What we covered here
• Today’s vote: GOP members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci, who guided the US Covid-19 pandemic response, in contempt of Congress.
• How we got here: The vote comes after Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times in a hearing last week, refusing to answer questions over concerns his responses would be used by Republicans in an attempt to bring charges against him. Committee Chair Rand Paul, who has long sought to blame the pandemic and shortcomings of the US response on Fauci, warned “there will be repercussions for your refusal to testify.”
• What happens next: Paul said the committee’s referral would be delivered directly to the attorney general and US District Court today, bypassing a full Senate vote, though he did not rule one out in the future. The Justice Department is then expected to consider whether to charge Fauci with a crime.
We’ve wrapped up our live coverage. Read more about the contempt vote here, or catch up by scrolling through the posts below.
Get up to speed on Senate committee's move to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress today, in a vote that fell along party lines.
It comes after Fauci invoked his right not to self-incriminate more than 100 times at a hearing last week. The contempt vote now likely sets up a legal battle over the limits of Fauci’s Fifth Amendment rights.
Here’s what to know:
- Committee Chair Rand Paul told reporters the referral for Fauci to be held in contempt will be delivered to the Department of Justice and the attorney general’s office today.
- This means Paul will bypass a full Senate vote. The move breaks with Senate precedent for rare contempt votes and will require Vice President JD Vance’s sign-off due to his constitutional role as president of the chamber. Paul did not rule out the possibility of a Senate vote in the future.
- Federal prosecutors now face a far trickier calculation in deciding whether to actually bring charges, according to CNN legal analyst Elie Honig. The case against Fauci’s right to invoke the Fifth Amendment is murky at best, Honig said.
- Democrats attempted to table the contempt vote until the committee could hear from Fauci’s lawyer and legal experts about Fauci’s right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. In some moments, the debate got heated.
- Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, called the move a “crude political stunt” intended to punish the retired director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for exercising his constitutional rights.
- GOP members of the committee celebrated the vote on social media, including Sens. Bernie Moreno, Rick Scott and Josh Hawley. Paul has long sought to blame shortcomings of the US pandemic response on Fauci.
CNN’s Christian Sierra, Adam Cancryn, Annie Grayer, Sarah Owermohle and Richa Sharma contributed reporting to this post.
What Sen. Paul told reporters about next steps for the Fauci contempt referral
Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Rand Paul told reporters that the referral for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be held in contempt will be delivered to the Department of Justice and attorney general’s office on Thursday.
Covid’s last culture war over Fauci shows a nation unready for the next crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic was a historic stress test that revealed American politics as too broken to deal with a national crisis.
Six years later, a new political storm over Dr. Anthony Fauci, once the nation’s most prominent health official, suggests those fractures are now even more toxic. And a long-delayed reckoning over the worst public health emergency in 100 years is more distant than ever.
The hearing voting to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress was a classic Washington melodrama in which each party zeroes in on a larger-than-life personality to grind ideological axes. And a contempt referral by the committee to the Justice Department would raise pressing legal and constitutional questions over the president’s pardon power.
But more importantly, the new Fauci saga is a clarifying moment regarding Covid-19’s still-potent political legacy heading into the 2026 and 2028 elections.
The showdown underscores the shattered consensus on public health between MAGA Republicans and Democrats who accuse their foes of flouting science. And it raises the vital question of whether any lessons have been taken from the vicious political disputes that erupted over Covid-19 mitigation methods between career health officials and the first Trump White House, and between Washington and state and local health and political leaders.
Read full analysis of the Fauci hearing here.
Infectious disease expert argues contempt vote is "unfair" and "inappropriate"
Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert and a distinguished professor at Florida International University, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that ongoing investigations into Dr. Anthony Fauci have been “incredibly inappropriate.”
Marty said people like Fauci, who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, are working to advance science, and we must be “very careful how we criticize the work that science does.”
“These are people who are operating on the concept of trying to prevent problems, minimize their impact and have the tools ready so that we can defend ourselves,” Marty said.
She went on to say that blaming Fauci for the Covid-19 pandemic is as inconceivable as blaming Texas attorney general Ken Paxton for the next hurricane. She underscored Fauci’s practices during the pandemic allowed for the development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in under a year, which she called “unheard of for vaccine research.”
