Rand Paul’s Senate Committee Just Held Fauci in Contempt
Anthony Fauci thought Biden’s pardon was his exit ramp from accountability. Thursday morning, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee told him it isn’t.
The committee voted 8-5 along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress
— every Republican voting yes, every Democrat voting no — after he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during last week’s hearing into COVID origins, pandemic restrictions, and gain-of-function research. The contempt resolution now goes to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. Rand Paul’s argument is the same one he made during the hearing and has been making since: Biden’s preemptive pardon removed Fauci’s criminal jeopardy for pre-2025 conduct. The Fifth Amendment protects against self-incrimination. If you cannot be incriminated because you’re pardoned, you have no Fifth Amendment right to invoke. Invoking it anyway is contempt. Paul was prepared to make a criminal referral to the DOJ — and he is. Democrats predictably tried every procedural maneuver available. Senators Peters, Hassan, and Blumenthal all moved to table the resolution. They argued Paul was bypassing the full Senate, that his legal theory was untested, and that Fauci’s attorney should be allowed to address the committee. Paul dismissed each move in turn. “Democrats would rather protect the ‘experts’ than the American people,” he said before the vote.
And then there’s the phone
He’s right. Not one Democrat on that committee was willing to go on record demanding that Anthony Fauci answer questions about the funding of high-risk gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, about the diary entries showing he knew COVID likely came from a lab while publicly promoting natural origin theories, about the emails ordering destruction of government records, about the pulmonary infarction he quietly suffered after receiving the vaccine while publicly dismissing similar concerns from Americans who reported the same symptoms. Not one. On Wednesday evening, Senator Ron Johnson confirmed that his Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations obtained a copy of Fauci’s COVID-era iPhone data. Texts. Records. Communications that may answer every question Fauci refused to answer under oath last week. Biden’s pardon doesn’t protect documents that already exist. It doesn’t retroactively destroy a phone. Whatever is on that device is now in the hands of Senate Republicans — and if it contradicts Fauci’s carefully constructed public narrative, there is nowhere left to hide. The DOJ now has a contempt referral to act on. Florida has an open state investigation. Ron Johnson has the phone data. The autopen pardon’s validity remains contested. And the opening statement Fauci read to the committee — voluntarily addressing subjects he then refused to discuss — may have partially waived the Fifth Amendment protection he was relying on.
He wanted a peaceful retirement. He’s getting a five-year legal marathon instead
The accountability Fauci thought he’d escaped just formally began.
