Dr. Anthony Fauci invokes 5th Amendment, declining to answer questions at Senate hearing

Dr. Anthony Fauci invokes 5th Amendment, declining to answer questions at Senate hearing

Fauci, 85, had made several previous congressional appearances clashing with Sen. Rand Paul

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from senators in a Republican-led committee hearing about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauci said it pained him to do so, but that he was acting on the advice of his counsel. The move injects new drama into the lingering tensions between Fauci and Republican lawmakers over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and accusations he lied about the origins of COVID-19, which he denies.

Fauci was subpoenaed by the Senate's homeland security committee led by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has long had a fraught relationship with the now-retired infectious-disease expert. Fauci, 85, was making at least his 20th appearance before a congressional committee since the emergence of the coronavirus.

In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has an "obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution."

"The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.'"

Debate over presidential pardon

Fauci's decision to invoke the Fifth, at least for now, sidesteps calls for his prosecution. Paul had warned in a social media post earlier this week of potential consequences if he was caught lying at Wednesday's hearing.

Fauci received what was viewed as a somewhat unprecedented pardon from then-president Joe Biden, covering the immunologist's activities in government between 2014 and Biden's last day in office in January 2025. Republicans contended that the pardon wouldn't apply to Wednesday's hearing.

The U.S., despite a reputation for public health and medical research excellence, suffered many more COVID-19 deaths overall and on a per capita basis — more than 1.2 million people at last comprehensive count — than other G7 countries.

The U.S. has also seen more intense partisan divides over the years about the origins and handling of the pandemic, which was declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020.

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Fauci, who helped lead the nation's COVID-19 response as medical adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump in his first administration, has become a target of Republican frustrations.

Ahead of the hearing, Trump wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt Fauci made bad decisions on masks, shutdowns and other issues.

To supporters, Fauci has been an emblem of sound scientific expertise. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush for his work on HIV/AIDS research from its earliest days of discovery in the 1980s to helping implement the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, considered one of the most impactful U.S. global health initiatives of all time.

Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's personal diary covering the pandemic years, discovered on government computers by the Health and Human Services department and provided by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Some of the diary entries — including Fauci's uncertainty in the pandemic's earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created — already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.

Other diary entries appeared designed to embarrass Fauci, as he appeared bemused in his writings by his sudden fame and sometimes awed by encounters with celebrities after the coronavirus emerged.

"I think today's hearing does real damage," said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the panel. "It's attempting to turn one person into the scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across both the Trump and the Biden administration were responsible for handling."

"This is only going to, unfortunately, deter other scientific experts from public service," Peters added, alluding to threats Fauci has received that have required him to have security protection for his family.

Paul in his opening statement sought to build the case that Fauci helped produce the COVID-19 pandemic by approving funding of research on virus mutations and then covered up his complicity.

"Instead of an apology, you have for years avoided responsibility," Paul said.

Paul later had one of Fauci's lawyers, David Schertler, ejected from the hearing.

In a statement, Schertler said Paul's accusations are "false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable."

In a public letter, more than 150 infectious-disease experts and other scientists wrote that "no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges" and that they are "urging our elected representatives in Congress stop these witch-hunts."

Angela Rasmussen, the U.S.-born virologist who works at the University of Saskatchewan, referred to it in a social media trial as a "show trial" and a waste of taxpayer money.

Many scientists believe the COVID-19 virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, but Paul and many Republicans contend the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory.

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Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there's more evidence supporting COVID-19's natural origins.

The National Institutes of Health for years gave grants to a New York non-profit called EcoHealth Alliance, which used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats.

Fauci has previously stressed, including in a CBC interview, that it was "molecularly impossible" for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.