SPECIAL REPORT: Fauci Invokes the Fifth 100+ Times as Rand Paul Escalates COVID-19 Origins Inquiry
The former NIAID director refused 15 questions as a Senate panel weighed contempt, reopening fights over Wuhan research, his Biden pardon and Congress’ subpoena power.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination over 100 times Wednesday and refused to answer questions before a Senate committee investigating the government’s handling of COVID-19 and the pandemic’s unresolved origin.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, accused Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky of conducting an “unhinged” effort to send him to prison.
“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 in his opening statement at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.
Fauci gave a Fifth Amendment response to each of Paul’s 15 questions. The protection applies to witnesses in congressional investigations when compelled answers could directly incriminate them or provide a link in a potential criminal case.
Paul, the committee’s chairman, argued that Fauci could not invoke the amendment because former President Joe Biden had pardoned him for federal offenses connected to his government service and the pandemic response. Paul said the pardon offered no protection from prosecution for conduct after it was issued, including false statements made during Wednesday’s hearing.
Biden’s pardon warrant, signed Jan. 19, 2025, covers potential federal offenses committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through the date of the pardon in connection with Fauci’s work as NIAID director, his COVID-19 responsibilities and his service as Biden’s chief medical adviser. It does not cover subsequent conduct.
“The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so. It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today,” Paul said.
A contempt proceeding would require additional congressional action. A valid Fifth Amendment claim can defeat a contempt allegation, and Congress can pursue a court order compelling testimony under a grant of immunity. Those competing claims place Fauci’s refusal, the scope of Biden’s pardon and Paul’s threatened response at the center of a potential legal fight.
Fauci ran NIAID from 1984 through 2022 and became the most recognizable federal official in the U.S. pandemic response. He has remained a target of President Donald Trump and conservative lawmakers who dispute his public-health recommendations and his testimony about federally funded coronavirus research.
Trump wrote on social media before the hearing: “His ideas were CRAZY!”
Paul ordered one of Fauci’s lawyers removed from the hearing room after the lawyer repeatedly tried to speak without being recognized.
Fauci attorney David Schertler described Paul’s investigation as “an obsessive vendetta” and said the senator’s accusations “are false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”
Schertler traced the conflict to a combative 2021 exchange between Fauci and Paul and accused the senator of pursuing “an intense and seemingly pathological course of retribution, revenge and obsession.”
Prosecution Threats Define the Hearing
Paul has spent years accusing Fauci of lying to Congress about whether the National Institutes of Health funded “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan, China. He also alleges that Fauci helped conceal information pointing toward a laboratory origin for COVID-19.
Fauci denies both accusations and maintains that his congressional testimony has been truthful.
“Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me,” Fauci said, “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 that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”
“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” Fauci said.
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s top Democrat, said the inquiry had been structured to support conclusions reached before Fauci entered the hearing room.
“This hearing appears to be a culmination of months of biased and selected efforts by the majority, under the guise of a committee investigation, to basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago,” Peters said.
“It’s not just what we investigate that matters, but how we conduct that investigation that also matters. One-sided investigations designed to validate predetermined conclusions do not serve the American people, who sent us to actually uncover the truth and to solve problems.”
Gain-of-function is a broad scientific term for research that gives an organism a new or enhanced capability. In pathogen studies, it can include experiments that increase transmissibility, virulence or resistance. Researchers and policymakers have used different definitions for routine biological modification and the narrower category of work capable of creating enhanced pandemic threats.
That distinction drives the dispute. Paul applies a broader definition to experiments supported through an NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which subcontracted some work to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci says the experiments did not meet the government’s formal regulatory definition for enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research. In 2024 congressional testimony, Fauci said the definition he used was a codified standard established independently of him.
COVID-19’s Origin Remains Unresolved
No government or scientific body has established the pandemic’s origin conclusively.
A World Health Organization assessment released in 2025 found that the weight of available evidence supported transmission from animals to humans. The group said a laboratory incident could not be confirmed or eliminated because China had not provided requested viral sequences, laboratory records, biosafety information and animal-market data.
The FBI has assessed that a laboratory-associated incident in Wuhan probably caused the pandemic. China said the claim had “no credibility whatsoever.”
The CIA shifted its position in January 2025 and judged a research-related origin more likely than natural transmission. The agency assigned the conclusion “low confidence” and said both explanations remained plausible. Four other U.S. intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council previously favored natural transmission, reflecting the intelligence community’s continuing division.
The dispute matters beyond Fauci’s testimony. Establishing whether the virus entered humans through an infected animal or a laboratory incident would shape international biosafety standards, federal research oversight and preparations for future pandemics.
Paul released a 1,141-page collection of Fauci’s pandemic-era diary entries before the hearing. The entries run from December 2019 through December 2022 and document meetings, telephone calls, media appearances, policy discussions and Fauci’s assessments of other officials.
“Many entries in Fauci’s daily historical account completely undermine the official narrative that Fauci and other public health officials espoused,” Paul said in a statement accompanying the release.
A fact-check supplied by a Fauci representative said the entries were consistent with his public positions. Fauci has publicly supported further investigation of both origin theories and said the evidence he had reviewed favored natural transmission. An NIH timeline records Fauci saying in 2023 that he saw no data establishing a laboratory leak and remained open to the possibility.
Diary Release Expands the Public Record
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime Fauci critic and prominent opponent of vaccines, said he found the diary material on government servers and turned it over to Paul. Kennedy and Paul contend that Biden’s pardon would not shield Fauci from a perjury or false-statement charge arising from new testimony.
The entries devote substantial space to Fauci’s television appearances, interviews and sudden prominence during the pandemic. They also record conversations about asymptomatic transmission, China’s limited disclosure of outbreak information, disagreements within the Trump administration and early uncertainty about the virus’s origin.
A review provided by Fauci’s representative said his positions in the diary matched his statements at the time. The entries show that he discussed the possibility of a laboratory origin with other scientists in early 2020 and later supported additional investigation when the theory gained renewed attention.
The Trump administration has made high-risk biological research a separate policy priority. A 2025 executive order directed agencies to end federal support for “dangerous gain-of-function” research in countries of concern and suspend other covered projects pending tighter oversight. The administration announced additional oversight rules Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors added another element to the political and legal environment surrounding Fauci when a grand jury indicted former NIAID adviser David Morens in April.
Morens is charged with conspiracy, destruction or falsification of records and concealment of federal records. Prosecutors allege that he used a private email account to evade public-records requests involving coronavirus grants and COVID-19’s origin. Morens is presumed innocent unless proved guilty. Fauci was not charged.
Biden said he pardoned Fauci to protect a longtime public servant from “unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions,” according to his official statement preserved in the government record.
Wednesday’s hearing produced no new testimony about the NIH grants, the Wuhan research or the origin of COVID-19. It established the next point of conflict: whether Congress will accept Fauci’s Fifth Amendment claim or pursue contempt proceedings against the former official who led the nation’s infectious-disease agency for nearly four decades.
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Rand Paul is a crank. I hate to agree with Joebobmarkwaynejimmyjohnlarrygary Mullin, but I think his neighbor had good reason to lose his shit on this shithead.
How much more ludicrous does Rand Paul plan to be? Dr. Fauci's face belongs with the four on Mount Rushmore than any president since Teddy. FDR belongs there but there's not enough rock, apparently. If Rand Paul want to find the silliest, least effective lickspittle in our Government, he himself Rand Paul has nudged aside BillyJimmyBobBubbuh Mullin.