On Thursday, July 30th, 2026, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before the Senate to testify on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic but invoked his Fifth Amendment rights in response to all questions.

Senator Rand Paul criticized Fauci for declining to testify, particularly after Fauci refused to answer inquiries about a presidential pardon. Paul accused Fauci of lying to Congress by denying that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded certain research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Paul has encouraged the Justice Department to prosecute Fauci on these grounds, although Fauci was preemptively pardoned by President Biden shortly before leaving office last year.

Paul described the hearing as "the capstone to Anthony Fauci's 40 years of abusive power at NIH," and questioned whether Fauci's actions during the pandemic keep him awake at night, suggesting Fauci might worry about having "led to the largest man-made plague in human history."

Fauci responded by accusing Senator Paul of an "unhinged obsession" with calling for his prosecution, citing repeated slanderous comments and the public release of his unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating him. Fauci stated that under the advice of his attorneys, he would invoke his right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering questions, despite his respect for the legislative branch and his history of cooperating with Congress.

During the hearing, Fauci also recounted a mid-March 2020 conversation with then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, in which Fauci said he "convinced him … to close the NYC schools," although de Blasio had already made that decision based on Fauci's public statements.

The committee plans to hold a vote next week on a resolution certifying Fauci's contempt of Congress due to his refusal to answer questions.

Sources