US Senate panel votes to hold former official Fauci in contempt of Congress
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x whatsapp-stroke copylink google Add Al Jazeera on Google info Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, attends the US Senate committee hearing July 29, 2026 [Nathan Howard/Reuters] Published On 6 Aug 2026 6 Aug 2026 A United States Senate panel has voted to hold former health official Anthony Fauci , a key figure in the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in contempt of Congress.
The move on Thursday came after Fauci last week invoked the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which includes the right to remain silent, during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The 8-5 vote fell along party lines.
Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), charged that the Republican-led hearing was designed to entrap him. He had previously been pre-emptively pardoned by former President Joe Biden after a politically divisive government response to the pandemic, which included school closures and vaccine promotion.
In his opening statements last week, Fauci accused the committee chairman, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, of having an “unhinged obsession” with him, arguing he had previously cooperated in several congressional hearings and investigations following the pandemic.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he 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 – quote – ‘behind bars’,” Fauci said.
After the vote on Thursday, the panel could refer Fauci to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution.
Speaking before the vote, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said there was “virtually no chance that a court would actually approve any contempt because [Fauci] had a well-founded fear of self-incrimination, which entitled him to invoke the Fifth Amendment”.
Rand, meanwhile, argued that Fauci’s decision to deliver an opening statement decrying the hearing before invoking his Fifth Amendment right during questioning, showed he was “trying to have it both ways”.
Democrats and critics have charged that last week’s hearing, which comes six years after the pandemic spread across the US, was a purely political exercise that shed no new light on the issue.
Several Republicans have for years accused Fauci of leading an intentional effort to mislead the public on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, charging he downplayed the possibility the virus may have emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, and not from a nearby wet market via natural animal-to-human transmission. Fauci has denied he ever outright dismissed the “lab leak” theory.
The origin of the virus remains unknown, but surveys have found a majority of experts in the field believe available evidence indicates natural transmission over a lab leak.
Nevertheless, Republican President Donald Trump’s White House has fully embraced the lab leak theory, launching a website last year highlighting several claims that experts said gloss over the nuance of the debate.
Trump’s health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, has also been a top critic of Fauci. Before last week’s hearing, Republicans on the Senate committee released several of Fauci’s diary entries, which had been provided by the secretary.
The diaries contained no smoking gun proving Fauci intentionally misled the public although they did include some uncomfortable revelations.
Those included Fauci recounting advising then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and an aide to California Governor Gavin Newsom on COVID-19 restrictions, including the closing of schools and businesses. Condemnation of such closures became a politically potent cause for Republicans in the wake of the pandemic.
The vote on Thursday comes just before midterm elections in November.
It was not immediately clear what the next steps would be.
Typically, the issue would be brought to a full Senate vote before referral to the DOJ. That would require passing a 60-vote threshold, only attainable if several Democrats break from their party. Paul has said he wants to bypass the process and directly refer the matter to the DOJ with an accompanying legal brief.
Under federal law, it is illegal for a person called as a witness before the Senate or the US House of Representatives to “refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry”.
Still, Fauci’s lawyers have maintained that he remains on solid legal ground in invoking his constitutional right to remain silent to avoid self incrimination.
Senator Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate panel, said the vote on Thursday contradicted the longstanding practice of lawmakers respecting the right of witnesses to invoke their fifth amendment rights.
“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.
Biden’s pre-emptive pardon of Fauci covers only his actions from January 1, 2014 through January 19, 2025. The former…
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