U.S. Senate committee votes to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt

Dr. Anthony Fauci was held in contempt of Congress on Thursday by a Republican-led Senate committee, just over a week after the longtime federal health official invoked the Fifth Amendment, declining to answer questions about his guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauci, 85, said last week the decision to not answer questions pained him, but that he was acting on the advice of his counsel. The right to plead the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination is protected under the U.S. Constitution under most circumstances.

Fauci made at least 20 appearances before congressional committees after the emergence of the coronavirus, and his lawyers argued he had already appeared well past his retirement in mid-2024, with no substantial COVID-19 developments since then.

More pointedly, his team cited threats before the hearing by committee chair Sen. Rand Paul and others, that Fauci faced possible prosecution if he perjured himself.

“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,'” Fauci said in a brief opening statement last week.

David Schertler, a lawyer for Fauci who was ejected by Paul in last week’s contentious hearing, said Thursday that if comes up for a full chamber vote, the “Senate should reject Senator Paul’s meritless and politically motivated contempt resolution.”

“Today’s partisan committee vote is a crude political stunt intended to punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights,” Schertler said in a statement.

But Paul said he intends to send the referral directly to the Justice Department, rather than to the full Senate first, despite Democratic questions over whether that would be legal.

Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro — longtime advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump — each served prison sentences of about four months in 2024 after contempt findings from a Democratic-led committee for refusing to appear before a House of Representatives panel examining the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The Bannon and Navarro matters were each voted on by the entire House membership after committee recommendations.

While the U.S. Justice Department is not duty bound to follow a criminal referral from Congress, Democrats have accused the department in Trump’s second term of pursuing politically motivated prosecutions.

Another federal health official, Dr. David Morens, was indicted earlier this year, accused of concealing federal records during the pandemic.

Controversial pardon

Paul, trained as an ophthalmologist, has helped lead the charge against Fauci for six years. The first U.S. senator to contract the coronavirus, Paul has questioned nearly everything about COVID-19 from its inception, from masking to excess death totals.

The Kentucky Republican also fended off criticism of his belated disclosure, by congressional rules, that his wife in February 2020 had invested in Gilead, maker of Remdesivir, which was often used as a COVID-19 treatment after previously being given to some hepatitis C patients.

Dr. Anthony Fauci declined to answer questions from senators about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic after being subpoenaed by the homeland security committee led by Sen. Rand Paul.

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.

“We are voting on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a sweeping pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence,” Paul said Thursday.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, and other Democrats said holding Fauci in contempt would set a bad precedent. Blumenthal pointed out that Trump pleaded the Fifth hundreds of times during a deposition in New York state between the presidencies.

Ongoing debate in U.S.

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

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.

Fauci has served as a lightning rod and frequent target of ire among Republicans after he served as Trump’s chief medical adviser in 2020, taking on a more prominent public-facing role than the officials who were then at the helm of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control. 

To supporters, Fauci has been a provider 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.

Republicans have accused Fauci of lying and evasiveness with respect to statements he made in 2020 regarding masks, distancing, the emerging COVID vaccines and the origins of the virus. They’ve accused the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of imperiousness, with Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin on Thursday derisively referring to him to as “Saint Fauci.”

Fauci and his defenders have said that any shifting statements were made in the face of an unknown, rapidly evolving virus, and that any mistakes were made on a good-faith basis.

Paul in his opening statement last week 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.

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.

The National Institutes of Health, where NIAID is housed, 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 been adamant that his government institute didn’t directly fund risky gain-of-function research, and that it would be “molecularly impossible” for the work being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to be the original source of the virus. 

In a public letter weeks ago, 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 to stop these witch-hunts.”