(Washington Post) Anthony S. Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Senate hearing Wednesday where Republicans pressed the retired government scientist on whether he was sufficiently truthful in past testimony about the coronavirus pandemic.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), a longtime adversary of Fauci, concluded the nearly three-hour hearing by saying the committee is planning a vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.
Paul acknowledged to GOP colleagues that there are legal questions about whether Fauci could be held in contempt — citing President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardon of Fauci last year — but contended that Fauci should have just answered questions on Wednesday, even if it meant admitting to a past lie or other wrongdoing.
Fauci, who helped lead the nation’s pandemic response and frequently appeared before Congress during his 54-year government career, began the hearing by saying that it “pains me” to now invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination. But he alleged that Paul, who convened Wednesday’s hearing, was wrongly seeking to trap him in a misstep that could lead to perjury charges.
“Under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci said.
He subsequently declined to answer questions from Paul — who began the hearing by asking Fauci about the pandemic response and whether there was a folder in front of him on the table — and other lawmakers, invoking the Fifth dozens of times.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) peppered Fauci with basic questions, such as the day of the week and what color tie he was wearing. Fauci declined to answer those questions, too. At times, senators grew heated, with Hawley alternately using a mocking tone — repeatedly referring to Fauci as “doc” — and raising his voice to lace into him.
At one point, a Hawley staffer propped up an image of a magazine cover for which Fauci posed in September 2020. “You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar,” Hawley said.
Democrats, meanwhile, praised Fauci as a hero and thanked him for his work fighting infectious diseases.
Fauci’s lawyer alleged that Paul was fixated on Fauci after their clashes at the height of the pandemic — referring to a 2021 incident in which the two men traded accusations of lying — and that the senator’s sole purpose for the hearing was to punish Fauci and see him in prison.
“The accusations that Chairman Paul continues to propagate are false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable,” David Schertler, Fauci’s attorney, said in a statement.
In Paul’s opening statement, he repeated his past allegations that Fauci, a longtime leader at the National Institutes of Health, was involved in covering up the possibility that the coronavirus outbreak began with a lab leak in Wuhan, China. Paul has also repeatedly alleged that Fauci lied in past hearings about the NIH’s role funding coronavirus research in Wuhan before the pandemic began and has repeatedly blamed Fauci for millions of deaths related to the outbreak and said that the infectious-disease expert should be imprisoned.
Sen. Gary Peters (Michigan), the committee’s top Democrat, called Paul’s efforts biased. “One-sided investigations designed to validate predetermined conclusions do not serve the American people,” Peters said.
Fauci’s nonanswers frustrated Republican senators and led to complications of their own. After Fauci pleaded the Fifth to each of Paul’s opening questions, the senator warned the former official it was against the law to obstruct an investigation and threatened “repercussions” for Fauci’s unresponsiveness.
Fauci at Wednesday’s hearing. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post)
Schertler, seated at the table next to Fauci, asked to make a comment. Paul said Schertler was not recognized, criticized him for sitting at the table next to his client when he had been told not to and threatened to remove him. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) gestured for security.
“Another word, and you’re gone,” Paul said.
“Very well,” Schertler responded.
Peters said he would like to hear what Fauci’s attorney had to say. Paul again declined to recognize the attorney and accused him of disrupting the proceedings.
“Will you allow me to make a short statement?” Fauci’s attorney asked again. Paul called for security to remove him. “Buh-bye,” the attorney said as he picked up his briefcase and was escorted out.
Ahead of the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal records, including a diary that contained his unvarnished thoughts on President Donald Trump and other officials, saying that Fauci’s private comments conflicted with his public statements and testimony.
The 85-year-old Fauci, who last faced the Senate in September 2022 and retired from government later that year, has persistently denied Paul’s allegations and on Wednesday said that Paul’s decision to release his personal diary was “aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me” before the hearing. He also said that he has already spent days “answering questions about the very issues that are now the subject of this hearing,” referring to past appearances before Congress.
“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,’” Fauci said.
Fauci was preemptively pardoned by Biden before he left office, with Biden saying that Fauci and other officials receiving preemptive pardons had not committed wrongdoing but were at risk from the incoming Trump administration. Ahead of the hearing, Paul and other Republicans had said if Fauci lied to the Senate on Wednesday, it would fall outside the protections conveyed by Biden’s pardon.
Paul has insisted that scrutiny of Fauci is necessary.
Ahead of the hearing, Fauci’s allies dismissed Paul’s investigation as baseless, pointing to examples of Fauci publicly acknowledging the possibility that the virus leaked from a lab, beginning in early 2020.
“No credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges,” more than 150 scientists, physicians and other Fauci supporters wrote in an open letter released Tuesday. “These conspiracy theories have led to a five-year period of harassment and threats of violence directed at Dr. Fauci and his family.”
Infectious-disease experts have also insisted to Paul and other Republicans that while the NIH funded virus research in Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak was first detected in 2019, the work could not have sparked the pandemic.
But Paul and his allies appear to be winning the battle of public opinion.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents to a May 2025 Economist/YouGov poll said it was probably or definitely true that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, while 17 percent said that was probably or definitely false. Another 25 percent were unsure.
Trump and his White House have embraced the idea too, creating a website that calls a lab leak the “true” origin of the pandemic, without sharing any definitive proof.
Paul, who assumed control of the Senate’s government oversight panel in 2025 after Republicans won control of the chamber, has spent years investigating the origins of covid-19. Beginning in 2020, Paul has used congressional hearings to grill Fauci over that issue and his handling of the pandemic generally. Videos of their tense exchanges have circulated on social media.
Fauci, who last faced off with Paul publicly in 2022, has repeatedly denied accusations from the GOP senator and other Republicans. In a 2021 hearing, Fauci told Paul that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research” — a type of research involving the manipulation of viruses or other microbes — at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci in 2024 also battled GOP lawmakers at a House hearing, his most recent previous appearance in front of Congress, dismissing some of their allegations as “simply preposterous.”
In 2023, Paul published a book about what he called the “Great Covid Cover-Up” — featuring a photo of Fauci wearing a mask on the cover — and during the pandemic he solicited campaign donations through a website calling for Fauci to be fired.
Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Paul released a slew of documents that have been embarrassing for Fauci and created new complications for him. In one release, Paul published internal NIH emails that appear to show Fauci and his colleagues strategizing about how to win prizes during the pandemic, an issue that Republicans raised at the hearing.