Marty argued that if Congress wanted to truly assess pandemic response, they should have granted Fauci total immunity for testifying so that he could speak freely and not be in “a position where someone who does not understand the critical components of how science is done — how the methodology works — would put him through years of unnecessary and inappropriate harassment.”
DOJ faces high bar if it brings contempt case against Fauci, CNN legal analyst says
Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee showed little hesitation Thursday in pushing the Justice Department to investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci for being in contempt of Congress.
But federal prosecutors will now likely face a far trickier calculation in deciding whether to actually bring those charges against the former government scientist, according to CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig.
The case against Fauci’s right to invoke the Fifth Amendment is murky at best, raising questions as to whether the Justice Department can prove he committed a crime beyond reasonable doubt.
“If Dr. Fauci maybe had a legal right to take the Fifth, that’s not going to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed a crime,” said Honig, a former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York. “So the bar is really high here.”
If the Justice Department does take up the case, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro would be responsible for bringing the charges.
Paul says contempt referrals to be delivered by hand to DOJ today
Speaking to reporters after the vote, Sen. Paul said the committee’s referral to the Justice Department to recommend holding Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress would be hand delivered to the attorney general and US District Court today.
“This is outside the ordinary bill making process, so it doesn’t have to go to the House, doesn’t have to be signed by the president, and really doesn’t have to go before the Senate,” he said. “There is some precedent for doing it that way, and it still may be done that way,” he conceded, but said for now the referral would be taken over directly. He didn’t rule out having a vote in the Senate at a later date.
“We have voted the majority to refer this, so that will be accomplished today,” he said.
Paul had previously told CNN that he planned to include a legal brief from committee Republicans, “summarizing our perspective on whether or not the Fifth Amendment applies when you have a pardon.”
When asked earlier this morning, the Justice Department said it had not yet received the referral and declined to comment further.
Republican lawmakers celebrate committee vote to hold Fauci in contempt
GOP members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee are celebrating on social media after voting to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress.
Sen. Bernie Moreno called the vote only “a small amount of justice,” framing it as the first step in a broader effort to prosecute Fauci.
“No one is above the law and especially not a power hungry narcissist. Next step: DOJ must investigate and prosecute,” Moreno wrote on X.
Republican committee members led by Sen. Rand Paul have vowed to bypass a full Senate vote, instead sending their recommendation straight to the Justice Department.
Paul wrote on X that he and his colleagues cast their vote “on behalf of the millions of Americans and their families still affected years after the COVID pandemic.” The committee chair has long sought to blame shortcomings of the US pandemic response on Fauci.
Sens. Rick Scott and Josh Hawley also hailed the vote and criticized Fauci’s decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate during last week’s committee hearing.
“Last week, Fauci pled the Fifth & refused to answer basic questions, including what color his tie was. It was a predetermined, premeditated design to evade this committee’s questions on any subject, including emphatically, those for which he has a pardon,” Hawley wrote on X.
Scott wrote: “When Congress sought answers, Fauci refused to answer. He misled Congress and the American people, cost countless lives and livelihoods, and was obsessed with protecting his own popularity rather than telling the truth. He MUST be held accountable.”
Paul and Peters get heated over merit of contempt vote
Debate over holding the vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee Thursday at times led to heated moments, such as this one between Republican chairman Rand Paul and Gary Peters, the ranking Democrat on the panel.
Fauci’s lawyer blasts vote as “crude political stunt”
Following the contempt vote, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s lawyer David Schertler called the move a “crude political stunt” intended to punish the retired director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for exercising his constitutional rights.
Schertler appeared alongside Fauci at the start of his testimony last Wednesday, but was told to move to a seat behind him – and later, in a stunning moment, removed from the room after the lawyer attempted to speak on behalf of Fauci.
Dr. Anthony Fauci's lawyer was escorted out of a Senate hearing by security following a tense back-and-forth with Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul.
On Thursday, Democrats attempted to table the contempt vote until the committee could hear from Schertler and legal experts about Fauci’s right to invoke the Fifth Amendment to not incriminate himself. Republicans — who argue that the scientist’s sweeping presidential pardon makes that unnecessary — voted down those efforts.
