Dr. Anthony Fauci opened his five minutes of testimony Wednesday at a hearing on the origins of COVID-19 by invoking the Fifth Amendment and then declining to answer any of Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) questions.“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” Fauci said in replying to Paul’s questions.Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies in a Senate hearing on Wednesday.Allison Robbert/Associated PressIn his opening statement minutes earlier, Fauci said he had testified before Congress multiple times across his 38 years as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and sat for sworn hearings and dayslong interviews on the same pandemic questions now before the committee.He added that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights due to what he described as Paul’s “obsession” with prosecuting him, pointing to Paul’s repeated calls for him to end up “behind bars,” Paul’s “slanderous comments,” and the senator’s recent release of his unredacted personal diary that Fauci said was intended to embarrass and intimidate him.“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” Fauci said.Fauci, the infectious disease scientist who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 pandemic response, has become a target of many Republicans’ criticism over his handling of the pandemic, from mask and vaccine mandates to his early public statements on the virus’s origins.The hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, however, is part of Paul’s yearslong accusations that Fauci lied about the pandemic, a claim Fauci has persistently denied and called “preposterous.”At the beginning of the hearing, Fauci declined to answer the litany of questions from Paul, who has repeatedly called for him to be criminally prosecuted, and other Republicans so far have expressed skepticism toward public health experts and sweeping government pandemic responses. Democrats, including ranking member Gary Peters (D-Mich.), sought to defend Fauci and cast the hearing as a politicized inquiry.During the pandemic, Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a role he held since 1984, and, starting in January 2021, also as chief medical adviser to then-President Joe Biden. He retired in 2022, and was later preemptively pardoned by Biden to protect him from potentially politically motivated charges.The hearing began at 8:30 a.m. ET. Watch here. RelatedCoronavirusCOVID-19Republican PartyU.S. SenateAnthony Fauci