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The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has voted to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress. 

Thursday's vote was along party lines, and came after Fauci refused to answer lawmakers' questions in 

 about the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, citing his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

In an opening statement during that hearing, Fauci said that the committee's chairman, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has "an unhinged obsession" with him and suggested the hearing was convened in an attempt to trick Fauci into lying under oath.

"Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress," Fauci said, "under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions."

Fauci told the committee he had answered many of their questions already during previous testimony. 

In a statement following Thursday's vote, an attorney for Fauci, 

David Schertler, said, "Today's partisan committee vote is a crude political stunt intended to punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights."

Fauci, the United States' leading infectious disease expert during the pandemic, has long sparred with Paul over the origins of the pandemic. In the days leading up to last week's hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's private diary entries, pointing to them as evidence that he masked private uncertainty about what caused the pandemic.

Paul has argued that Fauci shouldn't be concerned about testifying, given his immunity from prosecution over pandemic-era conduct. That immunity stems from a pardon that Fauci received from President Joe Biden for conduct between 2014 and January 2025 — a pardon that the then-president described as "preemptive" given Republican scrutiny of Fauci.

 wouldn't protect Fauci from any prosecution stemming from conduct after that date, including any remarks made during present-day congressional testimony.

In remarks just before the contempt vote, Paul said the committee was strictly responding to Fauci's refusal to testify, rather than his decisions during the pandemic. 

"The chair directed Anthony Fauci to answer. He refused. That is what we are voting on today. Not his opinions. Not his policies. Not anything he said from the podium six years ago. We are voting on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a federal pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence," Paul said. 

Democrats sought to table the vote, warning of the harm it could mean for the panel's oversight role. 

"To be clear, this resolution will not provide the committee with any additional information or compel Dr. Fauci to provide answers to our inquiries," said Michigan's Gary Peters, the committee's top Democrat. "Criminal contempt is punitive. It does not compel a witness to answer questions or produce the documents we'd all like to see. What it will do is create a damaging precedent that future witnesses will use to resist legitimate constitutional, or excuse me, congressional oversight, and weaken this committee's ability to compel testimony." 

It will ultimately be up to the Justice Department to decide whether to pursue a criminal prosecution of Fauci. Paul's 

, as written, directs the President of the Senate, Vice President Vance, to certify the committee's decision to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. 

Doing so would sidestep a vote by the entire Senate, but in order for the resolution to carry the full force of Congress the GOP would need to secure 60 votes for it. 

While prosecutions are rare, two former Trump advisers — Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro — were imprisoned on contempt-of-Congress charges during the Biden administration. 

Many Democrats now see a similar risk for Fauci, pointing to the prosecution of other former government officials whom President Trump is critical of, including his former FBI director, James Comey. 

Fauci, Paul and the debate over the pandemic's origin

Paul and the Trump administration have argued for years that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, came from a lab in China. And he alleges that Fauci, who helped lead the federal COVID-19 response, downplayed support for the lab leak theory.

Fauci strongly denies the accusation. He says the scientific evidence suggests the virus spilled over naturally from an animal into a human, and many 

virologists who study pandemic origins agree

 by the World Health Organization — based on three years of research by the 27 members of The WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens — stated that "the weight of available evidence" also supports the animal-spillover theory.

looked at samples from a wet market in Wuhan, finding that those that tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus clustered around a stall where live animals were sold.

But supporters of the lab leak theory note that the analysis of the virus by scientists relied on incomplete data provided by the Chinese government. They also point to the lack of a smoking gun in previous analyses — such as samples from an animal directly infected with SARS-CoV-2 at the Wuhan market.

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Rachel Carlson

Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to answer their questions about the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senate Homeland Security committee votes to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress

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