Dr. Anthony Fauci refused to answer a single question during a contentious Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as lawmakers pressed him over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the virus's origins and newly released personal diary entries.
The hearing, led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), was the latest flashpoint in a years-long feud between the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director and one of his most vocal congressional critics. Instead of testifying, Fauci delivered an opening statement explaining why he would not respond to questions from members of the committee.
"I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight," Fauci said, noting that he had testified before or briefed Senate and House committees more than 200 times during his 38-year career in public service. He also pointed to multiple previous appearances before Congress related to the federal government's response to Covid-19.
But Fauci argued that Wednesday's hearing was different.
"However, 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.
He continued: "Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. 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."
The decision effectively ended any chance of a substantive exchange. Throughout the hearing, senators from both parties asked Fauci questions, but he declined to answer each one by invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Fauci arrived with several attorneys. During the proceedings, one of his lawyers was removed from the hearing at Paul's direction after continuing to speak without being recognized by the committee.
The hearing came just days after Paul publicly released 1,141 pages from Fauci's personal diary covering the years 2019 through 2022. The nearly daily entries have become central to the senator's investigation, with Republicans arguing they reveal differences between Fauci's private observations during the pandemic and his public statements.
Following the hearing, Paul announced he would move next week to have the committee vote on holding Fauci in contempt of Congress.
"If the vote is affirmative and sent to the Department of Justice, they will have to make a decision whether to pursue this," Paul told reporters after the hearing.
The Kentucky senator also questioned whether Fauci needed to invoke the Fifth Amendment at all, arguing that President Joe Biden's grant of immunity raises legal questions about those protections.
"All he had to do today was tell the truth," Paul said. "If he testified and told the truth, even if he admitted to destroying thousands of records, which we think happened, there's no penalty attached. It would just be the truth."
Paul said lawmakers still have "serious" scientific questions that deserve answers, particularly regarding gain-of-function research and the origins of Covid-19.
Much of Wednesday's hearing centered on information contained in Fauci's recently released diary.
One entry dated January 26, 2020, states, "It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market."
The entry continues: "Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans."
Republicans argue the entry is significant because Fauci publicly emphasized the possibility of a natural origin while dismissing claims that the virus could have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Paul's office also highlighted Fauci's description of a February 1, 2020, conference call with a dozen scientists that ultimately led to publication of The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Nature Medicine. According to Fauci's diary, only two scientists participating in the discussion believed the virus likely emerged naturally, while the other ten "felt that deliberate insertion was possible."
The diary also states that scientists raised concerns about gain-of-function coronavirus research taking place in Wuhan.
Eight days after that call, Fauci appeared on Newt Gingrich's podcast and dismissed the lab-leak theory as "just conspiracy theories."
The Proximal Origin paper later became one of the most frequently cited scientific publications supporting the natural-origin theory and was repeatedly referenced by journalists, researchers and public health officials during the pandemic. When asked publicly in April 2020 whether Covid-19 may have originated in a laboratory, Fauci cited the paper as evidence against that possibility.
Recently released Slack messages cited by Paul's office indicate some of the scientists who authored the paper began questioning its conclusions only a few months after publication.
Republicans also pointed to diary entries involving government shutdowns during the early months of the pandemic.
According to a March 15, 2020, entry, Fauci recalled convincing then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and California Gov. Gavin Newsom to close schools, bars and restaurants. Two years later, Fauci told The Hill that he "didn't recommend locking anything down," a statement Republicans say conflicts with his diary.
Another diary entry has fueled questions about Fauci's early estimates of Covid-19's mortality rate.
During congressional testimony on March 11, 2020, Fauci said the virus had a mortality rate of between 1 and 3 percent. But according to a diary entry written about a month earlier, Fauci documented a conversation with former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden in which the two agreed the case fatality rate was "more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%."
Paul attempted to question Fauci about those apparent inconsistencies during Wednesday's hearing, but every question was met with the same response: an invocation of the Fifth Amendment.
Democrats on the committee criticized the hearing, arguing Congress should focus on current national priorities instead of revisiting the government's pandemic response.
"It must be enormously frustrating to know this hearing is designed to trap you," Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) told Fauci.
Republicans countered that the investigation is far from over.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said lawmakers intend to keep pursuing answers despite Fauci's refusal to testify and called for a special counsel to investigate the government's handling of the pandemic.
"Why are there so many discrepancies in what was in his diary versus what he told us, what he told the public?" Marshall asked.
For now, the hearing leaves both sides exactly where they began. Fauci maintains he has cooperated extensively with Congress throughout his career but believes Wednesday's proceeding was intended to build a criminal case against him. Paul and other Republicans insist the former health official has yet to explain what they view as significant differences between his private writings and his public statements.
