A Senate committee voted on 6 August 2026 to hold Dr Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to every question put to him at a hearing eight days earlier.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed the contempt resolution by eight votes to seven, along strict party lines, with all Democrats opposing it. Politico reported the result.
Fauci, who led NIAID for 38 years before retiring in 2022 and became the public face of the United States government's pandemic response, had appeared before the committee on 29 July under subpoena. The hearing was part of a Republican-led investigation into the origins of COVID-19. The Hill reported that he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times.
Committee chair Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky who has pursued Fauci publicly and in Congress throughout the pandemic years, argued that Fauci had no valid basis to plead the Fifth. Paul's reasoning rests on a blanket preemptive pardon that President Joe Biden granted Fauci before leaving office, covering the period from 2014 to early 2025. Yahoo News reported Paul's argument that the pardon renders the Fifth Amendment protection legally unsupported.
Fauci disputed that framing. Politico reported that he said he invoked the Fifth because he believed Paul intended to manoeuvre him into a statement that could later be used to bring a perjury charge against him.
That concern may not be unfounded. NPR reported that legal experts have warned Fauci could still face perjury charges if he contradicts previous sworn testimony, regardless of the Biden pardon. The pardon's precise scope, and whether it forecloses Fifth Amendment protection, has not been definitively settled.
The hearing itself was unusually combative. Yahoo News reported that Paul had one of Fauci's attorneys ejected from the room during the proceedings. Shortly before the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's private diary entries from the pandemic period, NPR reported, accusing Fauci of concealing the truth about COVID-19's origins. The full content and significance of those entries has not been independently established.
Rather than pursue a full Senate floor vote — a path that would require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and would almost certainly fail without Democratic support — Paul is seeking to refer the contempt resolution directly to the Justice Department. CBS News reported that the resolution calls on Vice President JD Vance, in his constitutional role as president of the Senate, to certify the committee's contempt report to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro.
Whether that route carries legal force is not clear. Congressional contempt findings can in theory result in fines or imprisonment, but enforcement depends entirely on the Justice Department choosing to act. It is not known whether the department will agree to prosecute.
The proceedings are the latest episode in a years-long confrontation between Paul and Fauci. Fauci has described Paul as having an obsession with him. Paul has consistently argued that pandemic-era decisions and questions about COVID-19's origins were never adequately scrutinised. The contempt vote ensures that argument will continue to play out in a legal as well as political arena — though on what timeline, and with what outcome, remains open.
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