Invoking the 5th Amendement over 100 times when you have a blanket pardon covering all the things you're being asked about.... bold strategy.
Sen. Paul vows contempt vote after Fauci repeatedly invokes Fifth Amendment in Covid hearing
Republican Sen. Rand Paul declared that there will be a vote next week on holding
Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after the scientist who led the US government response to the Covid-19 pandemic invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during a contentious congressional hearing.
Appearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee under a subpoena from
Paul, Fauci declared in his opening statement he would not be answering questions, citing what he characterized as the chairman’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”
But in an unusual move, Republican Senators proceeded with the hearing anyway, peppering him with inquiries about National Institutes of Health-funded research and the origins of Covid-19. It forced Fauci to repeat, over and over, that he was invoking his constitutional right.
When the hearing was near its end, Paul said he would have a contempt vote next week – which could initiate a process that would result in the Justice Department considering whether to charge Fauci with a crime.
Throughout the hearing that ran well over two hours, Fauci mostly stared straight ahead. But at times, frustration appeared to flash across his face.
And in a particularly dramatic moment, Paul had Fauci’s attorney escorted out as the lawyer repeatedly tried to interject and invoke Fauci’s Fifth Amendment rights.
In a written statement submitted before the hearing, the lawyer said that the circumstances surrounding Fauci’s appearance “regrettably made his continued cooperation (with Congress) impossible,” adding that Paul had a “public crusade” against his client.
Republican critics might not have gotten meaningful exchanges to relitigate the scientist’s alleged mishandling of the Covid-19 response and conspiracies about the origins of the virus. But they did get hours of images of Fauci refusing to answer after GOP lawmakers delivered lengthy monologues questioning his conduct – a political boon in their long-running bid to undercut him.
“Let the record record that the witness has refused to answer whether there’s a folder in front of him based on his Fifth Amendment right,” Paul said at one point.
Fauci, though, noted in his opening statement that GOP lawmakers had made clear they wanted to use the hearing to get him prosecuted, saying “the sole reason (Sen. Paul) 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, ‘behind bars.’”
Democrats on the committee, meanwhile, used their time to voice frustration that Paul subpoenaed Fauci rather than focusing on budget cuts to health care agencies.
“It is unfortunate that you have been put in the position that you are in today, and it must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you,” Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire said to Fauci.
Fauci, the face of American infectious disease research dating back to the HIV/AIDs crisis, has appeared more than 250 times before Congress, and this is the first time that he’s invoked the Fifth Amendment.
The 85-year-old former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has previously appeared before lawmakers to deny, under oath, allegations brought by Paul of obscuring the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and controversial infectious disease research.
Pressure from Paul and others led President Joe Biden to
preemptively pardon Fauci during his last days in office, shielding Fauci from charges pertaining to any comments made in previous years.
But he faced a new threat after Paul became chairman of a major Senate committee: that Republican senators and others, including US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would endeavor to find new ways to pursue perjury charges against him.
“A pardon that protects a person from criminal prosecution doesn’t rewrite history. 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,” Paul said in his opening remarks, referencing his allegations that Fauci had misrepresented the pandemic’s origins and deleted internal correspondence.
Paul and Kennedy made clear ahead of the hearing that they hoped Fauci, who retired in 2022, would perjure himself in comments about the origins of Covid-19, shutdown measures and scientific research funded by NIAID.
“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,” Kennedy told Fox News on Monday night.
President Donald Trump also weighed in ahead of the hearing on Wednesday, saying in a social media post that Fauci “made too many bad calls.” The president added that he “didn’t let (Fauci) shut the Country down” during the pandemic.
Fauci’s refusal to answer questions comes days after another House Republican
referred former special counsel Jack Smith to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, suggesting he’d made false statements in his own committee testimony, which took place behind closed doors. Like Fauci, Smith has also come under intense scrutiny by Trump allies, who were angered by his investigation into the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
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