Paul, who had ordered Shertler’s removal last week, has suggested he will send a recommendation to prosecute Fauci directly to the Justice Department, bypassing a typical contempt vote before the entire Senate.
“Today’s resolution is a continuation of Senator Paul’s personal vendetta against Dr. Fauci, who spent 50 years in public health and has saved countless lives,” Schertler said in a statement. “It is shameful and wrong that Senator Paul is abusing his power by trying to weaponize the Justice Department against an honorable public servant.”
The committee voted. What happens next?
Ahead of today’s vote, Rand Paul had vowed to send the committee’s recommendation straight to the Justice Department, bypassing a full Senate vote in a move that’s likely to set up a high-stakes legal and political test for the Trump administration.
He had conceded that there is little precedent for bypassing a full Senate vote before asking the Justice Department to bring contempt charges — a decision that could pose a hurdle for any resulting attempt at prosecution.
“There is not a lot of precedent for a lot of this, but it isn’t law so there isn’t any exact procedure that it has to follow,” Paul told CNN on Tuesday. “It’s a referral, it’s a recommendation.”
Vice President JD Vance will now need to sign off on the committee’s circumvention of long-established rules due to his constitutional role as president of the Senate. Then it would be up to the Justice Department to decide whether to bring formal charges — charges that would all but certainly be challenged by Fauci’s lawyers, launching a likely lengthy legal battle.
Senate panel votes to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress
GOP senators on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress, advancing an audacious effort to prosecute the well-known scientist over his role in the US government response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The party-line vote comes after Fauci declined to answer lawmakers’ questions during a fiery hearing last week, infuriating Republicans on the panel. They have since argued that his decision opened the door to federal contempt charges — a crime that, if convicted, can carry with it a sentence of up to a year in prison.
Republican chairman Rand Paul has said he will send the committee’s recommendation straight to the Justice Department, bypassing a full Senate vote in a break with precedent that’s likely to set up a high-stakes legal and political test for the Trump administration.
Vice President JD Vance will now first need to sign off on the committee’s circumvention of long-established rules due to his constitutional role as president of the Senate. Then it would be up to the Justice Department to decide whether to bring formal charges.
Even then, legal experts cautioned, there’s little guarantee that the contempt charges would succeed, instead likely kicking off a lengthy court battle over the limits of Fauci’s Fifth Amendment rights.
Contempt vote draws small crowd
The Senate committee vote today has only drawn a handful of public attendees, a far sparser crowd than those who packed into the room for Fauci’s testimony last week.
The committee began debate Thursday morning before roughly two-dozen people who quietly observed Democrats’ efforts to table the contempt vote and Chairman Rand Paul’s rejections of their arguments.
The atmosphere is a far cry from the electric one of last Wednesday, during which audible reactions to contentious moments, clapping when Fauci’s lawyer was removed from the room and laughing at times when the retired scientist invoked the Fifth Amendment, could be heard.
What will happen if the Senate panel votes to hold Fauci in contempt?
If the Senate committee votes to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress, Sen. Rand Paul has vowed to send the committee’s recommendation straight to the Justice Department, bypassing a full Senate vote in a move that’s likely to set up a high-stakes legal and political test for the Trump administration.
Paul has conceded that there is little precedent for bypassing a full Senate vote before asking the Justice Department to bring contempt charges — a decision that could pose a hurdle for any resulting attempt at prosecution.
“There is not a lot of precedent for a lot of this, but it isn’t law so there isn’t any exact procedure that it has to follow,” the senator told CNN on Tuesday. “It’s a referral, it’s a recommendation.”
Vice President JD Vance would then need to sign off on the committee’s circumvention of long-established rules due to his constitutional role as president of the Senate. Then it would be up to the Justice Department to decide whether to bring formal charges — charges that would all but certainly be challenged by Fauci’s lawyers, launching a likely lengthy legal battle.
Committee Republicans rejecting last-ditch efforts to derail the Fauci's contempt vote
Sen. Rand Paul and GOP lawmakers are rejecting last-ditch efforts by Democrats to delay the vote to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt. Several Democrats brought up various motions to allow experts and Fauci’s legal counsel to offer testimony before they moved to the contempt vote – but Republicans called these attempts “intended to avoid accountability.”
