Dr. Anthony Fauci declined to answer questions on the COVID pandemic at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, invoking the Fifth Amendment and thereby claiming his right against self-incrimination.
In doing so the scientist made the issue personal and directly accused Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) of an “unhinged” campaign to see him imprisoned.
“Under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci asserted before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Sen. Paul chairs, in his opening statement.
Dr. Anthony Fauci before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 29, 2026. Dr. Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is testifying after Senator Rand Paul, Republican from Kentucky, released more than 1000 pages of Fauci’s diary entries from the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. (Alex WROBLEWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
“Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me,” maintained Fauci, “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.’”
The 85-year-old erstwhile director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has appeared previously before lawmakers.
The attorney for former NIH Director Anthony Fauci (R), David Schertler (L), departs the hearing room after being removed by committee chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) during a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington, DC. Fauci declined to answer questions from the committee asserting his fifth amendment right during the hearing. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
He chose then – as now – to deny, under oath, allegations brought by Sen. Paul of obscuring the origins of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and controversial infectious disease research.
As Breitbart News reported, Fauci is testifying following the disclosure of personal diaries that call into question the decisions he made in response to the pandemic that began in March 2020 before quickly sweeping the world.
Fauci’s diaries suggest he misled the public on the fatality rate of COVID-19 and knew scientists believed the coronavirus outbreak was the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, instead of the “wet market” theory of the virus’s origin.
More to come…
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