Dr. Fauci Held in Contempt of Congress and Could Be Prosecuted After Invoking the Fifth Amendment During COVID Questioning

A Senate committee on Thursday voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress over his refusal to answer questions at a hearing last week focused on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, RadarOnline.com can report.

The contempt resolution came a week after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has felt the wrath of Republicans over allegations he hid the true origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was eventually pardoned by President Joe Biden during his last days in office to avoid any prosecution.

However, he was subpoenaed by Sen. Rand Paul to appear before a hearing on the outbreak and the U.S. response.

In a statement explaining his decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, Fauci said he had "good reason to fear the possibility of criminal charges" given what he said was Paul's determination "to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote."

The pardon from Biden covered acts from 2014 through the January 2025 day it was issued. It does not shield Fauci from state-level prosecutions or from investigations into any testimony that he did give that lawmakers thought was false.

The referral now goes to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which will decide whether or not to investigate or potentially attempt to prosecute the doctor for contempt.

As Radar reported, while delivering his opening statement to the Senate committee, Fauci tore into Paul, accusing him of being "obsessed" with seeing him in prison.

The sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, 'behind bars,'" Fauci said.

The 85-year-old declared, "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 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions."

Despite his presidential pardon, Fauci has still felt the wrath of Paul and his fellow Republicans, who summoned the doctor to Capitol Hill anyway.

"A pardon that protects a person from criminal prosecution doesn't rewrite history," Paul told Fauci during the hearing on Wednesday, July 29. "It does not erase documents. It does not convert a misleading statement to a truthful one, and it does not prevent Congress from establishing what happened."

Hints that the committee could pursue charges against Fauci came even before the hearing, when Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. told Fox News, "There are many things that (Fauci) said that we know are lies, and Rand Paul presumably is going to ask him about those things, and if he lies again, then he could be subject to perjury prosecution."

Fauci and Paul's feud has continued throughout the years, with the politician refusing to abandon his insistence that the COVID virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.

Recently, the battle ramped up after Paul publicly released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's personal diary entries that documented his response to the pandemic in real-time.

In one entry from January 26, 2020, while discussing the origin of the virus, Fauci wrote, "We know the market (in Wuhan) was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans."