Senate Republicans have had enough of Anthony Fauci’s silence. This week they moved to hold him in contempt of Congress — a real step, not a symbolic one — after he refused, again and again, to answer questions about his role in the nation’s COVID-19 response.
The vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee broke down along party lines. No surprise there. What’s notable is what got Fauci here: he invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 100 times during last week’s hearing.
A hundred times. That’s not a witness being cautious.
That’s a witness who believes, on some level, that honest answers could hurt him.
Committee chair Rand Paul didn’t hide his frustration. He’d warned there would be “repercussions” for stonewalling, and now he’s making good on it — with a twist.
Normally a contempt resolution has to clear the full Senate before it goes anywhere. Paul’s version skips that step entirely and sends the referral straight to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
He wants the Justice Department looking at this now, not months from now.
There’s a wrinkle worth watching: whether Joe Biden’s pardon of Fauci shields him even here, in a congressional hearing. Paul says that’s exactly the kind of question DOJ needs to sort out.
“It’s a good legal discussion, and we will make those legal points to DOJ in sending the referral over,” he told Fox News Digital.
None of this happened in a vacuum. Paul and Fauci have been at odds since the pandemic’s earliest days, with Paul insisting that Fauci’s agency funded the kind of risky research that may have led to a lab leak in Wuhan.
And that somebody, eventually, needs to answer for it.
Meanwhile, the investigation is picking up material. HHS, now under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has handed Senate investigators a copy of Fauci’s cellphone from the pandemic years. It’s now in the hands of Ron Johnson’s subcommittee.
What’s on it remains to be seen.
But it’s one more sign that this fight isn’t ending with a committee vote.
