Sen. Rand Paul is racing to push a contempt of Congress citation against Dr. Anthony Fauci through committee before the Senate breaks for recess, a move that could send the case straight to the Justice Department.
Paul, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, announced the plan Thursday on Fox News after Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during a combative hearing the day before. The 85-year-old former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases refused to answer questions about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, his public statements on the virus's origins, and allegations that he lied to Congress about U.S.-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Paul told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" that he plans to bypass the full Senate floor and pass the contempt motion directly out of committee, then send it to the Department of Justice with a legal brief supporting the case. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is expected to send the chamber into recess at the end of next week, which would ordinarily stall such a vote. But Paul signaled he is undeterred.
The procedural path Paul outlined is unusual. Contempt of Congress citations typically move from committee to a full chamber vote before referral to the DOJ. Paul, as the New York Post reported, argued there is no rule requiring that step.
Paul laid out his reasoning on Fox News:
"In the past, often, contempt messages go from committee to the floor, but I don't think there's any rule that says it has to. I think it's less likely to pass on the floor. I think we can pass it out of committee."
From there, Paul said, the citation would go directly to the DOJ with supporting legal arguments. If the Senate is already in recess when the vote happens, Vice President JD Vance, as president of the Senate, can certify the contempt citation.
Contempt of Congress is a criminal misdemeanor that carries one to 12 months in prison and a $100,000 fine upon conviction. The final decision on whether to prosecute would fall to D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office.
Pirro herself appeared to signal interest in the case. On the day of the hearing, she posted a video clip on her X account showing a sketch from "The Dave Chappelle Show" in which the comedian played a fictional crack dealer pleading the Fifth before a Senate subcommittee.
At the center of the contempt argument is Fauci's decision to deliver an opening statement at Wednesday's hearing, and then invoke the Fifth Amendment on every question that followed, from senators of both parties. That sequence matters legally.
New York criminal defense lawyer David Schwartz told the Post that Fauci's approach "definitely constituted contempt."
"You can't just sort of testify through your opening statement and then invoke the Fifth Amendment."
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who sits on the Homeland Security panel, drew a direct parallel to the case of former IRS official Lois Lerner. Lerner gave an opening statement before a congressional committee, then took the Fifth, and the committee held her in contempt for doing both. Lankford recalled the precedent plainly: "The committee then held her in contempt for that, saying, 'You can't do both.'"
That precedent has limits, though. The DOJ under then-Attorney General Eric Holder ultimately declined to bring charges against Lerner after a two-year investigation. Whether Pirro's office would follow the same course remains an open question.
Fauci received a sweeping pardon from President Biden before leaving office, one broad enough, Paul has argued, that it should have freed Fauci to testify without fear of criminal liability for past conduct. Instead, Fauci's refusal to answer raised a novel legal question: can a pardoned witness still invoke the Fifth?
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, told Fox News the pardon undercuts Fauci's rationale for silence:
"The only reason for him to take the Fifth is because he doesn't want to admit, based on his personal diaries, that he lied repeatedly to the public and Congress when he was head of the NIAID."
Schwartz, the defense attorney, offered a different read. He said Fauci "was in a tough spot because he could have faced state-level prosecutions for any false statements he may have made to the committee had he chosen to testify." A federal pardon does not shield a witness from state charges, and Florida's attorney general has already opened an investigation into Fauci following the hearing.
Biden's pardon, according to Fox News, covered actions taken between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025. That scope is wide, but it does not extend to new statements made under oath in 2026.
Paul has pursued Fauci for roughly five years. He has sent multiple criminal referrals to the DOJ, two under Biden, and at least one under the current administration. Paul himself put the number higher on Fox News, saying he had sent referrals "twice under Biden and twice under Trump." The exact count is unclear, but the pattern is not: every previous referral went nowhere.
What changed the dynamic was the release of Fauci's personal diary by the Homeland Security Committee. The diary entries revealed gaps between what Fauci said publicly and what he recorded privately. On a February 1, 2020 call with a dozen scientists, ten of the participants felt "deliberate insertion was possible" as an explanation for COVID-19's origins, National Review reported. Eight days later, Fauci publicly dismissed the lab leak theory as a conspiracy.
The diary also showed Fauci privately believed COVID-19's mortality rate was 0.2 to 0.3 percent, while he testified before Congress that the rate fell between 1 and 3 percent. Sen. Roger Marshall asked the question the diary raised: "Why are there so many discrepancies in what was in his diary versus what he told us, what he told the public?"
Paul framed the hearing as Fauci's chance to clear the record. "All he had to do today was tell the truth," Paul said. "If he testified and told the truth, even if he admitted to destroying thousands of records, which we think happened, there's no penalty attached. It would just be the truth."
Fauci used his opening statement to cast the entire proceeding as a political exercise. He accused Paul of dragging him before the committee for one reason only:
"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.'"
His attorney, David Schertler, had previewed that defense in a June 16 letter to Paul. Schertler wrote that "NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as that term has been defined by preeminent experts in the field after a thorough deliberative process." He called Paul's allegation of false testimony "absolutely and demonstrably false" and denied any cover-up.
Schertler was removed from Wednesday's hearing after attempting to speak on Fauci's behalf. Neither Fauci's legal team nor the U.S. Attorney's Office responded to requests for comment.
Almost every Democrat on the Homeland Security panel denounced Paul's efforts the day before the hearing. AP News reported that Democrats characterized the proceeding as politically motivated.
Beyond the gain-of-function dispute, Paul accused Fauci and a former assistant of deleting federal records to obscure details about COVID-19's origins. That allegation gained weight in May, when David Morens, Fauci's former senior adviser at NIAID, was indicted for concealing and destroying federal records related to a grant for coronavirus research in Wuhan.
Fauci has consistently maintained that NIAID did not fund gain-of-function research, experiments that enhance a pathogen's ability to spread or cause disease, at the Wuhan lab. But other officials have disputed that characterization, and three major U.S. intelligence agencies, the CIA, the Energy Department, and the FBI, have each concluded that an accidental lab leak most likely caused the pandemic. Fauci, by contrast, has favored the natural spillover theory.
The alleged false statement at the heart of Paul's case dates to May 2021, when Fauci testified that NIAID's parent agency "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology." Paul contends the evidence, including the diary, the Morens indictment, and the intelligence assessments, proves otherwise.
Paul said he expects to win a contempt vote in committee next week, though he acknowledged he "can't guarantee" the outcome. If the motion passes and the Senate is already in recess, Vance can certify the citation, and the legal brief goes to Pirro's office.
The Lerner precedent looms over the process. A contempt citation is only as strong as the prosecutor willing to act on it. Under Holder, the DOJ let Lerner's case die. Pirro's social media activity suggests she may take a different view, but posting a comedy sketch is not the same as filing charges.
Breitbart noted that Democrats on the committee framed the entire effort as political entrapment, while Just The News reported that Florida's attorney general opened a separate investigation into Fauci following the hearing, citing his "lack of candor."
Fauci had every chance to sit in that chair and answer questions under the protection of the broadest presidential pardon in recent memory. He chose silence instead, 111 times. If that does not tell the American public everything it needs to know, a contempt vote certainly will.
