What we're watching
• Happening now: The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is meeting to hold a vote today on whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci, who guided the US Covid-19 pandemic response, in contempt of Congress.
• Last week’s hearing: The vote comes after Fauci, who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times during a committee hearing last week. “There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify,” warned Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul, who has long sought to blame the pandemic and shortcomings of the US response on Fauci.
• What could happen next: A vote to hold Fauci in contempt could initiate a process that would result in the Justice Department considering whether to charge him with a crime.
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.
Why Republicans are holding a contempt vote today — and why Fauci might not be safe
Dr. Anthony Fauci received a very broad pardon from President Joe Biden that covered virtually anything related to his government service between January 2014 and January 2025.
In other words, Fauci is already immune from prosecution for many of the potential alleged crimes Sen. Rand Paul and the committee’s Republicans could try to link him to from the Covid era.
But whether it was enough for Fauci to plead the Fifth and be done with it is a major unanswered question.
There is a tension between Fifth Amendment protections and Congress’ investigative authority. And witnesses who claim they are protected from answering questions can be called upon to justify that in court and can be held in contempt.
In announcing his plans to schedule a contempt vote for Fauci last week, Paul said: “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify.”
Senate subcommittee obtains Fauci’s phone ahead of contempt vote
A Senate subcommittee investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci has obtained a copy of his iPhone, a spokesperson for the panel’s chair, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, told CNN on Wednesday.
The Department of Health and Human Services provided the phone to Johnson’s panel, the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ahead of the planned vote to hold the retired scientist in contempt of Congress.
Johnson’s possession of a copy of the phone – which Fauci used during his time as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – could boost congressional Republicans’ efforts to probe and potentially attack Fauci and his actions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Hopefully, this device will address many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing,” Johnson wrote on social media Wednesday night.
CNN has reached out to a spokesperson for Fauci for comment.
Sen. Rand Paul said a full Senate vote is not needed on whether to hold Fauci in contempt
Sen. Rand Paul said the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee does not need a full Senate vote to refer Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Department of Justice for contempt charges.
Paul, who chairs the committee, said the panel would immediately send to the DOJ the results of the vote on whether to hold Fauci in contempt after the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases invoked the Fifth Amendment throughout his testimony before the panel last week.
He did not forecast whether the panel would have the votes to hold Fauci in contempt.
“We don’t do charging, the Department of Justice does. If we win the vote on Thursday my plan is to send it to the Department of Justice,” he told CNN.
Pressed on why the full Senate wouldn’t need to vote on the measure, Paul said, “Because it’s not a law. There’s no ‘have to’; it’s always a suggestion, even if the whole Senate passes it, it’s a suggestion.”
He added that the committee would have a legal brief with the DOJ, “making the argument that he can’t plead the Fifth under a pardon, and that he’s obstructing an investigation still, and we’ll see what DOJ thinks.”
Remember: On his way out of office, President Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons for Fauci and others targeted by incoming President Donald Trump.
Paul argued the contempt charge would be “equivalent to obstruction.”
“We’re in the middle an investigation, we’d like him to answer questions. We think the pardon grants immunity, all he has to do is come and tell the truth. So we’ll see what happens,” the Kentucky Republican said.
Inside Fauci's strategy at his Senate hearing last week
Dr. Anthony Fauci arrived at a high-stakes Senate hearing last week with a single, modest goal: Survive. The former top government scientist felt he accomplished that mission, people close to Fauci told CNN.
Invoking his Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate more than 100 times, Fauci gave Senate Republicans a myriad of clips to share on X, but deprived them of any new opportunity to fulfill their vows to prosecute him for perjury. He refused to be drawn back into long-running battles over Covid-19 and its origins.
“There was no other option,” one of the people close to Fauci said. “Rand Paul has millions of documents that he could bring up over a 50-year career. (Fauci) has nothing in front of him.”
But in a sign that Fauci’s team anticipated Republicans would seek to challenge his Fifth Amendment rights, the scientists’ opening statement underwent multiple revisions to ensure he did not address his Covid-era actions in a way that would inadvertently undermine his claim against self-incrimination, one of the people familiar said.
Fauci instead used his opening statement solely to decry the hearing itself, accusing Paul of having an “unhinged obsession” with imprisoning him. And the scientist’s team purposely did not telegraph their plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment ahead of time, that person said, forcing Republicans to plan for all scenarios.
How did Dr. Anthony Fauci get here?
Dr. Anthony Fauci spent decades nurturing his reputation as the government’s most recognizable, most accessible and often most voluble authority on the nation’s public health crises.
But last Wednesday, under intense scrutiny and the ever-present threat of prosecution, Fauci spent a congressional hearing that spanned well over two hours uttering only a single, 24-word sentence: “Under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”
Committee chairman Sen. Rand Paul’s vote on holding Fauci in contempt of Congress for invoking that right extends a years-long investigation aimed at validating his and other Republicans’ belief that Fauci orchestrated a cover-up of the origins of the coronavirus.
The vote could initiate a process that would result in the Justice Department considering whether to charge Fauci with a crime.
Senate committee will vote on whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs will hold a vote today on whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci, who oversaw the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in contempt of Congress.
Sen. Rand Paul, the committee chair, announced plans to hold the contempt vote last week, after Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times during a committee hearing that Republican critics had publicly hoped would open the retired scientist up to charges of perjury.
Fauci, who for decades led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had never before over the course of hundreds of appearances on the Hill invoked the right previously.
Ahead of the hearing, the committee released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s personal diary from 2019 to 2022. Fauci, in his opening statement before the committee last week, pointed to this and comments from Paul and other Republicans as his reason for refusing to answer questions.
