Sen. Rand Paul is pushing to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after the former COVID czar invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times at a Senate hearing, and Paul says a Senate recess won't slow him down.
Paul, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, announced Thursday on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" that he plans to pass a contempt citation out of his committee and send it directly to the Department of Justice with a legal brief, skipping the full Senate floor vote that such motions have traditionally required. The move sets up a collision between congressional authority and Fauci's legal defense that could land on the desk of DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose office would decide whether to prosecute.
The catalyst was Wednesday's hearing before Paul's committee, where the 85-year-old former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases refused to answer a single substantive question from senators of either party. National Review reported that Fauci pleaded the Fifth to every question posed by senators from both parties, despite delivering an opening statement in which he accused Paul of hauling him before the committee solely to manufacture a criminal case.
That opening statement is now central to Paul's contempt argument. Fauci used his time at the microphone to challenge Paul's motives, telling the committee:
"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.'"
Then Fauci stopped talking. For every question that followed, 111 in all, he invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination.
New York criminal defense lawyer David Schwartz told the New York Post that Fauci's approach "definitely constituted contempt." As the Post reported, Schwartz said a witness cannot deliver voluntary testimony through an opening statement and then refuse to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment.
"You can't just sort of testify through your opening statement and then invoke the Fifth Amendment."
Sen. James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican who sits on the committee, pointed to a direct precedent. Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the agency's targeting of conservative groups, gave an opening statement at a House hearing and then took the Fifth. Republicans held her in contempt.
Lankford recalled his own involvement in that referral: "The committee then held her in contempt for that, saying, 'You can't do both.'" The Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder, however, declined to prosecute Lerner after a two-year investigation, a fact that underscores how far a contempt citation must travel before it produces consequences.
Paul laid out his procedural strategy on Thursday. He told Fox News he believes the contempt motion can pass his committee without ever reaching the Senate floor, a route that would avoid the messier politics of a full chamber vote, where Democrats could slow or block the effort.
"In the past, often, contempt messages go from committee to the floor, but I don't think there's any rule that says it has to. I think it's less likely to pass on the floor. I think we can pass it out of committee."
From there, Paul said, the contempt citation would go straight to the DOJ with a supporting legal brief. He expressed confidence in the committee vote: "I can't guarantee that we're going to win the vote, but I'm pretty certain we can win the vote next week."
Timing adds urgency. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is expected to send the chamber into recess at the end of next week. Paul has already accounted for that obstacle. If the Senate is out of session, Vice President JD Vance, as president of the Senate, can certify the contempt citation, keeping the referral on track even with lawmakers out of Washington.
Paul subpoenaed Fauci earlier this year after the former official refused to appear voluntarily for questioning about COVID origins. Wednesday's hearing was the result of that subpoena, and Paul made clear he views Fauci's blanket refusal to testify as obstruction, not a legitimate exercise of constitutional rights.
Fauci's legal team has argued he had every right to invoke the Fifth. His attorney, David Schertler, wrote a June 16 letter to Paul insisting that "NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as that term has been defined by preeminent experts in the field after a thorough deliberative process." Schertler called Paul's allegation that Fauci lied to Congress "absolutely and demonstrably false."
But Schertler had a rough day at the hearing itself. He was ejected from the room after trying to speak on Fauci's behalf, a move that left Fauci to face the committee alone.
The legal question hanging over the entire proceeding is whether Fauci can legitimately claim Fifth Amendment protection when he already holds a presidential pardon. Former President Biden issued Fauci a full and unconditional pardon covering all actions taken between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025. Paul has argued that the pardon should have eliminated any criminal exposure from the hearing, making the Fifth Amendment claim baseless.
Fox News reported that legal experts are divided on the question. Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, argued that Fauci had no legitimate reason to invoke the Fifth:
"The only reason for him to take the Fifth is because he doesn't want to admit, based on his personal diaries, that he lied repeatedly to the public and Congress when he was head of the NIAID."
Other legal analysts took a different view. Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the Washington Examiner that Fauci's strategy was sound from a strictly legal standpoint: "Legally, he played it perfectly. Now politically, obviously, this is a disaster." The pardon does not cover future conduct, including perjury committed at the hearing itself, and does not shield Fauci from potential state-level prosecutions. That gap in coverage gave Fauci's lawyers a credible basis for advising him to stay silent.
Schwartz, the criminal defense lawyer, noted Fauci was in a "tough spot" because any false statements made to the committee could have exposed him to state-level prosecution that Biden's pardon cannot reach.
Paul's case against Fauci rests on more than the hearing itself. The senator has spent five years arguing that Fauci lied to Congress in May 2021, when he testified that NIAID "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology." Paul has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department multiple times, twice under Biden, twice under Trump, by Paul's own count, and none has produced charges.
The release of Fauci's personal diary ahead of the hearing added new fuel. National Review reported that diary entries showed 10 out of 12 scientists on a February 1, 2020, call believed "deliberate insertion was possible" as an explanation for the virus, yet Fauci publicly dismissed the lab leak theory just days later. Fauci's own diary entries described a Wuhan wet market not as the "source" of the virus but as a potential "amplifier," a distinction that cuts against the natural-spillover narrative he promoted publicly for years.
Three major U.S. intelligence agencies, the CIA, the Energy Department, and the FBI, have since concluded that an accidental lab leak most likely caused the pandemic. Fauci consistently favored the natural-spillover theory.
Paul also alleges that Fauci and an assistant deleted federal records. That allegation gained weight when David Morens, Fauci's former senior adviser, was indicted earlier this year for concealing and destroying federal records related to a grant for coronavirus research in Wuhan. The Florida attorney general has since opened a separate investigation into Fauci following his Fifth Amendment invocations at the hearing.
Almost every Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee denounced Paul's efforts to force Fauci's testimony. Fauci himself framed the hearing as political theater, claiming in his opening statement that Paul released his "unredacted personal diary" as part of a campaign to put him behind bars.
Paul was unmoved. He told Fox News that Fauci's pardon should have freed him to testify without legal risk, and that his refusal to do so only deepened the case for contempt.
"All he had to do today was tell the truth. 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."
If the contempt citation passes the committee and reaches Pirro's office, it will test whether this DOJ treats congressional subpoenas more seriously than the last several administrations did. Pirro herself signaled interest on Wednesday, posting a video clip on X from "The Dave Chappelle Show" depicting a fictional character pleading the Fifth before a Senate subcommittee. The post was not subtle.
Contempt of Congress is a criminal misdemeanor carrying one to 12 months in prison and a $100,000 fine upon conviction. Whether it ever reaches that stage depends on a Senate leadership willing to let the process play out, a DOJ willing to prosecute, and courts willing to enforce congressional authority against a witness who already holds a presidential pardon.
For five years, Fauci answered questions about COVID with carefully hedged denials. Now he won't answer at all. The American public deserves to know whether that silence is protecting the Fifth Amendment, or just protecting Anthony Fauci.