Dr. Anthony Fauci has refused to appear voluntarily before a second Senate panel investigating his COVID-19 pandemic response, weeks after invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during a contentious hearing.
Fauci's attorney, David Schertler, rejected a request from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director to sit before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Schertler argued that compelling Fauci to testify again would "impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes," the New York Post reported Friday.
The refusal lands on top of an already escalating confrontation between Fauci and Republican lawmakers. On July 29, Fauci appeared under subpoena before Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times, declining to answer questions about his role in the federal government's pandemic response and the origins of COVID-19.
That stonewalling triggered a party-line vote by Paul's committee to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. Paul has since moved to send the contempt referral directly to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., bypassing a full Senate vote, an unusual procedural step that underscores how far Republicans are willing to push.
Johnson, who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is running a parallel probe focused on Fauci's pandemic-era conduct, including questions about vaccine safety and efficacy. His subcommittee has separately obtained records related to Fauci and the government's COVID-19 response, and the Department of Health and Human Services turned over Fauci's pandemic-era cellphone to the panel ahead of the contempt vote.
Johnson made clear that Fauci's refusal to show up will not slow his investigation. The Washington Examiner reported that Johnson issued a pointed response:
"Since Fauci refuses to talk about his role and decisions related to COVID-19, my Subcommittee will continue to obtain his records and request to speak with key individuals that he worked with."
Johnson also took aim at Fauci's shifting posture. The Wisconsin Republican noted that Fauci once publicly boasted he was "very happy to testify before any congressional oversight committee" and declared, "I have nothing to hide."
"He arrogantly once stated that he was very happy to testify before any congressional oversight committee. I have nothing to hide. Apparently, he has a lot to hide."
Whether Johnson's subcommittee will escalate to a formal subpoena remains an open question. Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson's office, Paul's office, and Schertler for comment on the possibility, but the source does not indicate any of them responded.
Paul, who has spent years pressing Fauci on the origins of COVID-19, has accused the former health official of funding research in China that Paul describes as "risky", work the Kentucky senator alleges contributed to a lab leak of the virus. Paul has repeatedly called for Fauci to face prosecution and subpoenaed him earlier this year to appear before his committee.
At the July 29 hearing, Fauci offered a brief statement but refused to engage substantively with lawmakers' questions, pleading the Fifth more than 100 times across roughly three hours of testimony. AP News reported that Fauci told the committee he believed the hearing's sole purpose was to get him to "say something, anything, that could vindicate" Paul's repeated public pledges to see him "behind bars."
Paul framed the hearing differently. He called the session "the capstone to Anthony Fauci's 40 years of abuse of power at NIH."
After the hearing, Paul's committee voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt, a step that set up a direct referral to the Justice Department. Paul told Fox News Digital ahead of the vote that the legal questions surrounding Fauci's Fifth Amendment claims are worth pressing.
"It's a good legal discussion, and we will make those legal points to DOJ in sending the referral over."
At the center of the legal dispute is a preemptive pardon that former President Joe Biden issued to Fauci before leaving office. Paul and other Republicans have argued that the pardon eliminated Fauci's risk of federal prosecution, and therefore removed the legal foundation for invoking the Fifth Amendment, which protects individuals from being compelled to give testimony that could incriminate them.
Fauci and his attorneys have disputed that interpretation, though the specific legal arguments they have advanced are not detailed in available reporting. The question of whether a presidential pardon nullifies a witness's Fifth Amendment privilege is a genuinely unsettled area of constitutional law, and it is the core issue the contempt referral will force the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office to evaluate.
Paul's committee also received more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's personal diary before the July hearing. What those pages contain has not been publicly disclosed, but the sheer volume, combined with the cellphone records HHS turned over to Johnson's subcommittee, suggests investigators have significant material to work through even without Fauci's live testimony.
Meanwhile, the pressure is not limited to Capitol Hill. Breitbart reported that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has opened a separate state-level investigation into Fauci following his July testimony, a move that adds another front to the legal exposure Fauci faces outside the federal pardon's reach.
Fauci's current posture stands in sharp contrast to the public persona he cultivated for decades. As the nation's most visible public health official during the pandemic, he appeared on television almost daily, fielded questions from hostile and friendly interviewers alike, and publicly declared his eagerness to face congressional scrutiny.
Now he will not sit for a voluntary hearing. He will not answer questions under subpoena. He invoked his right to silence more than 100 times in a single session, and his attorney's response to a second panel's request was to call the inquiry political harassment.
Johnson and Paul have both signaled they will not let Fauci's refusal end the matter. Johnson's subcommittee will keep pulling records and interviewing people who worked alongside Fauci. Paul's contempt referral is heading to the Justice Department. And a state attorney general in Florida has opened his own probe.
Fauci can decline every invitation. But the records, the diary, and the cellphone do not plead the Fifth.
