Pleading the Fifth
Rand Paul had the infectious disease expert’s lawyer ejected from the committee room
Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse questions from lawmakers during a high-profile hearing today before the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC). The move has already infuriated Republicans, particularly Committee Chair Rand Paul, who announced before the hearing closed that they will move to attempt to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.
Republicans, as they have in the past, were set to grill the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and leader of America’s Covid-19 response on myriad conspiratorial claims about the pandemic.
In his opening statement, Fauci, who has appeared before multiple congressional bodies in the past, told the committee that given Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution,” the “only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he 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.’
