Dr. Anthony Fauci spent years lecturing Americans, sparring with lawmakers and presenting himself as the unquestioned authority on the government’s response to COVID-19.
Now the Senate is moving to hold him in contempt after he refused to answer questions about what happened. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote Thursday, August 6, at 8:30 a.m. EDT on a resolution holding the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in contempt of Congress.
The resolution follows Fauci’s subpoenaed appearance before the committee on July 29, when he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times rather than answer questions about COVID-19 research, government funding connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his previous testimony before Congress.
🚨DROPPED: My contempt resolution for Anthony Fauci pic.twitter.com/JKiYEbwgtX
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) August 4, 2026
“Dr. Fauci appeared under subpoena and invoked the Fifth Amendment to refuse answering questions,” Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Tuesday.
Paul ruled during the hearing that Fauci could not rely on the Fifth Amendment because former President Joe Biden had already issued him a sweeping preemptive pardon. Paul also argued that Fauci waived any remaining privilege when he delivered an opening statement defending himself before refusing to answer lawmakers’ questions.
“That is obstruction of a congressional investigation. The Committee will act accordingly,” Paul said.
Biden’s pardon covered any federal offenses Fauci may have committed between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025, arising from his work as NIAID director, a member of the White House coronavirus response teams or Biden’s chief medical adviser. Biden said the pardon was intended to protect Fauci from politically motivated prosecution and did not indicate that Fauci had committed a crime.
Fauci’s attorneys nevertheless advised him not to testify. Although the pardon could protect him from prosecution for covered conduct during the specified period, it could not prospectively protect him from a new offense arising from his testimony before the Senate.
That distinction has become central to the contempt dispute. Paul maintains that Fauci no longer faced a legitimate risk of prosecution for the conduct under investigation and was therefore required to answer. Fauci’s decision to make an opening statement before invoking the Fifth has given Republicans another basis for arguing that he waived the privilege.
New Conservative Post previously noted how Fauci’s performance to that of former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, who delivered a statement proclaiming her innocence before invoking the Fifth Amendment during a 2013 congressional hearing.
The House later voted 231-187 to hold Lerner in contempt, although the Justice Department declined to prosecute her after concluding that she had not waived her constitutional rights. The legal circumstances surrounding Fauci are not identical, but the political strategy is familiar: deny wrongdoing, attack the investigation and then decline to answer the questions.
The contempt fight also comes as other figures from Fauci’s former agency face growing legal scrutiny.
In April, New Conservative Post reported that the Justice Department had indicted David Morens, a longtime senior adviser to Fauci, over an alleged effort to evade Freedom of Information Act requests involving COVID-19 research grants and communications with EcoHealth Alliance.
Congressional investigators obtained emails in which Morens discussed deleting federal records and using personal accounts for official communications. Morens wrote that he tried to “always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly.”
Paul has also released more than 1,100 pages from Fauci’s pandemic-era diary. The records documented Fauci’s early discussions about the origins of COVID-19 and his close attention to the enormous media profile he developed during the pandemic.
“Press still hot and heavy about me,” Fauci wrote in April 2020. “Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me.”
Democrats have defended Fauci and accused Paul of using the committee to pursue a partisan vendetta. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the committee’s ranking member, argued during the hearing that Republicans were revisiting old political disputes rather than addressing current national-security concerns.
Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not proof that Fauci committed a crime. But his refusal represents a dramatic change for a former government official who appeared before Congress hundreds of times and spent much of the pandemic insisting that Americans should trust the public-health establishment.
Fauci was willing to speak when he controlled the message. When confronted under subpoena with newly released records, questions about federal research funding and possible contradictions between his private communications and public statements, he stopped talking.
If the contempt resolution passes the committee, it can advance to the full Senate. The vote will determine whether lawmakers are prepared to enforce the subpoena—or whether Fauci’s silence will once again be the final word.
[READ MORE: Democrats Facing Major Money Problem]
