Senate committee votes to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer
COVID questions
[August 07, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate committee voted along party lines Thursday to
hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress over his refusal to
answer questions at a hearing on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic,
setting up a referral to the Justice Department for potential
investigation over whether the country's longtime top infectious disease
official properly exercised his constitutional rights.
A department spokesperson confirmed Thursday evening that the department
had received the contempt referral, is "reviewing it and will work with
the Senate accordingly.”
The vote approving 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, an episode that raised fresh legal
questions about the ability of Congress to compel testimony from a
previously pardoned witness.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the committee chairman who
pressed for the contempt finding, said that constitutional protection
did not apply because Fauci last year received a pardon from Democratic
President Joe Biden and thus did not have to worry about the threat of
prosecution.
“Dr. Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution," Paul said at the
outset of Thursday's vote. "All he had to do was tell the truth.”
He told colleagues that the issue before them was not Fauci's opinions,
policies or “anything he said from a podium six years ago.”
Instead, he added, “We were voting on whether a witness who has received
the benefit of a sweeping federal pardon can be ordered by this
committee to answer questions and then defy that order without
consequence.”
Fauci, in a statement last week explaining his decision to invoke his
Fifth Amendment rights, 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."
Fauci's lawyer, David Schertler, said in a statement that the contempt
resolution was "a continuation of Senator Paul’s personal vendetta
against Dr. Fauci, who spent 50 years in public health and has saved
countless lives.” Schertler accused Paul of abusing his power by trying
to “weaponize the Justice Department.”
“Today’s partisan committee vote is a crude political stunt intended to
punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights," Schertler
said. “The Senate should reject Senator Paul’s meritless and
politically-motivated contempt resolution. For years, Senator Paul has
proclaimed to anyone who would listen that Dr. Fauci should be
prosecuted and put in prison. Dr. Fauci has committed no crime – and
Senator Paul knows it.”
The pardon from Biden covered acts from 2014 through the January 2025
day it was issued, but does not shield him from state-level prosecutions
or protect him from federal investigations into any testimony he did
give that lawmakers deemed false. The current Justice Department has
repeatedly initiated false statement investigations into perceived
adversaries of President Donald Trump as part of what critics have
called a retribution campaign.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci is sworn in before the Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee at the Capitol, Wednesday, July
29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Democrats who unanimously opposed the contempt resolution agreed
with Fauci that he had a well-founded fear of self-incrimination
given the publicly stated desires of Republican lawmakers, including
Paul, to see him prosecuted in connection with COVID. The Trump
administration has also raised questions about whether the Biden
pardons were valid given Biden’s frequent use of an autopen to
conduct official business.
“The goal was to wait for Dr. Fauci to make any kind of misstatement
and then have a weaponized Department of Justice file criminal
charges for that new statement that would not have been covered by
the pardon, leaving Dr. Fauci little choice but to invoke his
constitutional right to not walk directly into a trap,” said Sen.
Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., before the vote.
Trump himself weighed in Thursday at the White House, noting in
response to a reporter's question that two advisers from his first
term, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, were jailed on contempt
charges during the Biden administration after they defied
congressional subpoenas and refused to even show up for their
scheduled hearings.
“When you see that happen, you sort of say maybe he should,” Trump
said of Fauci being prosecuted. “What he did is far more serious
than a lot of crimes, frankly.”
Paul's decision to send the referral directly to the Justice
Department would leave it to prosecutors in Washington to decide
whether to investigate or potentially attempt to prosecute Fauci for
contempt. A referral from Congress does not compel the Justice
Department to act.
The committee's top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan,
questioned whether the referral would be legally valid if Paul did
not seek a vote before the full Senate, where the 60 votes needed to
pass the resolution are seen as unlikely. He said punishing a
witness for exercising a constitutional right against
self-incrimination would complicate future efforts by Congress to
conduct oversight and compel appearances and testimony.
“If this committee now seeks to punish a witness for asserting their
(constitutionally) protected Fifth Amendment rights, future
witnesses will argue that appearing before Congress exposes them to
punishment regardless of whether they comply with a subpoena and
invoke a constitutional protection,” he said. “They will point
directly to this vote — this vote — as a justification for refusing
to appear at all.”
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