{"id":550476,"date":"2026-07-30T01:35:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T01:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/550476\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T01:35:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T01:35:16","slug":"fauci-repeatedly-declines-to-answer-questions-at-contentious-covid-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/550476\/","title":{"rendered":"Fauci repeatedly declines to answer questions at contentious Covid hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Anthony Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer dozens of questions from senators in a Republican-led committee hearing about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

The decision, at least for now, shielded Fauci from answering questions that could expose him to accusations of lying under oath. Though he received a pardon in early 2025 from Democratic President Joe Biden, some Republicans pursuing a yearslong campaign for his arrest had suggested he could still face charges for any perjury committed during the hearing.<\/p>\n

The scientist, who helped lead the nation\u2019s Covid-19 response<\/a>, was subpoenaed to testify under oath by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has long had an antagonistic relationship with Fauci.<\/p>\n

In response to angry, sometimes mocking, questions from Republican senators, Fauci declined to answer more than 100 times, injecting new drama into partisan divides that have festered for years about the origins and handling of the pandemic. Fauci himself has become a polarising figure, even receiving death threats that prompted him to seek security.<\/p>\n

\"Senator<\/p>\n

Senator Rand Paul speaks as Dr Anthony Fauci appears before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the Capitol, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Washington. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has an \u201cobvious obsession with calling for my prosecution\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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, unquote,\u201d Fauci said, adding that while it pained him to do so, he was following his attorney\u2019s advice by taking the Fifth.<\/p>\n

Paul, who has long argued that Fauci should be criminally investigated, based on his belief that the scientist was dishonest in previous testimony to Congress, announced that the committee will vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt for declining to answer questions.<\/p>\n

He did not say whether he would push for a criminal contempt referral to federal prosecutors or another charge. He also raised questions about whether Fauci\u2019s pardon affects his eligibility for Fifth Amendment protections.<\/p>\n

Republicans accuse Fauci of lying while Democrats say he didn’t deserve that<\/p>\n

\"David<\/p>\n

David Schertler, Dr Anthony Fauci’s defence lawyer, is escorted out, as Fauci appears before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the Capitol, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Washington. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In the combative hearing, Paul and other Republicans accused Fauci of lying in earlier testimony about the coronavirus\u2019s origins, something the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has forcefully denied. Democrats called the hearing a politically motivated attempt at entrapping Fauci and praised the scientist for his work during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

With Fauci declining to answer questions throughout, Paul dominated the approximately three-hour hearing, listing a litany of accusations and detailed questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday will be the capstone to Anthony Fauci’s 40 years of abuse of power at NIH,\u201d Paul said. \u201cHistory will judge, but the facts as we now know them paint a sordid tale of dishonesty, misjudgment and ultimately the hubris, the likes of which the world has never seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a heated moment during the hearing, Paul ejected Fauci\u2019s attorney, David Schertler, from the room after he tried to speak without being recognised. In a statement, Schertler said the removal was \u201coutrageous and demonstrates the completely biased and baseless nature of this proceeding\u201d. In another statement, he called Paul\u2019s accusations about Fauci \u201cfalse and disgraceful\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"David<\/p>\n

David Schertler, Dr Anthony Fauci\u2019s defence lawyer, is escorted out, as Fauci appears before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the Capitol, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Washington. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Democratic senators praised Fauci and said he didn\u2019t deserve the treatment he was getting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis hearing is designed to entrap you,\u201d said Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

Paul released some of Fauci’s diary<\/p>\n

Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1000 pages of Fauci\u2019s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul said on social media that what Fauci \u201cwrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some of the diary entries \u2013 including Fauci\u2019s uncertainty in the pandemic\u2019s earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created \u2013 already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.<\/p>\n

But they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for mask mandates, school closures and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt the scientist made bad decisions about masks, shutdowns, and other issues. He later told reporters he watched the entire hearing.<\/p>\n

Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before entering public office, said on social media that his department had found the diary entries on government property and had given them to the committee.<\/p>\n

Dozens of disease experts defend Fauci<\/p>\n

\"File<\/p>\n

File photo of Dr Anthony Fauci speaking at the White House. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Scientists also scrambled to defend Fauci ahead of the unusual hearing \u2014 the second time he has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins since leaving the government in 2022. While the Covid-19 pandemic introduced him to millions of Americans, he talked the nation through numerous outbreaks over decades, including HIV, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks, while advising seven presidents.<\/p>\n

In a public letter, more than 150 infectious-disease experts and other scientists wrote that \u201cno credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges\u201d and that they are urging elected officials to \u201cstop these witch-hunts\u201d.<\/p>\n

Among topics discussed at Wednesday’s hearing was whether NIH-funded research in China may have played a role in how the pandemic started.<\/p>\n

Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There\u2019s no new scientific evidence supporting the theory that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 found no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there\u2019s more evidence supporting Covid-19\u2019s natural origins.<\/p>\n

Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded what’s known as gain-of-function research \u2014 the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact \u2014 at a lab in Wuhan.<\/p>\n

The NIH, for years, gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, which used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. But the definition of gain-of-function covers both general research and especially risky experiments that enhance the ability of potential pandemic viruses to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment definition and that \u201cit would be molecularly impossible\u201d for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.<\/p>\n

Trump, a Republican, paused some federally funded gain-of-function research last year, and on Tuesday his administration announced new rules to tighten oversight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Anthony Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer dozens of questions from senators in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[40096,42,43,64,40,38,41,39,66],"class_list":["post-550476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-coronavirus-pandemic","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}