Sen. Josh Hawley filed legislation to block federal employees from accepting or soliciting cash prizes, one day after Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times rather than answer questions about collecting over $1 million during the pandemic.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, July 29, and refused to answer virtually every question put to him. Hawley, a Missouri Republican, accused Fauci of turning his government staff into a personal awards-application operation while Americans were dying of COVID-19, and Fauci's response, repeated more than a hundred times, was a single scripted sentence invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination.
The next day, Hawley introduced the No Cash Prizes for Bureaucrats Act. The bill would bar federal employees from receiving or soliciting rewards for medicine and research, and would strengthen existing NIH regulations that already prohibit officials from using their own or a subordinate's official duty time to chase such awards. Hawley's office says the legislation targets loopholes in current federal law that Fauci allegedly exploited to collect prize money while running the government's pandemic response.
"No federal bureaucrat should accept cash prizes while on the job. That's why I'm introducing legislation to bar federal employees from accepting cash prizes or soliciting awards. Fauci got rich while millions of people died. It can never happen again."
At the Wednesday hearing, Hawley laid out what he described as a pattern of conduct backed by public records and internal government emails. He accused Fauci of using taxpayer-funded federal employees to apply for and solicit at least eight separate cash awards on his behalf. One prize alone, the Dan David Prize, carried a check of $900,000. Hawley put the combined total above $1 million.
Hawley read from an internal email attributed to Greg Folkers, Fauci's former chief of staff at NIAID. The email, according to Hawley, directed staff to strengthen Fauci's nomination for the Dan David Prize by adding material about his pandemic work:
"We're working on this nomination for the Dan David Award for Fauci. We need to beef up the COVID part."
Hawley told Fauci directly that the email showed government employees, on the taxpayer's dime, were drafting award applications for their boss's personal enrichment. He listed additional prize sources Fauci allegedly pursued using government staff and resources: the Partnership for Public Service, the Adelson Prize, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Academy of Medicine, and the CDC Foundation, among others.
"In fact, you turned your staff into a full-time application machine," Hawley said at the hearing. "You actually wrote to people and said, 'Do you think maybe I'd qualify?'"
Fauci answered none of it.
Fauci's blanket refusal to testify extended far beyond questions about cash prizes. The New York Post reported that Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment at least 111 times during the hearing, including when asked whether the CIA had funded NIAID. His personal NIAID diaries, which he authenticated, showed he had privately recommended lockdowns while publicly denying doing so.
Each time, Fauci delivered the same line: "On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution."
Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, pressed Fauci on whether he even understood the amendment he kept citing. Fauci could not, or would not, say who wrote the Fifth Amendment or what it says. Moreno asked him bluntly: "So you're invoking a right that you don't know who wrote it or what it says. Is that correct?"
Moreno also confronted Fauci over pandemic-era policies that led to arrests of ordinary Americans for violating lockdown orders, demanding of the former NIAID director: "Who the f*** do you think you were for doing that?"
Hawley and other Republican senators argued that Fauci's Fifth Amendment claim was legally groundless. Former President Biden granted Fauci a blanket pardon covering actions prior to its issuance, a fact that, under established case law, could eliminate the risk of criminal prosecution that the Fifth Amendment is designed to guard against. Hawley cited the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Walker to argue that a pardon nullifies Fifth Amendment protection because the witness no longer faces criminal jeopardy.
Fauci's opening statement offered a different rationale. He told the committee he believed the hearing's sole purpose was to extract a statement that could be used against him, telling senators: "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."
Hawley was unpersuaded. He noted that while Fauci refused to answer questions from elected representatives, he had recently found time for media appearances. "You had time to sit for InStyle magazine, but you can't answer questions for the American people," Hawley said.
Committee Chairman Rand Paul announced the committee would vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for his blanket refusal to testify. Paul noted that Fauci faced no legal risk from honest testimony, even testimony admitting wrongdoing, because the pardon already covered pre-pardon conduct. "All he had to do today if he wanted to testify was to be honest," Paul said. "As long as he was honest, even about committing a crime, he would have no jeopardy."
The pardon would not, however, protect Fauci from perjury or contempt charges arising from conduct during the hearing itself.
Hawley framed the hearing confrontation as the case study and the legislation as the fix. Existing federal law already prohibits government employees from soliciting rewards like cash prizes, but Hawley argued those statutes contain loopholes wide enough for a determined bureaucrat to walk through. His bill would close those gaps by explicitly blocking federal employees from receiving rewards for medicine and research, barring them from soliciting such awards, and strengthening the existing NIH regulations that restrict officials from using official duty time, their own or a subordinate's, to pursue prizes.
At the hearing, Hawley connected the cash-prize scheme to a broader indictment of Fauci's conduct during the pandemic. He told Fauci he understood why the former NIAID director was refusing to speak: "It's because you did all kinds of terrible things. It's because during the pandemic, you got rich... while people were dying."
Hawley also cast Fauci's behavior as something larger than personal enrichment, a reflection of unchecked power in the federal bureaucracy. "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."
Paul's attorney-removal order underscored the tension. During the hearing, Paul had Fauci's attorney, David Schertler, physically removed from the hearing room by Capitol Police, a rare step that signaled the committee's willingness to enforce its authority.
Fauci's silence left major factual questions unresolved. Did he personally direct staff to apply for all eight awards Hawley cited, or only some? Were the prizes received, merely solicited, or both? What is the full content of the Folkers email beyond the excerpt Hawley read aloud? And what, precisely, do the "public records" Hawley referenced consist of, Freedom of Information Act releases, Office of Personnel Management filings, or something else? Fauci's refusal to engage means the Senate got allegations and evidence from one side, and a constitutional shield from the other.
The contempt vote Paul announced could force the issue. If the committee acts and the full Senate follows, Fauci would face a legal obligation to comply, pardon or not.
A federal official who collects a million dollars in prizes while the country he's supposed to protect buries its dead, then hides behind the Constitution when asked to explain, that is not a man exercising his rights. That is a man proving exactly why the loophole needs to close.
