Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment at Senate Covid hearing

Dr. Anthony Fauci refused to answer senators’ questions Wednesday about the origins of Covid-19 and the government’s pandemic response, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a Senate hearing led by one of his fiercest critics, Sen. Rand Paul.

The decision disrupted what was expected to be a contentious appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Fauci, the former longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in prepared remarks that he was acting on the advice of his attorneys because he believed Republicans could try to use his testimony to pursue a perjury case against him.

“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, 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.

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he continued. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

Paul, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the committee, has repeatedly accused Fauci of lying to Congress, an allegation Fauci has denied. Ahead of the hearing, Paul raised the possibility that Fauci could face prosecution if he lied under oath.

“There’s no risk to perjury if you tell the truth,” Paul told a reporter Tuesday. “In fact, he can even admit to not telling the truth in the past. He can admit destroying records. He can admit to, you know not adequately presenting both sides of equations, which isn’t really a crime. He can admit to anything. The only thing he can’t do is lie again.”

During questioning, Paul pointed to a red folder on Fauci’s table that he said contained a copy of a federal law making it a crime for a subpoenaed witness to refuse to answer questions pertinent to an inquiry. “Do you have that in front of you?” Paul asked. Fauci again declined to answer, citing the Fifth Amendment.

“Let the record show that the witness has refused to answer whether there’s a folder in front of him based on his Fifth Amendment right,” Paul said.

The hearing focused on questions about Covid-19’s origins, including whether the virus could have emerged from a laboratory leak. Paul has argued that it was dangerous for Fauci’s agency to fund research in Wuhan, China, and has said Fauci had a conflict of interest in leading the pandemic response while his agency was connected to such research. He has also released more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s personal diary from the pandemic years, saying the entries show discrepancies between Fauci’s private views and public statements.

“The American people deserve answers,” Paul said in opening remarks, according to The Guardian. “Frankly, the American people deserve an apology.”

Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s top Democrat, said inquiry into risky research and Covid’s origins is legitimate, but he criticized the hearing as partisan. He said Paul had called for Fauci to be arrested and fired, used Fauci to fundraise and sell his book, and blocked Democrats from the inquiry “in order to support his pre-drawn conclusions.”

“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,” Peters said. Paul called the claim that Democrats were excluded “categorically false” and said Democrats were uninterested in participating.

Former President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Fauci in the final hours of his administration. Fauci said at the time that he had been “the subject of politically motivated threats of investigation and prosecution” and that he had “committed no crime.” Paul said earlier this week that he did not know whether the pardon would be challenged.