Rand Paul to hold committee vote on holding Fauci in contempt for refusing to testify

The Senate panel chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) will hold a vote on holding Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt for refusing to testify about his actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, an escalation in the long-running battle between the two men.Paul said he scheduled the vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee because Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment, declining to answer questions at a Wednesday hearing, even though he received a blanket pardon from President Joe Biden. “Because you refuse to answer, citing a privilege that is unsupported, because of your pardon, and after being denied to do so, this committee has scheduled a vote next week on a resolution certifying your contempt,” Paul said.The citation will have to be voted out of committee before it will be referred to a full vote in the Senate. There, Democrats could block it via a filibuster.Republicans argued Wednesday that Fauci had no reason not to testify as long as he did not lie, given that he had already received a pardon for any crimes possibly committed during the pandemic.“I think there’s another legal question that the courts may have to to decide upon, and that is whether or not a presidential pardon that offers you complete immunity, that you can still claim that you need protection from immunity when you’ve been protected, because Dr. Fauci isn’t liable for anything as long as he tells the truth,” Paul said at the end of Wednesday’s hearing.Paul said Fauci would be protected from prosecution “even if he admits that he destroyed records on a routine basis — his assistant said she destroyed a ton of emails.”Paul and Republicans also argued that Fauci effectively waived his Fifth Amendment rights by delivering an open statement at the hearing before refusing to answer questions.Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) noted the instance in which former IRS official Lois Lerner gave an opening statement and then tried to invoke the Fifth Amendment. She was subsequently held in contempt by the House of Representatives.“The committee then held her in contempt for that, saying, ‘You can’t do both,'” Lankford said. “‘You can’t both testify and say, “I’m not going to answer questions.”‘ So the parliamentary question that I think we’ve got to be able to deal with is: Is this consistent with Lois Lerner?”Fauci said at the start of the hearing that he would not answer questions because “the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason [Paul] 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.’”He also said his attorneys advised him not to testify because of Paul’s “unhinged obsession” regarding the alleged cover-up of U.S.-funded risky virus research.Paul and Fauci have clashed for years at Senate hearings over the origins of the pandemic and Fauci’s recommendations on vaccines, masking, and much more.RAND PAUL HAS FAUCI LAWYER REMOVED FROM COVID-19 HEARING OVER INTERRUPTIONSBut Republicans maintained that Fauci would be on safe ground, legally, as long as his testimony was truthful.“He should be held in contempt and every avenue pursued,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said in a text to the Washington Examiner. “Question I would ask – if he’s pardoned- the only thing he could do wrong is lie. So what is he afraid of?”Naomi Lim contributed to this story.