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Fauci Repeatedly Invokes 5th Amendment 07/30 06:15
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday repeatedly invoked the
Fifth Amendment and declined to answer dozens of questions from senators in a
Republican-led committee hearing about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision, at least for now, shielded Fauci from answering questions that
could expose him to accusations of lying under oath. Though he received a
pardon in early 2025 from Democratic President Joe Biden, some Republicans
pursuing a yearslong campaign for his arrest had suggested he could still face
charges for any perjury committed during Wednesday's hearing.
The scientist, who helped lead the nation's COVID-19 response, was
subpoenaed to testify under oath by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who
has long had an antagonistic relationship with Fauci.
In response to angry, sometimes mocking questions from Republican senators,
Fauci declined to answer more than 100 times, injecting new drama into partisan
divides that have festered for years about the origins and handling of the
pandemic. Fauci himself has become a polarizing figure, even receiving death
threats that prompted him to seek security.
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 get me to say something, anything, that could
vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, 'behind
bars,'" Fauci said, adding that while it pained him to do so, he was following
his attorney's advice by taking the Fifth.
Paul, who has long argued that Fauci should be criminally investigated,
based on his belief that the scientist was dishonest in previous testimony to
Congress, announced that the committee will vote next week on whether to hold
Fauci in contempt for declining to answer questions.
He did not say whether he would push for a criminal contempt referral to
federal prosecutors or another charge. He also raised questions about whether
Fauci's pardon affects his eligibility for Fifth Amendment protections.
Republicans accuse Fauci of lying while Democrats say he didn't deserve that
In the combative hearing, Paul and other Republicans accused Fauci of lying
in earlier testimony about the coronavirus' origins, something the longtime
National Institutes of Health scientist has forcefully denied. Democrats called
the hearing a politically motivated attempt at entrapping Fauci and praised the
scientist for his work during the pandemic.
With Fauci declining to answer questions throughout, Paul dominated the
approximately three-hour hearing, listing a litany of accusations and detailed
questions.
"Today will be the capstone to Anthony Fauci's 40 years of abuse of power at
NIH," Paul said. "History will judge, but the facts as we now know them paint a
sordid tale of dishonesty, misjudgment and ultimately the hubris, the likes of
which the world has never seen."
In a heated moment during the hearing, Paul ejected Fauci's attorney, David
Schertler, from the room after he tried to speak without being recognized. In a
statement, Schertler said the removal was "outrageous and demonstrates the
completely biased and baseless nature of this proceeding." In another
statement, he called Paul's accusations about Fauci "false and disgraceful."
Democratic senators praised Fauci and said he didn't deserve the treatment
he was getting.
"This hearing is designed to entrap you," said Sen. Maggie Hassan of New
Hampshire.
Paul released some of Fauci's diary
Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's
personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early
efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul said on social media that
what Fauci "wrote privately and what he told the country are two different
stories."
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.
But they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for
mask mandates, school closures and other policies they believe infringed on
their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday wrote on social media that he stopped
relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt the scientist
made bad decisions about masks, shutdowns, and other issues. He later told
reporters he watched the entire hearing.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist
before entering public office, said on social media that his department had
found the diary entries on government property and had given them to the
committee.
Dozens of disease experts defend Fauci in letter
Scientists also scrambled to Fauci's defense ahead of the unusual hearing --
the second time he has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins
since leaving the government in 2022. While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced
him to millions of Americans, he talked the nation through numerous outbreaks
over decades, including HIV, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks, while advising
seven presidents.
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 elected officials to "stop these
witch-hunts."
Among topics discussed at Wednesday's hearing was whether NIH-funded
research in China may have played a role in how the pandemic started.
Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped
from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in
the Chinese city of Wuhan. There's no new scientific evidence supporting the
theory that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory
Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 found
no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.
Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that
there's more evidence supporting COVID-19's natural origins.
Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded
what's known as gain-of-function research -- the practice of enhancing a virus
in a lab to study its potential real-world impact -- at a lab in Wuhan.
The NIH, for years, gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth
Alliance, which used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying
coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. But the definition of gain-of-function
covers both general research and especially risky experiments that enhance the
ability of potential pandemic viruses to spread or cause severe disease in
humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment
definition and "it would be molecularly impossible" for those bat virus
experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.
Trump, a Republican, paused some federally funded gain-of-function research
last year, and on Tuesday his administration announced new rules to tighten
oversight.
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