Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as a key adviser to Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the Covid-19 pandemic, declined to answer questions at a high-profile Senate hearing on July 29, 2026, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), accused Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who called the hearing, of having an “unhinged obsession” with him.

Fauci stated that Paul had led a years-long investigation into himself and the origins of the pandemic aimed at “embarrassing and intimidating me” and potentially landing him “behind bars.” Despite Fauci’s decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, he said, “under the advice of my attorneys I will invoke my right under the fifth amendment of the constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

The hearing, lasting about three and a half hours in Washington DC, saw Fauci repeatedly decline to answer questions related to the coronavirus pandemic, including conspiracy theories about the virus's origins. By some counts, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times and was escorted by police as he left the hearing.

Republicans framed the investigation as a probe into “the origins of Covid-19 and risky taxpayer-funded life science research.” However, scientists have criticized the inquiry as “vilification and harassment” of Fauci, who led NIAID for 38 years before retiring in 2022.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Democratic ranking member Gary Peters acknowledged the committee’s history of bipartisan oversight and said that studying risky research and Covid-19 origins is legitimate. However, Peters stated that the day’s hearing was not an example of such bipartisan inquiry.

As the hearing concluded, Chair Rand Paul announced the committee would vote the following week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to testify. Paul questioned whether Fauci’s actions led to “the largest man-made plague in human history” and if the millions of deaths were the result of experiments Fauci approved.

The hearing occurred amid other Senate activities, including a vote on an Iran war powers resolution, less than a week after the Senate rejected efforts to limit former President Donald Trump’s military actions in Iran.

Sources