Senate panel votes to hold Fauci in contempt after Fifth Amendment plea

Washington,UPDATED: Aug 6, 2026 21:34 IST

A US Senate committee has voted along party lines to hold Dr Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to answer questions at a hearing on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The move sets up a referral to the Department of Justice, which will decide whether to investigate whether the former top infectious disease official properly exercised his constitutional rights.

The vote came a week after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The episode has raised fresh legal questions over whether Congress can compel testimony from a witness who has already been pardoned.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the committee chairman, pushed for the contempt finding and argued that Fauci could not rely on that constitutional protection because he was pardoned last year by Democratic President Joe Biden. "Dr Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution," Paul said at the start of Thursday's hearing. "All he had to do was tell the truth."

Paul has said he plans to send the referral directly to the Justice Department instead of first taking it to the full Senate, despite questions from Democrats over whether that would be legal. If he does so, the decision on whether to investigate or try to prosecute Fauci for contempt would rest with the US attorney in Washington. A referral from Congress does not require prosecutors to act.

Fauci and Democrats, who unanimously opposed the contempt resolution, said he had a genuine fear of self-incrimination because Republicans have openly sought his prosecution. In a statement last week explaining why he invoked the Fifth Amendment, Fauci said he feared criminal charges because of what he called Paul's determination "to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote".

Fauci's lawyer, David Schertler, said the contempt resolution was "a continuation of Senator Paul's personal vendetta against Dr Fauci, who spent 50 years in public health and has saved countless lives". He accused Paul of trying to "weaponise the Justice Department" and added: "Today's partisan committee vote is a crude political stunt intended to punish Dr Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights." Schertler also said, "The Senate should reject Senator Paul's meritless and politically-motivated contempt resolution. For years, Senator Paul has proclaimed to anyone who would listen that Dr Fauci should be prosecuted and put in prison. Dr Fauci has committed no crime – and Senator Paul knows it."

Biden's pardon covered acts from 2014 through the January 2025 day it was issued. However, it does not protect Fauci from state-level prosecutions or from investigations into any testimony he did give if lawmakers believe it was false. Republicans have repeatedly backed the idea that Fauci should face charges over COVID, while the Trump administration has also raised questions about whether Biden's pardons were valid because he often used an autopen for official business.

Before the vote, Senator Maggie Hassan said the aim was to wait for Fauci to make a mistake that could expose him to fresh charges. "The goal was to wait for Dr Fauci make any kind of misstatement and then have a weaponised Department of Justice to file criminal charges for that new statement that would nor have been covered by the pardon, leaving Dr Fauci little choice but to invoke his constitutional right to not walk directly into a trap," she said.

The committee's top Democrat, Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, said Paul was undermining long-standing congressional respect for Fifth Amendment protections and questioned whether the referral would be valid if he bypassed the full Senate, where the 60 votes needed to pass the resolution are seen as unlikely. "If this committee now seeks to punish a witness for asserting their constitutionally protected Fifth Amendment rights, future witnesses will argue that appearing before Congress exposes them to punishment regardless of whether they comply with a subpoena and invoke a constitutional protection," he said.

The committee vote has now deepened a legal and political fight over Fauci's appearance before senators, with Republicans arguing that his pardon removed any federal risk and Democrats saying he still had reason to fear prosecution. The next step will depend on whether the Justice Department acts on Paul's planned referral.

With PTI Inputs

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