By THE ALASKA STORY
July 29, 2026 – The man who helped direct America’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic declined Wednesday to answer questions about the decisions he made, the research his agency funded or what he knew about the possible origin of the virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a contentious hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Fauci, 85, had been subpoenaed by committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has spent years investigating the federal government’s role in funding virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
“Because of the respect I have for this legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci said in his opening statement.
He then declined to answer more than 100 questions, according to reports from the hearing.
Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 through 2022. He became the most visible public-health official in the country during the pandemic, appearing regularly alongside President Donald Trump before becoming chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
During those years, Fauci spoke with authority about masks, vaccines, lockdowns, school closures and other policies that disrupted nearly every part of American life. On Wednesday, however, he would not discuss his own conduct under oath.
Paul questioned Fauci about recently released documents, including private diary entries and communications involving scientists who considered the possibility that Covid-19 escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Paul has argued that some scientists privately took the laboratory-leak possibility seriously while Fauci and other public-health officials publicly promoted a natural-origin explanation. The origin of the virus remains unresolved, with U.S. intelligence agencies reaching differing conclusions.
The Kentucky senator also raised questions about federal funding that flowed through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance to research conducted at the Wuhan laboratory. Fauci has long denied that the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research there under the federal definition in effect at the time.
“You were not a detached observer,” Paul told Fauci. “You had an institutional interest in the public believing that federally funded research had nothing to do with the pandemic. It was a conflict of interest from the very beginning.”
Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked whether NIH ever conducted research for, or in coordination with, elements of the U.S. intelligence community. He also declined to say whether his view had changed about whether the potential benefits of gain-of-function research outweigh its risks.
The constitutional protection against self-incrimination is available to any witness, and invoking it does not by itself establish guilt. But Fauci’s refusal immediately raised questions because Biden issued him a sweeping preemptive pardon shortly before leaving office in January 2025.
The pardon covered possible federal offenses dating back to Jan. 1, 2014, arising from Fauci’s government service. It would not, however, protect him from prosecution for any new offense committed after the pardon, such as making a false statement under oath during Wednesday’s hearing.
Paul asked Fauci whether the Biden pardon could be jeopardized if Fauci were found to have lied to Congress. Fauci again invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Fauci said he feared Paul was attempting to lure him into making a statement that could be used as the basis for a new criminal allegation, regardless of the pardon.
“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, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said.
He accused Paul of having an “unhinged obsession” with him and described the hearing as an attempt to embarrass and intimidate him.
Paul rejected that characterization and said the questions concerned Fauci’s official actions as head of NIAID and as a presidential adviser.
“The committee has issued a valid subpoena,” Paul said. “They have requested your presence here. The questions are very pertinent to your decision-making as head of NIAID, as well as a chief adviser to the president.”
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s ranking Democrat, defended Fauci and accused Paul of using the hearing to advance a partisan agenda. Peters cited Paul’s previous calls for Fauci to be fired, investigated and prosecuted.
“I fear the intent of this hearing is only meant to further a purely partisan agenda, and it will not make Americans safer,” Peters said.
Paul called Peters’ assertions “categorically false.”
By the end of the hearing, Paul said the committee would consider holding Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer its questions.
“There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify today,” Paul told him.
For millions of Americans whose businesses were closed, children were kept out of classrooms, relatives died alone and employment was threatened over vaccine mandates, the hearing offered few answers.
The official who once insisted Americans follow the government’s pandemic directives was finally placed under oath and asked to account for the government’s own decisions.
His answer was the Fifth.
