Dr. Fauci pointed out that Mr. Paul has previously called for his prosecution and, most recently, released years of unredacted entries from Dr. Fauci’s diary, all “aimed at embarrassing” him.
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“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ’behind bars,’” said Dr. Fauci, who is now retired from government service.
Mr. Paul had compelled Dr. Fauci’s appearance by subpoena.
The senator said he wanted answers on whether the U.S. funded risky research at the Wuhan, China, virus lab at the center of suspicion over the origin of SARS-CoV-2. He also said he wanted to explore the decision-making in the U.S. that led to the rejection of some treatments while pushing for the quick deployment of experimental vaccines.
President Biden granted Dr. Fauci a preemptive pardon covering federal offenses from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 20, 2025, related to his government service.
Mr. Paul said that Mr. Biden’s pardon should have cleared Dr. Fauci to speak to the committee. Dr. Fauci disagreed.
Tensions surged to the point that one of Dr. Fauci’s attorneys was removed from the hearing room for trying to speak without being recognized by the committee.
SEE ALSO: Trump says he warned Biden about Fauci, was ignored
Mr. Paul said he rejected Dr. Fauci’s reasoning behind invoking his right to remain silent and said the committee would not let the matter drop.
“It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today,” Mr. Paul said.
Dr. Fauci did make an opening statement before refusing to answer questions. Mr. Paul said that constituted a waiver of Dr. Fauci’s right to remain silent.
Mr. Paul repeatedly tried to order Dr. Fauci to speak, to no avail.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said Dr. Fauci’s answers were “completely inadequate” and contempt was “an option that ought to be available.”
“What he did today in front of that committee was inexcusable,” Mr. Thune said.
The lack of answers did not deter Republicans from attempting to press Dr. Fauci.
Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, said Dr. Fauci committed a crime by soliciting cash awards from the U.S. government during the pandemic — and recruiting his official staff, paid through taxpayer dollars, to assist in the effort.
He received more than $1 million in awards, the senator said, despite a law that prohibits using federal resources to solicit awards.
“A million people dead, you’re getting rich. A million people dead, you’re using federal employees to get cash awards for you. A million people dead, and you’re here taking the Fifth,” Mr. Hawley said.
Mr. Paul also suggested Dr. Fauci may have destroyed government documents that should have been preserved under federal law.
Dr. Fauci cited his Fifth Amendment right in refusing to respond to the accusation.
Democrats, meanwhile, decried the hearing as a distraction from current serious health threats, such as growing measles cases and an ongoing food-borne illness outbreak, and from what they said was a dangerous lack of responses from the Trump administration.
“I fear the intent of this hearing is only meant to further a purely partisan agenda, and it will not make Americans safer,” said Sen. Gary Peters, Michigan Democrat, the top Democrat on the panel.
Dr. Fauci became the face of the U.S. effort to combat the virus.
He was part of President Trump’s task force, though tensions quickly built between the two men as Mr. Trump pushed for a faster reopening of the country after the initial shutdowns, while Dr. Fauci grew frustrated with the mercurial president and his team.
In the diary released by Mr. Paul, Dr. Fauci called Mr. Trump “embarrassing” and “a very dangerous man.”
After Mr. Trump left the White House, Mr. Biden named Dr. Fauci as chief medical adviser.
His ups and downs with the two politically divergent presidents made Dr. Fauci a polarizing figure. Mr. Trump’s supporters largely disdain him as having made the pandemic recovery worse, while Mr. Trump’s critics have lionized him as a crucial voice in saving lives.
Dr. Fauci’s repeated insistence that the virus most likely spilled over from animals has also been a major point of controversy. Some U.S. agencies, including the FBI, say the more likely source is a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provided funding to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization, which in turn funded research at the Wuhan lab on bat coronaviruses.
Dr. Fauci has said that the research was not a dangerous gain-of-function experiment. Other experts disagree.
Mr. Paul said he wished Dr. Fauci had been willing to speak to the country Wednesday and to acknowledge mistakes in the country’s more draconian responses to the pandemic.
“I would have been willing to accept an apology today,” he said.
He told Dr. Fauci he would have to suffer from his own “hubris” and question whether millions of people died “as the result of his experiments, or experiments he approved.”
• Lindsey McPherson contributed to this report.
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