Dr Anthony Fauci refused to answer questions at a high-profile Senate committee hearing on the origins of Covid-19 and accused the Republican senator leading questioning of having an “unhinged obsession” with him.
Fauci, the veteran former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid), served as a key adviser to Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the Covid-19 pandemic. The hearing was called by Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who has investigated Fauci for years.
Fauci said Paul’s goal was “embarrassing and intimidating me”, and ultimately landing him “behind bars”.
“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,” Fauci said in his opening statement.
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Paul, frustrated, later told reporters that he would hold a vote to hold Fauci in contempt of US Congress next week, and described the question of whether the fifth amendment could shield him as “a question for the courts”.
Fauci, 85, served under seven US presidents and through numerous health crises, including the HIV crisis, Ebola outbreaks and the first coronavirus outbreak, called Sars-CoV-1. He became a household name overnight when the Covid-19 pandemic halted social life in 2020.
Quickly after opening statements, the hearing became a back-and-forth between Paul and Fauci. Paul grew visibly agitated as Fauci refused to answer, threatened the scientists with “repercussions”, and then tossed one of Fauci’s attorneys from the hearing room.
“Did the [National Institutes of Health] ever fund gain-of-function [research] on monkeypox?” Paul asked, in reference to research that manipulates viruses to make them more effective to shed light on how outbreaks happen.
“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment of the constitution,” said Fauci.
After another description of research Paul found unacceptable: “Dr Fauci, did the NIH ever conduct research for or in coordination with any element of the intelligence community, CIA, [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]?”
Fauci responded: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment of the constitution.”
Paul pressed on: “Dr Fauci, would you at least like to answer this one question for us today, and let us know whether or not you have changed your mind on whether or not the benefits of gain-of-function [research] outweigh the risks?”
Fauci replied: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment of the constitution.”
A visibly frustrated Paul soon scolded Fauci: “There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”
Soon, an attorney for Fauci attempted to join him at the table, and Paul demanded the attorney move.
“This is not a game with his lawyers,” said Paul, to the attorney who was apparently trying to speak, but could not be heard for lack of a microphone. “The attorneys were not recognized.”
“There’s a row behind you, sir,” said Paul. “This is the way Anthony Fauci wants to be remembered – for a lawyer not recognizing the rules … Security please remove him from the room,” Paul said. The attorney patted Fauci on the shoulder and voluntarily left, alongside a guard.
Members of the audience, which conspicuously included rightwing media figure Laura Ingraham, applauded.
Related: Trump administration needs to stop ‘public harassment’ of Fauci and scientists, open letter says
In part, Paul’s frustration at the hearing stemmed from a presidential pardon Fauci received from Biden, which in turn implicates the fifth amendment. There is debate among experts about how far the fifth amendment extends. Some argue that once a person accepts a presidential pardon, they cannot invoke the fifth amendment for federal crimes. Without that right, Congress could hold a witness in contempt, which can lead to fines or – in the extreme – jail time. Others have argued that the right extends as long as there is a valid threat of prosecution, particularly by states.
“You don’t have any rights under the fifth amendment,” claimed Josh Hawley, a Republican senator of Missouri, in a line of accusatory questioning. “This is about contempt – contempt for this body, and contempt for the American people.”
Democrats, meanwhile, defended Fauci. Paul is “single-mindedly fixated on seeing Dr Fauci prosecuted for imaginary crimes, and you are so invested in that outcome you have created a personal brand around it”, Fauci’s attorneys argued in a statement read aloud by the Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut.
Ahead of the hearing, Republicans characterized their work as investigating “the origins of Covid-19 and risky taxpayer-funded life science research”, while scientists have characterized the investigation as “vilification and harassment” of Fauci, who led Niaid for 38 years before retiring in 2022.
Indeed, Republican senator Bernie Moreno took the opportunity to demand Fauci apologize for a military policy that required service members to take the Covid-19 vaccine, to Americans who lost businesses during the pandemic and to a single Ohio mother who was arrested for not wearing a mask during an outdoor football game early in the pandemic. The senator called Fauci a “total and complete disgrace”.
Ron Johnson, a Republican senator of Wisconsin, used the hearing to call the Covid-19 vaccine, credited by scientists with saving millions of lives, an “experimental gene therapy”. He also accused Fauci of “lying” to his own diary, which elicited a smirk from Fauci.
The hearing was a continuation of Paul’s years-long support of the “lab leak” theory, or the idea that the Covid-19 pandemic began as a release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a theory many virologists contend is improbable.
“For years, Americans were told a lab origin wasn’t just unlikely – it was dismissed outright by the very people funding and reviewing this research,” Paul, who chairs the Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs, where Fauci testified, said last week.
Paul has argued that Fauci lied about the origins of the pandemic to shield his own culpability, because the NIH funded the lab in Wuhan through a sub-grant. Paul argued Fauci lied about the origins of the pandemic because, as Paul later hypothesized to reporters: “Holy you know what – if it came from the lab, If I funded the lab, I could be responsible for this entire pandemic.”
Related: Fauci expressed disillusionment with ‘rambling, crazy’ Trump in journal
The “lab leak” theory has gained significant traction in Republican circles since political opinion on the pandemic began to fracture. In just one example, the White House published a treatise on the theory in April 2025 that served as a rationale for defunding the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The theory in part impugns gain-of-function research, in which scientists seek to develop better vaccines by working with potentially dangerous pathogens.
A 2024 survey of virologists from the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute found that most believed the pandemic began as a so-called spillover event, or a virus jumping from an infected animal to a human. Similarly, a group of virologists argued in the Journal of Virology that the “preponderance” of evidence points to a natural origin, that the “lab leak” theory received outsized attention and that, ultimately, the origin may never be known. Gain-of-function research, meanwhile, has split the scientific community for years.
The scheduled hearing comes just days after Paul released what he described as Fauci’s “diary”, a more than 1,100-page document characterized as revealing Fauci’s inner conflicts about the lab leak theory. Scientists have said this is a normal part of scientific debate.
The diary also contained entries about Trump, who he advised closely during the early days of the pandemic. He described the president as “rambling”, “crazy”, “desperate”, “bumbling”, “incompetent”, “an idiot”, “a true embarrassment”, “totally nuts” and “truly an obnoxious adolescent”.
Gary Peters, a Democratic senator of Michigan, described the hearing as damaging to science and ignoring ongoing public health threats, such as the outbreak of the food-borne parasite cyclospora and measles, both at record highs.
“It’s attempting to turn one person into a scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across the Biden and Trump administrations were responsible for handling,” said Peters, who did not ask Fauci any questions. “This is only going to deter other scientific experts from public service.”
