What to know about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Senate testimony:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, formerly the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, is testifying Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, setting up a showdown with the panel’s chair, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.Fauci is appearing under subpoena just days after Paul’s office released a trove of diary entries Fauci wrote during his time as a leader in the Trump and Biden administrations’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic.In the journal entries, Fauci recounts early discussions about the origins of the coronavirus, an issue that lawmakers have investigated and that Paul has accused Fauci of downplaying.Fauci, citing Paul’s release of his personal diary, is invoking his Fifth Amendment rights. He told 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, quote, ‘behind bars.'” He has declined to answer Paul’s questions.
Republican senator on committee says Fauci has the “right” to invoke Fifth Amendment
Sen. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, acknowledged Fauci’s constitutional right to invoke the Fifth, but brought up the concerns he had about the nation’s handling of the pandemic and questions about the origins of the virus.
He noted concerns Fauci had raised in his diary about the inability of children to receive measles vaccinations during the pandemic because of the shutdowns. Lankford also brought up the drops in literacy among children that have persisted since the pandemic. Fauci also answered his questions by invoking the Fifth.
“There are a lot of issues and a lot of questions that have come up, and hopefully in some day in the future, we’ll be able to get all this clarity,” Lankford said.
After expulsion from hearing, Fauci’s attorney says his client has “valid Fifth Amendment privilege”
After he was removed from the hearing room, Fauci’s attorney, who did not identify himself, told reporters, “Dr. 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.”
Fauci invokes the Fifth in response to Paul’s questions, and Paul threatens him with repercussions
Paul asked Fauci questions about gain-of-function research — that is, changes to an organism that confer a new or enhanced ability — and other questions about the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment.
“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 told Fauci. “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”
Paul removes Fauci’s attorney from hearing room
Paul halted the hearing to expel Fauci’s attorney from the hearing room.
“Sit quietly and don’t say another word. I said sit quietly, you are not recognized,” Paul said.
Peters said he wanted to hear what the attorney had to say, but Paul refused.
“He is not recognized by the committee or the chair. If he speaks again, he will be removed from the room,” Paul said.
Soon afterward, Paul said, “Security, please remove him from the room.” The attorney was escorted from the hearing.
“Let the record state that Dr. Fauci will still have the advice of the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today,” Paul said.
Fauci invokes the Fifth Amendment, citing Paul’s “unhinged obsession with me”
In his opening statement, Fauci said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not respond to questions, citing Paul’s “unhinged obsession” with trying to put him “behind bars.”
“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, quote, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.
“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. Thank you.”
In response to Paul’s questions, Fauci is responding, “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based on my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.”
Paul says it’s “categorically false” that he’s blocked Democrats from accessing documents
“The accusation that the committee has denied access to the minority’s records is categorically false,” Paul told Peters. “This is the most transparent investigation in the history of Congress.”
Paul said all of the information was posted on a website, but no Democrats ever asked for the access code.
“They haven’t been on the website because they have not cared about the investigation,” Paul said.
Top Democrat accuses Paul of pursuing political agenda and “re-litigating the past”
Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the committee, criticized Paul in his opening statement, accusing him of pursuing a political agenda with a “one-sided” investigation.
“This hearing appears to be a culmination of months of bias and selected efforts by the majority, under the guise of a committee investigation, to basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago,” Peters said.
“In 2021, the chairman has called for today’s witness to be fired, to be arrested,” Peters said. “Accused him of leading coverups and conspiracies. He has even featured the witness prominently in fundraising emails and on the cover of his book. He has also called for the cancellation of the witness’ security detail —- despite the fact that witness and his family have received numerous credible death threats.”
“Instead of focusing on the national security challenges that we are facing in our country right now, today’s hearing looks backwards, revisiting questions this committee has already examined,” Peters said.
Rather than strengthening our preparedness against future disasters, Peters said, “we are instead re-litigating the past.”
Rand Paul tells Fauci “American people deserve an apology” and answers about research funding in China
At the outset of the hearing, Paul told Fauci the American people deserve answers and an apology regarding why U.S. taxpayers were funding research at a lab in China, without adequate safety standards.
“The American people deserve answers,” Paul said. “The American people deserve to know why dangerous research was funded by NIAID in a totalitarian country in a lab that lacked acceptable safety standards.”
“Frankly, the American people deserve an apology. I hope today Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China,” he said. “Admit that the risk of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits. Ask forgiveness.”
Paul accused Fauci of a pattern of private expressions of “alarm,” followed by “a rapid public disclosure of certainty, continued private doubt, and then years of resistance to disclosure.”
Trump blasts Fauci ahead of hearing
On Truth Social, President Trump blasted Fauci shortly before the beginning of the hearing.
“I Inherited Fauci, who was there since the 1980’s, but with each passing day, relied less and less on him,” the president wrote. “He made too many bad calls, like on MASKS. Remember at the beginning he was an anti-masker. He then switched to a super-masker. In any event I didn’t let him shut the Country down, although he wanted to.”
“Biden went on to give Fauci vast destructive power,” he said. “The rest is history!”
The debate over coronavirus origins and “gain-of-function” research
The precise origins of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic have not been definitively nailed down — drawing years of debate among politicians, medical experts and intelligence officials.
Many scientists believe the evidence suggests that the virus emerged naturally in bats, circulated to other species and spilled over to humans at a live animal market in Wuhan, China, where the first human cases appeared in late 2019. Others believe the virus accidentally leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan that was carrying out virology research.