The Republican majority on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee voted down motions to table the vote raised by the Democrats.
Paul has vowed to send Fauci’s contempt referral directly to the Justice Department, bypassing the traditional practice of first holding a full Senate vote.
Paul frames Fauci contempt vote as crucial to defending committee's subpoena power
Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday framed his committee’s vote to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt as necessary to ensure that Congress can conduct oversight on crucial issues, insisting that Fauci should not be able to defy a subpoena “without consequence.”
“We are voting on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a sweeping federal pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence,” Paul said in opening remarks ahead of the contempt vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
The Republican senator also insisted that Fauci would have faced “no risk” of prosecution if he testified on his Covid-era actions last week, despite Paul and others’ open acknowledgement in the run-up to the hearing that they hoped to get Fauci to perjure himself — potentially opening him up to new federal charges.
Fauci, who was preemptively pardoned by former President Joe Biden for his Covid-era actions, subsequently refused to answer lawmakers’ questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights more than 100 times.
“All he had to do was tell the truth,” Paul said on Thursday. “Documents tell only part of the story. Many of these questions can be answered only by Dr. Fauci. He he answered none of them.”
Ranking member Gary Peters warns of dire consequences of contempt vote
Gary Peters, the Democratic ranking member of the committee, used his opening remarks to decry the hearing and the contempt vote today. The hearing and the move to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt was done without bipartisan support, makes oversight more difficult and could erode an important constitutional right, he warned.
The committee “has a long and very proud history of conducting serious bipartisan oversight on behalf of the American people, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to follow the facts, compel information, and hold both Democratic and Republican administrations alike accountable,” he said. “That work depends on the credibility of this committee. It depends on the legitimacy of our investigations, and a recognition by witnesses, courts, and the public that Congress is exercising its powers dutifully.”
“The chairman is now asking the committee to take a vote that could harm our ability to conduct future investigations and disregards constitutional protections long recognized by the U.S. Senate, all without making a reliable case that there is a legal basis for holding Dr. Fauci in contempt,” he said.
The committee has convened ahead of contempt vote
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee has convened ahead of its vote to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress.
The panel’s Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, and the top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters, are expected to deliver opening remarks before the vote.
Why Fauci opted to invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times last week
Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during last week’s hearing on his Covid-era actions — and to hear him tell it, he had good reason for doing so.
The former government scientist opted not to answer lawmakers’ questions after Republicans openly acknowledged that the hearing was aimed at getting Fauci to perjure himself in his testimony.
Fauci received a pre-emptive pardon from former President Joe Biden for all of his actions from 2014 through January 2025. But if he testified, Fauci and his team worried, Republicans could seize on any small inconsistency to bring new charges accusing him of lying to Congress.
“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 that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said of committee chair Sen. Rand Paul during his opening statement last week.
“Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect that I have for the legislative branch of government and my decadeslong record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” he said.
Sen. Paul previously tried — and failed — to secure DOJ probes of Fauci
The 8-7 party-line vote Thursday in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee represents a major new milestone in the GOP’s targeting of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
But for committee chair Sen. Rand Paul, it’s far from the first time he’s tried to get Fauci thrown in jail.
Paul previously pressed the Justice Department to investigate Fauci during the Biden era, to no avail. After President Donald Trump took office, he renewed that request, arguing in a letter to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi last July that the government should examine whether Fauci’s preemptive pardon was legitimate.
“New information has revealed that these pardons were executed via autopen, with no documented confirmation that the President personally reviewed or approved each individual grant of clemency,” Paul wrote, citing reports that then-President Joe Biden had authorized his staff to affix his signature to a slew of clemency actions.
Several prominent Republicans, including Trump, have questioned Biden’s use of the autopen to grant pardons and approve other actions.
But none have formally challenged their authenticity, and the Justice Department never appeared to take any action on Paul’s request.
More recently, even Trump appeared reticent to criticize Biden’s pardons, telling reporters last month that Fauci “was pardoned by Biden, and I respect that.”
