Sen. Bernie Moreno called Dr. Anthony Fauci the left's "hero" for seizing "total and complete control of the American people" during COVID, one day after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment rights 111 times at a Senate hearing.
The Ohio Republican went on Fox News' "Hannity" Thursday evening and unloaded on the former White House chief medical advisor, saying Fauci's refusal to answer a single question before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee proved what critics had argued for years: that the man once treated as the face of American public health had something to hide.
Fauci appeared under subpoena Wednesday, July 29, before a committee chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. Rather than answer questions about gain-of-function research, COVID-19 origins, or his pandemic-era public statements, Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on every question, from senators of both parties, repeating the same phrase each time.
The hearing was combative from the start. Paul had released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's personal diary entries and internal notes ahead of the proceeding, and Republican senators came armed with specific contradictions between what Fauci wrote privately and what he told the public. Fauci's response to all of it was the same line, delivered on the advice of his attorneys:
"On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the constitution."
He said it 111 times, according to the New York Post's count, including when asked about CIA funding of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency he once led. His attorney, David Schertler, was physically removed from the hearing room by Capitol Police after repeatedly trying to interject during the questioning.
Fauci framed his silence as self-preservation, not evasion. In a prepared statement, he accused Paul of an "unhinged obsession" and said the senator's real aim was to put him "behind bars."
Paul saw it differently. As the hearing unfolded, the chairman told reporters that Fauci had a simple path out:
"All he had to do today was tell the truth. 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."
The 1,000-plus pages of diary entries and notes released by Paul's committee provided the hearing's factual backbone. National Review reported that the entries revealed significant gaps between what Fauci knew privately and what he told the American public.
On COVID-19's origins: Fauci's diary showed that during a February 1, 2020 call with a dozen scientists, ten of the twelve believed "deliberate insertion was possible", meaning the virus may have been engineered. Eight days later, Fauci publicly dismissed the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy theory.
On the fatality rate: Fauci privately agreed the COVID-19 mortality rate was "0.2, 0.3%." One month later, he testified before Congress that it was between 1 and 3 percent, a figure as much as fifteen times higher than his own private estimate. That inflated number helped justify the lockdowns, school closures, and business shutdowns that followed.
On lockdowns themselves: a linked Fox News headline referenced in the primary report stated that newly exposed diary entries showed Fauci "privately took credit for COVID-19 lockdowns despite public denial." Fauci declined to address any of it at the hearing.
Moreno's clash with Fauci during the Wednesday hearing was one of its most heated moments. The freshman senator told Fauci directly that the former advisor's pandemic-era conduct had inspired him to run for office in the first place, and then let loose:
"Here I am sitting in front of you six years later saying, 'Who the f--- do you think you were for doing that? It is a total disgrace what you did to this country.'"
Moreno also asked Fauci to turn and apologize to audience members who said they had been harmed by pandemic policies. Fauci would not look at them. On "Hannity" the following evening, Moreno said that moment bothered him most.
Asked whether he stood by his sharp language at the hearing, Moreno did not flinch. He called Fauci "one of the most depraved bureaucrats" and said the pandemic response was never about public health.
"This is about controlling American people. He treated us like lab rats."
Then Moreno widened the lens. He tied Fauci's conduct to a broader pattern he attributed to the political left, one in which government power, once seized, is never voluntarily returned:
"You want to give power to Democrats, socialists and communists in this country? They will take away your freedoms, they will take away your liberties, they'll control you, they'll replace you. They want to systematically destroy this country, and that's why Fauci is their hero. He got to do what they only fantasize about, which is total and complete control of the American people."
The fallout from Wednesday's hearing moved fast. Paul announced he would seek a contempt of Congress vote against Fauci, and moved to fast-track the proceedings before the Senate recess. AP News reported that Fauci had invoked the Fifth more than 100 times, and that the committee announced the potential contempt vote following his blanket refusal to testify.
On Thursday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced his office would open its own investigation into Fauci. The announcement came directly in response to Fauci's Fifth Amendment invocations at the hearing. Moreno said he hoped Ohio's attorney general would follow suit.
The Florida investigation raises a question that hung over the entire hearing: the scope of the pardon former President Joe Biden granted Fauci. Republicans have questioned whether that pardon, issued in early 2025, shields Fauci from state-level prosecution or only federal charges. Fauci's legal team has not publicly clarified the distinction.
Fox News Digital reported it reached out to Fauci's attorney for comment on Moreno's remarks. No response was noted.
Moreno made clear on "Hannity" that he views the diary entries and Fauci's silence as confirmation of what many Americans suspected throughout the pandemic, that the nation's top public health official misled the public while privately holding different views.
"We know what he was actually thinking. We know he lied to the American people. State attorneys general, like the one in Florida, I hope the one in Ohio does the same thing. We got to pursue this guy."
Moreno argued that Fauci's pandemic-era decisions, school closures, business lockdowns, mask mandates, set back children's health "for decades." He described Fauci not as a rogue actor but as the embodiment of a governing philosophy that prizes bureaucratic control over individual liberty.
Paul put it more bluntly at the hearing itself. He called the proceeding "the capstone to Anthony Fauci's 40 years of abuse of power at NIH."
Meanwhile, Breitbart reported that the diary entries indicated Fauci was aware scientists believed the coronavirus likely stemmed from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, not from a wet market, as the public was told for months. Fauci's Fifth Amendment invocations prevented any live questioning on the discrepancy.
The legislative response is still building. Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill to ban federal cash prizes in the wake of Fauci's testimony, adding another layer of congressional action to a week that saw the former NIH director go from witness to target.
A man who spent decades lecturing Americans about transparency sat in front of the United States Senate and refused to say a single word in his own defense. The American people deserve to know why.
