Senate panel moves toward contempt vote against Fauci

Senate Republicans are preparing to vote on whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after the retired federal health official refused to answer questions at a contentious hearing last week, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is set to consider the measure Thursday. Fauci, 85, helped lead the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and formerly served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He has been a frequent target of Republican criticism over pandemic policy and the origins of Covid-19, and has repeatedly clashed with the committee’s chairman, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

In last week’s hearing, Fauci said he was invoking the Fifth Amendment on the advice of his attorneys because he believed Republicans were trying to elicit testimony that could be used against him. He accused Paul of having “an unhinged obsession” with him and said the hearing appeared designed to trap him into lying under oath.

“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,” Fauci said, “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 also said he had answered many of the committee’s questions in previous testimony. In remarks reported by NBC News, he said Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution,” his “repeated slanderous comments” and his public release of Fauci’s unredacted personal diary led him to conclude that the hearing was meant to get him to say “something, anything” that could support Paul’s stated desire to see him “behind bars.”

Paul has argued that Fauci cannot rely on the Fifth Amendment because then-President Joe Biden gave him a preemptive pardon for conduct between 2014 and January 2025. Paul also contends that Fauci waived the right by giving an opening statement on matters relevant to the committee’s inquiry.

“I ordered him to answer and warned him about contempt, yet he still refused,” Paul said in a Tuesday statement. “That is obstruction of a congressional investigation. The Committee will act accordingly.”

Paul has accused Fauci of lying to Congress and destroying records, allegations Fauci and his lawyers have denied. Asked on MS NOW whether Fauci should go to prison, Paul said it was “a good question,” adding that people who lie to Congress should be charged with a felony and, if convicted, jailed.

Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, said last week that Paul’s “public crusade against Dr. Fauci can only be described as an obsessive vendetta.”

Abbe Smith, a Georgetown Law professor, told NBC News that Republicans’ argument that Fauci could not invoke the Fifth Amendment because of the pardon “did not seem correct.” She said the scope of preemptive pardons is legally uncertain and that she would have advised Fauci to assert the Fifth if she were his defense counsel. She also called the claim that Fauci waived the right through his opening statement “ultimately specious,” saying he was not answering specific allegations and then refusing further questioning.

If the committee approves the contempt resolution, it could refer the matter to the Justice Department or ask Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to hold a full Senate vote. If prosecutors pursue the case, the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington would need to seek an indictment from a grand jury. NPR reported that contempt-of-Congress prosecutions are rare, though former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were imprisoned on such charges during the Biden administration.