Last year, a panel of experts assembled by the World Health Organization was unable to reach a firm conclusion on how the coronavirus emerged. They wrote that the “weight of available evidence” suggested it jumped naturally from animals to humans, but they couldn’t rule out a lab leak, in part because China didn’t make records available.
The U.S. intelligence community offered a similarly mixed view in 2023. The National Intelligence Council and four other agencies found the virus likely infected humans through natural exposure to an animal, while the FBI and Department of Energy believed it was likely a lab incident. The CIA was unable to reach a conclusion at the time, though it issued a new assessment favoring the lab leak last year.
Some of the debate revolves around “gain-of-function” research, a controversial practice broadly defined as modifying or enhancing viruses to study how they evolve. Paul and other critics have accused the U.S. National Institutes of Health of funding such research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and have argued that it may have led to the coronavirus’ creation.
During the Biden era, the NIH denied that the bat virus research conducted in Wuhan constituted risky gain-of-function research, and the specific viruses that were studied were “genetically far distant” from the one that caused the pandemic.
Fauci and Paul have sparred for years
Wednesday’s hearing could be the latest in a series of explosive confrontations between Fauci and Paul, two medical doctors by training who have publicly accused each other of lying.
Paul has backed the theory that the coronavirus emerged from a lab, and has accused Fauci and other top officials of publicly downplaying and denigrating that theory, especially in the early days of the pandemic. Fauci insists he has always kept an open mind about the virus’ origins, though he has argued at various points that the evidence suggests the virus emerged naturally.
Also at issue: “gain-of-function” research. Paul has accused Fauci of lying to Congress by denying that the NIH funded that type of research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, and has encouraged the Justice Department to prosecute Fauci on those grounds. (Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci shortly before leaving office last year.)
Fauci has strenuously denied those allegations, arguing the studies Paul cited did not constitute gain-of-function research under federal definitions, which Paul rejected.
“If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you,” Fauci said in one contentious 2021 hearing.
Fauci privately wrote about Paul in diary entries released by Paul’s office over the weekend. On April 20, 2021, Fauci wrote that Paul was among those spreading conspiracy theories “to try and connect me with the virus from WUHAN.”
Fauci’s diary entries describe COVID-19 pandemic’s early days
Paul’s office released more than 1,000 pages of journal entries by Fauci over the weekend. They span about three years, from December 2019 to the end of his time as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director in December 2022.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News the entries were retrieved from government computer servers in recent months.
Fauci’s writings document his response to the pandemic in real time.
Fauci on COVID-19’s origins:
Some of Fauci’s diary entries reflect early uncertainty about the source of the coronavirus that caused the pandemic. In January 2020, he wrote that “we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” though he added that “somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.”
About a week later, he detailed a call with a dozen infectious disease experts, saying there “was not total agreement about the likelihood” that mutations to the virus were inserted by humans. He said two people on the call believed “this could occur naturally and we should not waste our time,” but “the rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible” and “we could not let this go.”
Paul has argued the diary entries demonstrate Fauci and his colleagues were privately entertaining theories about the origin of the coronavirus that they publicly dismissed.
Fauci has long insisted he kept an open mind on the lab leak theory and denied downplaying it or misleading the public.
Fauci on pandemic restrictions:
Fauci didn’t have the power to set COVD-19 restrictions, but his words carried weight.
In mid-March 2020, Fauci describes a conversation with then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in which he “convinced him … to close the NYC schools” — a decision Fauci said de Blasio had already made based on Fauci’s public statements. He said he “had a similar call” with an official in the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who planned to close schools and restaurants.
By August of that year, Fauci wrote that reopening schools should be the “default position,” but “one size does not fit all and decisions should be based on the level of infection in the community.” At the same time, he chafed at officials who wanted all schools to reopen at once.
In May 2021, Fauci was critical of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its strict, “ultra-conservative” advice on outdoor mask-wearing, fearing that “our credibility is going to be attacked” if the CDC doesn’t “loosen up.”
Read more here.
Fauci diary describes Trump, Biden and his own media frenzy
The diary tracks Fauci’s evolving relationship with Mr. Trump, his time in the Biden administration and his reaction to his newfound celebrity status.
Fauci on Trump
Fauci on Trump In the pandemic’s early days, Fauci described some positive interactions with the president, though at other points, he vented about Mr. Trump’s “rambling” press conferences and described arguments between the two of them.
In the latter half of 2020, as the two men’s relationship publicly frayed, Fauci expressed frustration with Mr. Trump’s attacks on him and statements about the pandemic. He said the president was acting “erratically,” and was a “true embarrassment” and an “idiot.”
In July 2021, after Mr. Trump left office, Fauci wrote: “Only now in retrospect do I fully appreciate what a disaster Trump was as President.”
Fauci on Biden
Fauci’s descriptions of former President Joe Biden — who named Fauci chief medical adviser — are far more positive. While describing an Oval Office meeting in July 2021, Fauci wrote that “seriousness, dignity, and integrity … now permeates the entire White House.”
Fauci on Fauci
Fauci extensively documented his own media appearances, and seems simultaneously bemused and fascinated by his sudden rise to fame.
He noted author Sally Quinn telling him she based a handsome character off of him, Brad Pitt playing him on “Saturday Night Live,” a Billy Crystal spoof and an email from Barbara Streisand. He also included pictures of Fauci masks, murals, portraits and bobbleheads.
But some diary entries expressed discomfort with the “cult hero”-style attention he was getting.
“It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world,” Fauci wrote on May 21, 2020. “POTUS seems to be enamored of me even though I am taking the spotlight away from him. We are developing a very unique and interesting relationship.”
