WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci refused on Wednesday to answer questions from a Senate committee, repeatedly invoking his constitutional right not to incriminate himself before a panel dominated by hostile Republicans who accused him of causing the coronavirus pandemic and insinuated that he enriched himself while Americans died.

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” Fauci repeated almost 100 times during a nearly three-hour hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

The hearing was part Washington theater, part political Rorschach test, highlighting deep partisan divisions over Fauci, who spent nearly 40 years as the government’s top infectious disease expert, advising presidents of both parties and generating bipartisan respect until his efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19 turned him into a polarizing figure.

When it ended, Sen. Rand Paul, the panel’s chair, announced that the committee would vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress, contending that he was not entitled to Fifth Amendment protection.

“Did his actions lead to the largest man-made plague in history?” Paul asked as the session concluded. “Are millions dead because of his experiments?” Fauci left the room stone-faced and flanked by police officers.

Democrats praised Fauci for his decades of public service and delivered speeches excoriating the Trump administration’s health policies without asking him questions. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., began by thanking Fauci, who took his first job at the National Institutes of Health in 1968, for “more than 50 years of service to this country,” adding, “It must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you.”

Republicans, led by Paul, painted him as a narcissist who was personally responsible for every COVID death or adverse vaccine reaction and mocked him for invoking the Fifth Amendment.

“What day of the week is it today?” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked, knowing Fauci would refuse to answer. “What color tie are you wearing? What color is the carpet in front of you?” Each time, Fauci gave his one-line response.

Calling Fauci “a megalomaniac and a liar,” Hawley then accused him of secretly profiting from his public service by applying for “cash prizes totaling over a million dollars.” In 2021, the Israel-based Dan David Foundation awarded Fauci $1 million for “defending science,” an award that was widely reported at the time.

The session was an escalation of a yearslong battle between Paul, a physician whose specialty is ophthalmology, and Fauci. The Kentucky senator accuses Fauci of funding research in China that sparked the pandemic, and then lying about it to Congress — accusations Fauci vehemently denies.

In a brief opening statement, Fauci, who appeared under subpoena, noted that he had testified before Congress more than 200 times during the 38 years he ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, including during the COVID pandemic.

“Over that period, I proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight,” he said.

“However,” Fauci added, “given Sen. Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

Fauci received a preemptive pardon from President Joe Biden, but the pardon protects him only from federal prosecution for actions he took through the date it was issued, Jan. 19, 2025.

Paul told Fauci that he “can’t have it both ways,” by refusing to testify while under the pardon’s protection. But legal experts said the pardon would not protect Fauci from being accused of lying under oath.

The session became volatile early on when Paul told him there would be “repercussions” for his refusal to answer questions. When Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, started to speak on Fauci’s behalf, Paul cut him off.

“Another word and you’re gone!” the senator said sharply. Schertler kept talking, and Paul ordered security to show the lawyer to the door.

Paul released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s typewritten diary over the weekend, and Republicans used excerpts to relitigate many of the old controversies about the COVID response: the safety of mRNA vaccines, the lab leak theory, the lockdowns, Fauci’s mask recommendations.

“Frankly, the American people deserve an apology,” Paul said in his opening statement. He accused Fauci of saying “one thing in public, and another in private” — a reference to the diary.

At the center of Paul’s inquiry is whether the coronavirus originated naturally, as Fauci believes, or in a laboratory. Paul insists that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci ran from 1984 until his retirement at the end of 2022, funded dangerous research in China that spun out of control and essentially created the virus that led to the pandemic. Fauci says that is not true.

That research, called “gain-of-function,” involves tinkering with the genetic makeup of viruses so scientists can better understand how they evolve and use that information prevent future pandemics. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced fresh restrictions on such work.

While Fauci’s institute did fund research at the Wuhan laboratory in China, the National Institutes of Health has repeatedly said the viruses being studied with American tax dollars were distinct from the one that caused COVID-19. But Paul asserted that Fauci had stuck to a narrow definition of gain-of-function research that did not capture the risks of work his institute had funded in Wuhan.

“The American people weren’t asking for a semantics debate over what is gain of function,” the senator said. “They were asking for common sense over whether this research was dangerous in Wuhan.”

The top Democrat on the panel, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, accused Paul of waging a politically-motivated inquiry to “basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago.”

Fauci and Paul have been tangling with each other for years. In 2021, when the senator accused Fauci of lying while testifying before the Senate, Fauci replied, “If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.”

Schertler said in statement that he believes that exchange “triggered” the senator’s campaign against his client. But he did not deliver the statement, because Paul refused to let him speak. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., read parts of the statement into the record.

“The accusations that Chairman Paul continues to propagate are false and disgraceful,” the statement said, “and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”

On Tuesday, a group of more than 155 physicians, scientists and public health advocates, organized by AIDS activists who worked closely with Fauci in the 1990s, issued a public letter defending him and condemning what they considered the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on science and scientists.

While the diary does not add much to the scientific debate around the lab leak theory, the entries included personal observations in which Fauci marveled at his fame and his relationships with a rapidly growing list of celebrities, providing fresh fodder for Fauci’s critics. He described Trump as “rambling.”

On Tuesday, Trump punched back, posting a 6-year-old video of Fauci throwing out an errant first pitch during a Washington Nationals game. It was, the president proclaimed, “by far, the worst throw I have ever seen in years of watching first pitches!”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg/Haiyun Jiang
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