Fauci Invokes Fifth Amendment Repeatedly at Senate Hearing, Refuses to Answer Rand Paul on Wuhan Funding

Anthony Fauci sat before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday and would not answer the questions that matter most.

The former NIAID director, testifying under subpoena, repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., pressed him on NIH funding for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to Fox News. Fauci opened with a defense of his record, noting he served 54 years at NIH, 38 as NIAID director, and testified before Congress more than 200 times.

But when Paul got specific, Fauci went silent. He accused Paul of an "obsession" with seeing him prosecuted and said he felt set up to "vindicate" Paul's past predictions that he'd end up behind bars, Fox News reported.

The pardon problem

Republicans kept hammering one argument: Fauci received a preemptive pardon from President Joe Biden before leaving office. A pardon is supposed to end criminal exposure. If there's no criminal exposure, there's no Fifth Amendment privilege to invoke.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., made that argument directly to Fauci's face, citing Brown v. Walker, an 1896 Supreme Court case holding that once a person is pardoned, they cannot claim Fifth Amendment protection for the pardoned conduct, according to Just The News. "You don't have any rights under the fifth amendment, because you've been pardoned, as you very well know," Hawley said. He added that Fauci's own lawyers, seated behind him, knew the precedent too. "This isn't about the Constitution, this isn't about the law," Hawley said. "This is about contempt, contempt for this body and contempt for the American people."

Hawley went further, suggesting Fauci's silence was less about legal exposure and more about avoiding questions on whether he personally profited during the pandemic, Just The News reported. No charges have been filed against Fauci related to personal enrichment, and no source here documents specific payments beyond the allegation itself.

Paul made a parallel argument during the hearing, telling Fauci a lawful subpoena obligates truthful testimony and that lying to Congress is itself a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, according to Fox News. The exchange ended with Fauci's attorney interjecting out of turn and getting ejected from the hearing room, a moment captured in an Eagle Country 99.3 report describing the chairman declaring "You are not recognized!"

What's actually in dispute

The underlying question predates Wednesday's hearing by years. Fauci told Congress in May 2021 that NIH "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology," according to Just The News. Paul and other critics say that statement was false, pointing to NIH grants routed through EcoHealth Alliance that funded experiments modifying bat coronaviruses to better infect human cells.

NIH's own defense has rested on a technical distinction: the agency says the EcoHealth-funded work didn't meet its regulatory definition of gain-of-function research requiring special review, even if it involved similar techniques. Then-Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak told Congress in May 2024 that under a broader, generic definition, the agency's funding did qualify as gain-of-function work at the Wuhan lab, while maintaining it fell outside the narrower regulated category, Just The News reported. NIH later removed that broader definition from its website amid the controversy, according to the same reporting.

Whether Fauci's 2021 testimony was a deliberate falsehood or a defensible reliance on a technical regulatory definition is a matter of interpretation that these sources do not resolve. No perjury charge has been filed. No court has ruled on it.

Where this goes next

The pardon's legal durability is itself contested. Questions about Biden's cognitive state when it was signed, and whether it was executed via autopen without his direct knowledge, have been raised by Paul in earlier remarks to Just The News, who called it "an extraordinary pardon" whose validity remains an open question. No court has invalidated the pardon, and no charges have been brought against Fauci that would test it.

Reaction from conservative figures was immediate and sharp. Rep. Jimmy Patronis, R-Fla., called Fauci "a monster" whose Fifth Amendment plea was "grotesque," according to Fox News. Author Ann Coulter went further, declaring "The Fifth Amendment is not legitimate" in this context, per the same report. Those are political and rhetorical judgments, not legal rulings.

The immediate unresolved question is procedural: will the Homeland Security Committee move to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer under subpoena, as Paul has suggested is possible? That decision, and any Justice Department response to it, has not yet happened as of Wednesday's hearing.