Louisiana Becomes the Third State to Open a Criminal Investigation of Fauci After He Took the Fifth 100-Plus Times

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said Saturday that her office will investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci, making Louisiana the third state to open an inquiry into the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the days after he refused to answer questions at a Senate hearing.

Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times on Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky presided. The hearing focused on gain-of-function research, U.S. funding connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the origins of COVID-19, and what lawmakers characterized as discrepancies between Fauci's contemporaneous private notes and his public statements during the pandemic.

Murrill grounded her decision in an earlier proceeding rather than the hearing itself. Louisiana and Missouri deposed Fauci in prior litigation, she said, and at the time he claimed not to recall many key details of his own actions — testimony she now argues is contradicted by records he kept at the time. "Fauci lied," Murrill said in announcing the investigation, which will examine whether he committed offenses that can be pursued in Louisiana courts.

Alabama's investigation was already underway. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced his state's inquiry immediately after Wednesday's hearing. The three investigations are separate, and none has produced a charge.

The legal architecture here is the reason state attorneys general are the ones acting. President Joe Biden issued Fauci a full and unconditional preemptive pardon on his last day in office, covering any federal offenses he may have committed or taken part in connected to his government roles from January 1, 2014, through January 19, 2025. That pardon is broad, but it is federal. It does not bar state prosecutors from bringing state charges, and it does not immunize a witness from the consequences of testimony given after the pardon's cutoff date — which is part of why a Fifth Amendment invocation still had force in the hearing room.

Paul has separately asked a U.S. attorney to investigate Fauci after what his office described as silence from the Justice Department. Fauci, who led NIAID for 38 years and became the most recognizable federal figure of the pandemic response, has consistently denied wrongdoing and has said that gain-of-function research as defined by federal policy was not funded at the Wuhan institute through the grants at issue. Six years after the pandemic's onset, the fight over his record has moved from congressional hearing rooms into three state capitals.