Rand Paul's Committee Voted 8-5 to Hold Fauci in Contempt — Then Skipped the Senate Floor and Went Straight to the Justice Department

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8-5 on Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress, then bypassed the usual next step entirely and sent the resolution directly to the Justice Department.

The party-line vote followed a hearing last week at which Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to answer questions about the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the origins of the virus. All five Democrats present opposed the resolution, and two additional members voted against it by proxy.

Committee Chairman Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who has pursued Fauci for years, defended the move as unusual but warranted. "Holding a witness in contempt is a serious thing, and it should be rare," Paul told the committee. He has argued that Fauci cannot claim protection against self-incrimination because President Joe Biden issued him a preemptive pardon before leaving office — a legal theory that is contested and, so far, untested in court on these facts.

The procedural decision is as consequential as the vote itself. A contempt resolution normally goes to the full Senate, where it would require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster — a threshold Republicans cannot reach. Paul instead directed the committee to refer the matter straight to the Justice Department, and a congressional aide confirmed the referral was transmitted Thursday. Whether the department acts on it is now a decision for the attorney general's office, which is itself in the middle of a contested confirmation fight.

Fauci's attorney, David Schertler, called the vote political retaliation. "Today's resolution is a continuation of Senator Paul's personal vendetta against Dr. Fauci," Schertler said, adding that his client had "solid legal ground" for invoking the Fifth Amendment and urging the Senate to reject what he described as a meritless and politically motivated resolution.

Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat, warned that the referral itself is the lasting damage. Sending a contempt resolution to the Justice Department without a floor vote, he said, "will create a damaging precedent that future witnesses will use to resist legitimate congressional oversight" — an argument that a committee majority can now short-circuit the chamber's own rules whenever it cannot win a vote.

The contempt fight is the latest escalation in a monthslong campaign. Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's private journals two days before the hearing, and Louisiana opened a criminal investigation of Fauci this month, becoming the third state to do so. Fauci, 85, has consistently denied wrongdoing and has said the pardon he received covers conduct he has never conceded was criminal.