Dr. Anthony Fauci turned his own defense into an offense on Wednesday, invoking the Fifth Amendment at least 100 times during a Senate hearing while accusing committee chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) of an “unhinged obsession” to put him “behind bars”—a striking spectacle given that Fauci already holds a sweeping pardon from former President Joe Biden.
Rather than simply declining to answer, Fauci opened the hearing with a pointed statement accusing Paul of weaponizing the proceeding against him. He cited Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me,” and the senator’s decision to publicly release more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal pandemic-era diary over the preceding weekend.
Biden issued Fauci a preemptive, unconditional pardon in the final hours of his administration, covering any offenses connected to his NIAID directorship and pandemic-response roles for a decade-long window running from January 1, 2014, through January 19, 2025. That clemency, however, does not extend to statements Fauci makes now, and Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee argued that is precisely this that loophole Fauci is trying to avoid by refusing to testify. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Fox News that “Biden’s pardon doesn’t cover Dr. Fauci’s testimony this week and if he continues to lie, he must be held accountable.”
