Fauci Is Headed Back to Capitol Hill — And This Time, He May Not Talk His Way Out

Fresh allegations offer a new opportunity to prosecute Fauci

Anthony Fauci is set to square off with his longtime adversary Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) once again when he testifies before Congress on July 29.

Sen. Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, issued a subpoena after fresh allegations surfaced last month that Fauci manipulated intelligence about the pandemic’s origins and lied to Congress to cover it up.

The subpoena wasn’t Sen. Paul’s first move. Fauci had reportedly agreed to testify voluntarily, then reversed course.

“He’s been slow-walking information to us for six months or more. We’ve been negotiating over the date for several months. He agreed, then he said he wouldn’t. So, I think it’s time that we bring him in,” Sen. Paul told Semafor.

A Six-Year Grudge Match

Sen. Paul has spent years trying to hold Fauci accountable. Starting in 2023, he referred Fauci to the Justice Department multiple times, accusing him of lying under oath when he denied that his agency funded gain-of-function research. That charge carried a five-year statute of limitations, which expired on May 11, 2026.

Sen. Paul aired his frustration to Joe Rogan back in January, pointing out that neither the Biden nor Trump DOJ ever acted on his referrals.

“In Anthony Fauci’s communications, we now have evidence that he was telling people like [former NIH Director] Francis Collins, ‘Read this and destroy it.’ Well, you can’t do that,” Paul said. “The executive branch, when they communicate, they’re required to keep their communications. And they’re required to do it on government devices. So, we have this evidence. And I’ve summarized it again in a criminal referral to Trump’s attorney general. And I still haven’t gotten action.”

Gabbard’s Parting Gift

Just as the criminal statute of limitations was closing one door, new evidence may have opened another.

On June 30 — her last day as Director of National Intelligence — Tulsi Gabbard released a batch of newly declassified documents and emails. They reveal how deeply Fauci influenced the intelligence community’s official story on COVID’s origins, essentially steering the investigation from behind the scenes.

According to the documents, Fauci’s fingerprints are all over the IC’s inquiry into where the virus came from. Gabbard also says the records show retaliation against officials who supported the lab-leak theory instead of the natural-origin explanation Fauci favored.

Her summary of the intelligence community’s behavior was that officials “almost always incorporated Fauci’s recommendations.”

One email from July 2021 shows an investigator noting that “Dr. Fauci recommended that the IC reach out” to scientists who had co-authored a paper favoring natural origin. A colleague defended relying on Fauci’s judgment the next day, calling him a “[Subject Matter Expert] with a wealth of knowledge ... who probably knows better than most who the real Coronavirus experts are” — despite Fauci having no official policymaking role in the investigation.

The documents also describe a June 4, 2021 meeting where Fauci met directly with the CIA’s Weapons and Counterproliferation Mission Center. There, he reportedly pushed investigators to keep chasing the natural-origin theory and pointed them toward scientists who shared his view.

That detail flatly contradicts what Fauci told Congress in 2024, when he testified he’d had no contact with intelligence agencies about COVID at all.

Sen. Marshall Pushes for Special Counsel

The push for accountability isn’t limited to Sen. Paul.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) — who, like Sen. Paul, is one of only four sitting senators with a medical degree — is now calling on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate Fauci, citing last month’s document release.

In a letter sent Monday to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Sen. Marshall argued that handing the case to a special counsel would prevent the appearance of the federal government policing its own pandemic-era conduct. A special counsel, he wrote, would “avoid the appearance that the federal government is improperly reviewing its own pandemic-era misconduct.”

Marshall wants the investigation to zero in on three things: Fauci’s role in the pandemic’s origins, the federal funding behind high-risk coronavirus research, and what Marshall describes as obstruction of Congress’s oversight efforts.

The Outside Pressure Campaign

While lawmakers fight this battle in Washington, America’s Frontline Doctors has been pushing for accountability from the outside. The group delivered a petition with more than 100,000 signatures to Congress back in 2023, and relaunched the campaign again last year.