The U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to charge epidemiologist Anthony Fauci, one of the architects of the American response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with contempt of Congress for invoking the right not to answer last week’s hearings. The hearing focused on Fauci’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic, who before the commissioners invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times, asserting the right not to answer questions that could contribute to his own incrimination.
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Well-founded fear of self-incrimination
Regarding Fauci’s position, Rand Paul, chairman of the Committee, stated that the constitutional protection given by the Fifth Amendment could not be applied since the epidemiologist had received a pardon last year from Democratic President Joe Biden and therefore should not fear criminal proceedings. Fauci and the Democrats opposed to the contempt resolution argued instead that he had a well-founded fear of self-incrimination, considering the publicly expressed desire by Republicans to prosecute him criminally.
“Dr. Fauci was not at risk of federal indictment,” Paul said at the start of the hearing. “All he had to do was tell the truth,” he added. Fauci, in a statement explaining his decision to invoke the rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, said he had good reasons to fear the possibility of criminal charges, considering what he called Paul’s determination “to make me say something, anything, that could justify his repeated public promises that I will end up, in his words, ‘behind bars’.”
The pardon granted by Biden covered acts committed from 2014 until the day in January 2025 when it was issued. It does not protect Fauci from possible state-level criminal proceedings nor from investigations into testimonies he actually gave that legislators consider false. The referral will be sent to the U.S. federal prosecutor’s office in Washington, which will decide whether to open an investigation or possibly attempt to prosecute the doctor for contempt of Congress.
President Paul’s options
Chairman Paul now has two options: seek a final vote in the Senate, where however 60 votes are needed which the GOP does not have (it holds only 53), or send the case directly to the Department of Justice which will then decide whether to proceed with criminal charges.
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