What to know as Senate panel sets vote to hold Fauci in contempt
The Hill · C · trust 55/100
Comments: by Rebecca Beitsch and Joseph Choi - 08/05/26 6:00 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Rebecca Beitsch and Joseph Choi - 08/05/26 6:00 PM ET Comments: Link copied NOW PLAYING The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is set to vote Thursday on a resolution to hold former top health official Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress, a week after he pleaded the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer questions during a committee hearing.
The move raises questions about broader GOP support and the legal risks Fauci may face should the Department of Justice (DOJ) ultimately take up the referral.
Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) stated his plans to vote on holding Fauci in contempt last week following the hearing in which the retired government scientist resolutely refused to answer any questions for hours, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.
Fauci invoked his constitutional rights 111 times throughout the three-hour hearing.
The resolution unveiled Tuesday would send the committee’s report of contempt to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia , though it could also be forwarded to the full Senate for a vote.
On the final full day of his term, former President Biden granted Fauci a sweeping pardon, which GOP members of the panel argue wipes out his claims to a Fifth Amendment protection.
The pardon covers any offense Fauci may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, to Jan. 19, 2025.
“Let’s just get one thing straight. You don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned, as you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said to Fauci during the hearing, referring to the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Walker.
At the time, the court wrote that “if the witness has already received a pardon, he cannot longer set up his privilege, since he stands, with respect to such offense, as if it had never been committed.”
Fauci’s attorneys maintain that the longtime scientist retains his constitutional rights against self-incrimination, including because a pardon only covers him for federal crimes, leaving open the risk of state-level prosecution.
“Chairman Paul’s public crusade against Dr. Fauci can only be described as an obsessive vendetta. It triggers what the Supreme Court has called a ‘basic function’ of the Fifth Amendment – ‘to protect innocent men ...‘ who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances,” the attorneys said in a statement.
They argued Paul’s previously stated aims of getting Fauci imprisoned clash with his claims that Fauci should speak freely without concern about potential legal blowbacks.
In May, Paul called for Fauci to be indicted for what the senator claimed was lying under oath about gain-of-function research, saying he did so in 2021. These actions, however, would fall within the scope of Biden’s pardon.
Democrats have argued that Fauci retains his Fifth Amendment rights just like any other American.
“Those rights are not negated by the existence of a pardon,” the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), wrote in a letter to his colleagues obtained by The Hill .
“A federal pardon does not eliminate an individual’s Fifth Amendment protection if they still face a ‘real and appreciable’ risk of federal or state prosecution.”
Peters said the case Hawley cited was for a witness who had been granted full immunity before his testimony.
In Fauci’s case, he could still face charges if he lied to Congress during his testimony and he also runs the risk of state-level charges, something Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) has threatened in opening his own investigation .
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also called the pardon effectively irrelevant to any future case against Fauci.
“They would have no case,” Blumenthal, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, said of the Justice Department.
“He’s taking the Fifth Amendment. He has a justifiable fear of self-incrimination when the chairman of the committee has said more than 300 times this year alone, he wants to put Dr. Fauci behind bars.”
“This is a total myth and misconception that the pardon somehow is a factor here,” Blumenthal added. “The pardon makes no difference whatsoever because it is for actions before the beginning of the Trump term.”
Typically, any criminal referral that passes out of committee is then forwarded to the full Senate floor for a vote.
But Paul also has the option of sending the Justice Department a criminal referral based on the contempt vote, a move House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) recently took in asking the DOJ to take up criminal charges against former special counsel Jack Smith.
Both are effectively referrals, and it’s up to the Justice Department whether to pursue charges.
Paul told reporters Thursday that while the matter may eventually reach the Senate floor, he would start by going directly to the DOJ himself.
“There is some tradition on contempt, and contempt a lot of times has gone to the full floor, but since it’s a recommendation, it’s not like we have a standard that you have to do it one way or another,” he said before noting the Senate is about to recess until early September.
“So I’ve made the decision that I don’t want to waste time over waiting a month and a half. We still might come to the floor, but at this point, the first thing we will do is we will send it over as a recommendation from our committee.”
Peters accused Paul in his letter of sidestepping his colleagues in securing the backing only of the panel’s seven other GOP members rather than the whole Senate.
“Any future subject of congressional…
Read the original at The Hill →
Open in TruthVane →