Rand Paul's Committee Votes Thursday Morning on Holding Fauci in Contempt of Congress

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote at 8:30 a.m. Thursday on a resolution holding Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress, the sharpest escalation yet in Chairman Rand Paul's years-long pursuit of the man who ran the federal pandemic response.

The resolution stems from a July 29 hearing at which Fauci, appearing under subpoena, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times. Paul, the Kentucky Republican who has chaired the committee's investigation into the origins of COVID-19, ruled from the dais that the privilege did not apply because President Joe Biden's pardon had already removed Fauci's exposure to federal prosecution, and that Fauci had waived whatever privilege remained by delivering an opening statement. Paul ordered him to answer, warned him that refusal could bring a contempt referral, and Fauci refused anyway.

"He is fully protected by a sweeping pardon, immune from prosecution, and he still refuses to comply with a lawful subpoena," Paul said in releasing the resolution this week. Paul has said he intends to bypass a vote of the full Senate and refer the matter directly to the Justice Department, a route that would put the decision to charge in the hands of federal prosecutors rather than the chamber. A conviction for contempt of Congress carries a fine and up to one year in prison.

The committee has 15 members and an 8-seat Republican majority, and Paul has said publicly that he believes he has the votes. Fauci's attorney, David Schertler, has argued the opposite of Paul's legal theory, saying his client was "on solid legal ground in asserting" the privilege. Legal scholars have noted that Biden's pardon, which covers potential federal offenses between January 1, 2014 and January 19, 2025, does not extinguish exposure to state prosecution — a point that matters more now that Louisiana this week became the third state to open a criminal inquiry into Fauci's testimony.

The hearing itself was extraordinary even by the standards of the committee's recent work. Fauci's lawyer was escorted from the room by security after a heated exchange with the chairman. Days before Fauci appeared, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's personal journals, which included entries on his sudden celebrity and unflattering assessments of the first Trump administration's handling of the outbreak. Fauci told the panel he had never lied to Congress.

A committee vote does not settle the legal question. It hands it to the Justice Department, which is under no obligation to act, and which has declined to prosecute congressional contempt referrals before. What a party-line vote would do is convert a four-year political fight into a formal criminal referral against the most recognizable public health official of the pandemic era — and leave the decision on charges to prosecutors serving the president whose response Fauci privately criticized in the diaries Paul made public.