Dr. Anthony Fauci declined to answer senators’ questions at a contentious hearing Wednesday on the origins of Covid and the government’s handling of the pandemic, saying he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid the possibility that Republicans would use his testimony to prosecute him for perjury.
The surprise decision set the stage for a hyperpartisan hearing that yielded no new revelations about the origins of the coronavirus or the government response to the pandemic. But the absence of Fauci’s testimony presented plenty of opportunities for Republicans and Democrats to put forth dueling narratives about those issues — and about Fauci himself.
Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee used their allotted time to criticize Fauci’s recommendations during the Covid pandemic, accusing Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of providing harmful advice on issues such as lockdowns and of lacking candor about the origins of the coronavirus.
Democrats came to Fauci’s defense, painting the hearing as a Republican-led effort to entrap him into committing perjury and using their time to focus criticism on the Trump administration’s healthcare policies.
After Fauci had invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times, committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., said as the hearing ended that he would call for a vote to hold him in contempt of Congress. He said after the hearing that the committee would vote on the issue next week.
Paul, a longtime critic of Fauci, has clashed with him numerous times at congressional hearings. Paul has accused him of lying to Congress about the issue of “gain of function” lab research on viruses, which makes them more dangerous to better understand them, and whether funding from the National Institutes of Health ultimately made its way to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Fauci has previously denied the allegations.
On Tuesday, Paul answered a reporter’s question about how he would respond to people who argue that he was trying to put Fauci in a position to perjure himself.
“There’s no risk to perjury if you tell the truth,” Paul said. “In fact, he can even admit to not telling the truth in the past. He can admit destroying records. He can admit to, you know, not adequately presenting both sides of equations, which isn’t really a crime. He can admit to anything. The only thing he can’t do is lie again.”
In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul’s repeated attacks on him formed his rationale for deciding to invoke his Fifth Amendment right. Fauci cited what he characterized as Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me” and his decision to publicly release Fauci’s personal journal.
“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 — quote — ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said in his opening remarks.
“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he continued. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decadeslong 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.”
In the final hours of his administration, former President Joe Biden issued pre-emptive pardons to Fauci and others to shield them from what Biden characterized as potential political prosecutions. This week, Paul did not preclude the possibility that Fauci could face charges over his testimony, saying “we’re going to find out” whether he should be prosecuted.
The pardon was a factor in his legal team’s determination that Fauci should not answer senators’ questions, because Republicans had consistently implied that the pardon would not apply to new statements.
During the hearing, Republican senators repeatedly tried to goad Fauci into responding to their questions — with Josh Hawley, R-Mo., at one point asking him to identify the colors of his tie and the floor’s carpeting.
Fauci answered each question, regardless of the topic, with the same line: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
At the end of his period of questioning, Paul told Fauci that he would face “repercussions” for not answering.
“The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so,” Paul said. “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”
When Paul concluded, Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, tried to say something to the senators but was repeatedly cut off by Paul, who ultimately ordered security to remove him from the committee room.
Shortly after he left the hearing, Schertler told NBC News that Fauci “has a valid Fifth Amendment privilege, and he has the right to assert it.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell the committee, and that’s all I was trying to tell the committee,” he said.
In a separate statement, Schertler called Paul’s actions “outrageous.”
“It proves the baseless and vindictive nature of this proceeding and Rand Paul’s personal vendetta against Dr. Fauci,” he said.
During his time to speak, the top Democrat on the committee, Gary Peters of Michigan, criticized the Republicans’ handling of the hearing, saying he believed the hearing “does real damage.”
“It’s tempting to turn one person into the scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across both the Trump and the Biden administration were responsible for handling,” Peters said, adding that people were facing death threats.
“This is only going to, unfortunately, deter other scientific experts from public service to understand that this is what they would have to go through as they provide their advice to us,” he said.
Separately, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters ahead of his period of questioning that he would not ask Fauci questions, arguing that the “show trial is a perjury craft for criminal prosecution going forward.”
During the hearing, Blumenthal defended Fauci and compared the Republican-led proceedings to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communism hearings of the 1950s.
“We should not be part of a rerun of that kind of effort,” Blumenthal said. “This attempt to rebrand one of the most challenging times in our nation’s history is a shortsighted act of desperation that will leave us less prepared for the next pandemic.”
Schertler said in a statement that the circumstances surrounding Fauci’s appearance “regrettably made his continued cooperation impossible,” accusing Paul of taking “an intense and seemingly pathological course of retribution, revenge, and obsession with Dr. Fauci” that has ultimately led to Fauci and his family’s facing threats and harassment.
“Dr. Fauci devoted his lengthy career to saving millions of lives globally through scientific discovery and sound public health policy,” Schertler said in the statement. “The accusations that Chairman Paul continues to propagate are false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”
