Five takeaways from the torrid COVID showdown where Fauci refused to say anything

Washington: Anthony Fauci, the man who led the US response to COVID-19, endured a torrid time facing down senators hellbent on dismantling his handling of the pandemic and questioning whether he had participated in covering up the origins of the virus.

Fauci had just one response to the hostility – say nothing.

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” Fauci said.

And he stuck to that script more than 100 times.

The decision, at least for now, shielded Fauci from answering questions that could expose him to accusations of lying under oath. Though he received a pardon in early 2025 from then Democratic president Joe Biden, some Republicans pursuing a years-long campaign for his arrest had suggested he could still face charges for any perjury committed during the latest hearing.

Rand Paul’s obsession with Fauci

The man leading the pursuit of Fauci is the chairman of the government oversight committee is the Republican senator Rand Paul.

He has spent years alleging that Fauci not only tried to hide the origins of COVID-19, but that – as director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a major division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – he had inadvertently funded research on coronavirus in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak was first detected in late 2019.

Paul has long had an antagonistic relationship with Fauci, who in response to angry, sometimes mocking questions from Republican senators on Wednesday, didn’t hold back on what he thought of his nemesis.

In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution”.

“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, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars’,” Fauci said, adding that while it pained him to do so, he was following his attorney’s advice by taking the Fifth.

Fauci became a household name in the early days of the pandemic under then-president Trump, with millions of Americans turning to him for guidance while the pandemic raged. But he also drew criticism for providing shifting information on the virus and its origins, and his push for pandemic restrictions (lockdowns, mask requirements, school closures), which led to similar measures being enacted globally, including Australia.

With Fauci declining to answer questions throughout the combative hearing on Wednesday, Paul dominated the approximately three-hour hearing, listing a litany of accusations and detailed questions.

“Today will be the capstone to Anthony Fauci’s 40 years of abuse of power at NIH,” Paul said. “History will judge, but the facts as we now know them paint a sordid tale of dishonesty, misjudgment and ultimately the hubris, the likes of which the world has never seen.”

In a heated moment during the hearing, Paul ejected Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, from the room after he tried to speak without being recognised. In a statement, Schertler said the removal was “outrageous and demonstrates the completely biased and baseless nature of this proceeding”. In another statement, he called Paul’s accusations about Fauci “false and disgraceful”.

Democrats called the hearing a politically motivated attempt at entrapping Fauci and praised the scientist for his work during the pandemic.

COVID-19 lab leak theory

One of the key topics discussed at the hearing was whether NIH-funded research in China may have played a role in how the pandemic started.

Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

There’s no new scientific evidence supporting the theory that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 found no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins.

Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded what’s known as gain-of-function research – the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact – at a lab in Wuhan.

The NIH, for years, gave grants to a New York non-profit called EcoHealth Alliance, which used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats.

But the definition of gain-of-function covers both general research and especially risky experiments that enhance the ability of potential pandemic viruses to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment definition and “it would be molecularly impossible” for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.

Fauci’s diary entries

Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul said on social media that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories”.

Some of the diary entries – including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created – already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.

But they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt the scientist made bad decisions about masks, shutdowns, and other issues. He later told reporters he watched the entire hearing.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before entering public office, said on social media that his department had found the diary entries on government property and given them to the committee.

Criticism of science

Fauci’s involvement in mandating the measures designed to stop the spread of COVID-19 were subject to criticism even as the pandemic was raging. And almost three years since it subsided, the hearing on Wednesday highlighted just how deep the resentment of his handling of the pandemic runs.

A number of Republican senators on Wednesday lambasted Fauci’s support of enforcing strict masking rules, closing schools and downplaying the effect it would have on the public.

While he stayed mum, Fauci had in the past responded to the criticism of the pandemic policies by equating it as a pushback against established science.

That stance by Fauci, along with perceived flip-flopping by him on measures over the course of the pandemic – from no masks in early 2020 to serious mask mandates later, for example – has made him a target of politicians, media and some in the public, who say he shut down alternative measures that may have been more effective.

However, scientists also scrambled to Fauci’s defence ahead of the unusual hearing. In a public letter, more than 150 infectious-disease experts and other scientists wrote that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges” and that they are urging elected officials to “stop these witch-hunts”.

Contempt finding against Fauci

The committee chairman said senators would decide whether to hold Fauci in contempt for declining to answer questions. Paul said a vote would take place next week.

He argued that Biden’s presidential pardon means Fauci no longer has a Fifth Amendment privilege, though he added that it’s a “legal question that the courts may have to decide”.

The senator did not say whether he would push for a criminal contempt referral to federal prosecutors, a civil contempt charge referral to a federal court or the rarest form of congressional contempt, an internal Senate charge in which the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms can detain a witness.

AP

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