Dr. Anthony S. Fauci refused on Wednesday to answer questions from a Senate committee, repeatedly invoking his constitutional right not to incriminate himself before a panel dominated by hostile Republicans who accused him of causing the coronavirus pandemic and insinuated that he enriched himself while Americans died.
“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” Dr. Fauci repeated more than 100 times during a nearly three-hour hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
The hearing was part Washington theater, part political Rorschach test, highlighting deep partisan divisions over Dr. Fauci, who spent nearly 40 years as the government’s top infectious disease expert, advising presidents of both parties and generating bipartisan respect until his efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19 turned him into a polarizing figure.
When it ended, Senator Rand Paul, the panel’s chairman, announced that the committee would vote next week on whether to hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress, contending that he was not entitled to Fifth Amendment protection.
“Did his actions lead to the largest man-made plague in history?” Mr. Paul asked as the session concluded. “Are millions dead because of his experiments?” Dr. Fauci left the room stone-faced and flanked by police officers.
Democrats praised Dr. Fauci for his decades of public service and delivered speeches excoriating the Trump administration’s health policies without asking him questions. Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, began by thanking Dr. Fauci, who took his first job at the National Institutes of Health in 1968, for “more than 50 years of service to this country,” adding, “It must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you.”
Republicans, led by Mr. Paul, painted him as a narcissist who was personally responsible for every Covid death or adverse vaccine reaction and mocked him for invoking the Fifth Amendment.
“What day of the week is it today?” Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri asked, knowing Dr. Fauci would refuse to answer. “What color tie are you wearing? What color is the carpet in front of you?” Each time, Dr. Fauci gave his one-line response.
Calling Dr. Fauci “a megalomaniac and a liar,” Mr. Hawley then accused him of secretly profiting from his public service by applying for “cash prizes totaling over a million dollars.” In 2021, the Israel-based Dan David Foundation awarded Dr. Fauci $1 million for “defending science,” an award that was widely reported at the time.
The session was an escalation of a yearslong battle between Mr. Paul, a physician whose specialty is ophthalmology, and Dr. Fauci. The Kentucky senator accuses Dr. Fauci of funding research in China that sparked the pandemic, and then lying about it to Congress — accusations Dr. Fauci vehemently denies.
In a brief opening statement, Dr. Fauci, who appeared under subpoena, noted that he had testified before Congress more than 200 times during the 38 years he ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, including during the Covid pandemic.
“Over that period, I proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight,” he said.
“However,” Dr. Fauci added, “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, 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.’”
Dr. Fauci received a pre-emptive pardon from President Joseph R. Biden Jr., but the pardon protects him only from federal prosecution for actions he took through the date it was issued, Jan. 19, 2025.
Mr. Paul told Dr. Fauci that he “can’t have it both ways,” by refusing to testify while under the pardon’s protection. But legal experts said the pardon would not protect Dr. Fauci from being accused of lying under oath.
The session became volatile early on when Mr. Paul told him there would be “repercussions” for his refusal to answer questions. When Dr. Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, started to speak on Dr. Fauci’s behalf, Mr. Paul cut him off.
“Another word and you’re gone!” the senator said sharply. Mr. Schertler kept talking, and Mr. Paul ordered security to show the lawyer to the door.
Mr. Paul released more than 1,100 pages of Dr. Fauci’s typewritten diary over the weekend, and Republicans used excerpts to re-litigate many of the old controversies about the Covid response: the safety of mRNA vaccines, the lab leak theory, the lockdowns, Dr. Fauci’s mask recommendations.
“Frankly, the American people deserve an apology,” Mr. Paul said in his opening statement. He accused Dr. Fauci of saying “one thing in public, and another in private” — a reference to the diary.
With the exception of gentle questioning from Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, the Republicans were brutal — and brutally personal — with Dr. Fauci. Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, claimed that Dr. Fauci alone was responsible for Covid lockdowns, deaths, vaccine injuries and Americans’ loss of trust in public health.
“The haphazard information you released and pushed on the American people with little research is appalling,” Mr. Scott said, adding, “You forced loved ones to die alone, destroyed the federal government’s credibility when it comes to public health.”
The pandemic was a fast-moving crisis, and Dr. Fauci’s diary makes it clear that he and scientists like him were dealing with an unknown virus in which the science was evolving quickly. Mr. Scott’s comments stood in stark contrast to those of Mr. Lankford, who acknowledged that the pandemic was “uncharted territory.”
At the center of Mr. Paul’s inquiry is whether the coronavirus originated naturally, as Dr. Fauci believes, or in a laboratory. Mr. Paul insists that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Dr. Fauci ran from 1984 until his retirement at the end of 2022, funded dangerous research in China that spun out of control and essentially created the virus that led to the pandemic. Dr. Fauci says that is not true.
That research, called gain of function, involves tinkering with the genetic makeup of viruses so that scientists can better understand how they evolve and use that information to prevent future pandemics. On Tuesday, President Trump announced fresh restrictions on such work.
While Dr. Fauci’s institute did fund research at the Wuhan laboratory in China, the National Institutes of Health has repeatedly said the viruses being studied with American tax dollars were distinct from the one that caused Covid-19. But Mr. Paul asserted that the Dr. Fauci had stuck to a narrow definition of gain-of-function research that did not capture the risks of work his institute had funded in Wuhan.
“The American people weren’t asking for a semantics debate over what is gain of function,” the senator said. “They were asking for common sense over whether this research was dangerous in Wuhan.”
The top Democrat on the panel, Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, accused Mr. Paul of waging a politically motivated inquiry to “basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago.”
Dr. Fauci and Mr. Paul have been tangling with each other for years. In 2021, when the senator accused Dr. Fauci of lying while testifying before the Senate, Dr. Fauci replied, “If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.”
Mr. Schertler, Dr. Fauci’s lawyer, said in statement that he believed that exchange “triggered” the senator’s campaign against his client. But he did not deliver the statement, because Mr. Paul refused to let him speak. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, read parts of the statement into the record.
“The accusations that Chairman Paul continues to propagate are false and disgraceful,” the statement said, “and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”
Dr. Fauci has also tangled with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose 2021 book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” accused Dr. Fauci of colluding with Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, and pharmaceutical companies. Mr. Kennedy promoted the book on social media after the hearing.
Mr. Kennedy said on Tuesday that he gave the diary to Mr. Paul, adding that the pages were “not personal journals,” but rather “government records created on a government computer by a federal employee during one of the most consequential public health emergencies in history.”
Peter Staley, a longtime AIDS activist and close friend of Dr. Fauci’s, said he kept the diary to help write a memoir, which he was already drafting when the pandemic hit. It was published in 2024. Mr. Staley said the personal observations reflect Dr. Fauci being “astonished at what was happening in his life.”
On Tuesday, a group of more than 155 physicians, scientists and public health advocates, organized by AIDS activists who worked closely with Dr. Fauci in the 1990s, issued a public letter defending him and condemning what they considered the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on science and scientists.
While the diary does not add much to the scientific debate around the lab leak theory, the entries included personal observations in which Dr. Fauci marveled at his fame and his relationships with a rapidly growing list of celebrities, providing fresh fodder for Dr. Fauci’s critics. He described President Trump as “rambling.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump punched back, posting a six-year-old video of Dr. Fauci throwing out an errant first pitch during a Washington Nationals game. It was, the president proclaimed, “by far, the worst throw I have ever seen in years of watching first pitches!”
Benjamin Mueller, Maggie Astor and Teddy Rosenbluth contributed reporting,
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