Fauci refuses to answer questions in 'unhinged' COVID hearing

Anthony Fauci, the former top US infectious disease expert, has declined to answer questions at a Republican-led Senate hearing about the origins of COVID-19 and his handling of the pandemic.Dr Fauci, who is 85 and retired in 2022, was subpoenaed by Republican senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and is a longtime adversary.Dr Fauci accused Senator Paul of an "unhinged" campaign to see him imprisoned and refused to answer more than 100 questions during the hearing on Wednesday, local time.Senator Paul said Dr Fauci was not allowed to plead the Fifth Amendment right to refrain from answering senators' questions, that a pardon from former US president Joe Biden would not protect him, and that there would be consequences for refusing to answer, adding the committee had scheduled a vote next week to hold Dr Fauci in contempt.Joe Biden pre-emptively pardoned Anthony Fauci in 2025. (Reuters: Jonathan Ernst)Dr Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, serving under multiple Republican and Democratic presidents, became the face of the US pandemic response.US President Donald Trump and many American conservatives have long criticised him. Before the hearing, Mr Trump took to social media to say Dr Fauci's ideas "were CRAZY".More than 1.1 million people died of COVID-19 in the US, prompting a long-running effort by conservatives to assign blame for the toll.Dr Fauci became the primary target of that anger, criticised for lockdown directives, guidance on mask-wearing and social distancing, and his promotion of vaccines, which became heavily politicised during the pandemic despite being shown to be safe and effective.He and many public health officials globally recommended such measures based on scientific evidence available at the time as best practices to slow the spread of a novel and deadly virus for which there was no immunity, until a vaccine became available.Mr Biden pre-emptively pardoned Dr Fauci on January 19, 2025, to guard against "unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions" for allegations related to COVID or his role in the response. The pardon does not cover subsequent conduct.Legal possibilitiesFederal law makes it a crime to knowingly and wilfully make a "materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation" to Congress, potentially exposing Dr Fauci to prison if prosecutors decided he lied after being pardoned.Republicans criticised Dr Fauci for refusing to answer and claimed federal law and a 19th-century US Supreme Court decision required him to testify.The 1896 decision lets Congress compel testimony from witnesses by immunising them from criminal prosecution for what they say, without violating the witnesses' Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.Dr Fauci even invoked the Fifth when senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, asked him what day it was and what colour his tie and the carpet were.Ohio Republican senator Bernie Moreno repeatedly asked if Dr Fauci would apologise to various groups Senator Moreno claimed were harmed by pandemic-era policies for which he blamed Dr Fauci.Rand Paul says Dr Fauci was not allowed to plead the Fifth Amendment right to refrain from answering senators' questions (Reuters: Nathan Howard)Senator Paul had David Schertler, one of Dr Fauci's lawyers, removed from the hearing after refusing to recognise his attempts to speak.In a statement, Mr Schertler called Senator Paul's pursuit "an obsessive vendetta" and said the accusations "are false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable".Senator Paul has for years called for Dr Fauci's indictment and accused him of lying to Congress about whether the National Institutes of Health funded virus research in Wuhan, China, and of helping cover up COVID's origins.'Slanderous comments'Dr Fauci denies both claims and says he has testified truthfully multiple times before Congress on these issues, with Senator Paul often his chief antagonist.Dr Fauci said Senator Paul's "obsession" with prosecuting him, his "slanderous comments" and his release of Dr Fauci's unredacted personal diary showed the hearing's sole reason was to make him "say something that could vindicate" Senator Paul's public pledges to see him behind bars.Michigan US senator Gary Peters, the committee's top Democrat, called the hearing biased and one-sided, describing it as an effort "to legitimise a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago".Claims of so-called gain-of-function research in China have been behind much COVID origin conspiracy theories, broadly accusing China of modifying a pathogen in ways that could make it more transmissible or dangerous.Senator Paul had long suggested that the US National Institutes of Health funded such work in Wuhan and that Dr Fauci lied when he denied it, while Fauci says the research did not meet the government's formal regulatory definition.COVID originsCOVID's origins remain unresolved.The FBI said in 2023 that a leak from a Wuhan laboratory likely caused the pandemic, a claim China said had "no credibility whatsoever".The CIA said in January 2025 a lab leak was likely, but with "low confidence", while four other US intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council believe the virus most likely emerged via natural transmission from an animal.Senator Paul this week published a 1,141-page tranche of Dr Fauci's pandemic-era diary entries, from December 2019 through December 2022, saying they "completely undermine the official narrative that Dr Fauci and other public health officials espoused".A review provided by a representative of Dr Fauci said the entries matched what he said publicly at the time.Dr Fauci has maintained since 2021 that he kept an "open mind" that COVID could have leaked from a lab, and spoke publicly in early 2020 about asymptomatic transmission and China's lack of transparency, the very matters Senator Paul says the diary reveals.The entries largely chronicle Dr Fauci's media appearances and rising fame.Reuters