Here Are the Biggest Moments from the Fauci Hearing
Fauci pleaded the Fifth 111 times despite having no such privilege.
Anthony Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday and declined to answer questions all day, invoking the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times, according to Chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
In his opening statement, Fauci said he believed the hearing’s real purpose was to get him to say something that could be used against him criminally:
“Although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the Legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci said.
Hawley’s argument: the Fifth doesn’t apply
The most notable moment of the hearing came from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who argued that Fauci’s Fifth Amendment claim doesn’t apply because Fauci has already been pardoned.
“Let’s just get one thing straight. You don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned. As you very well know. Because the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more. Brown v. Walker, 1896: ‘When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege.’ You know that. Your lawyers sitting behind you now shifting nervously in their chairs, they know it,” Hawley said.
He added: “This isn’t about the Constitution. This isn’t about the law. This is about contempt. Contempt for this body and contempt for the American people.”
How far the refusals went
Several senators tested the sweep of Fauci’s refusal to answer with simple, low-stakes questions. Sen. Hawley asked him what day of the week it was and what color tie he was wearing. Sen. Paul asked him to confirm whether there was a red folder sitting on the table in front of him.
Each time, Fauci gave the same response: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
After the folder question, Sen. Paul told the committee: “Let the record report that the witness has refused to answer whether there’s a folder in front of him based on his Fifth Amendment right.”
The cash prize questioning
Sen. Hawley pressed Fauci on allegations that he used federal employees and resources to help solicit roughly $1 million in cash prizes for himself during the winter of 2020, while COVID deaths were high.
“You turned your staff into a full-time application machine,” Hawley said. “You used eight separate federal employees on federal time using federal resources to solicit cash awards.” He went on: “This is your chief of staff using federal email to pressure the agency’s own ethics people so that you could get money, so that you could get rich. And it violated the law, didn’t it, Dr. Fauci?”
Hawley added that “thousands of people were dying while you were doing it,” and that Fauci was “supposed to be the nation’s doctor” but was “playing one on TV.”
Fauci again pleaded the Fifth. Hawley replied: “Yeah, yeah, I can see why.”
Moreno’s exchange
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) described the case of an Ohio mother who was tased and arrested for attending her son’s football game without a mask, and blamed the policies behind it directly on Fauci.
“Those policies were put in place because you had moronic politicians who listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people, and that is you,” Moreno said.
He added that hearing the story on the news motivated him to sell his businesses and run for the Senate.
“Here I am, sitting in front of you six years later saying, who the f*ck do you think you were for doing that?” the senator said.
He later told Fauci: “You may have had a 50-plus-year legacy of public service, but it ends in total and complete disgrace.”
Moreno then asked people in the gallery to stand if they had been shamed for opposing school closures, mask mandates, the six-foot rule, or for calling COVID the “Wuhan virus” or “China virus.” More than a dozen stood. Moreno asked Fauci to turn and look at them.
“Dr. Fauci, could you just turn and look at the people behind you?” Moreno asked, after Fauci kept facing forward. “You’re not willing to do that? It’s not a question.” Fauci briefly turned to speak with one of his attorneys but did not look at the gallery. “To your lawyers, it’s not a question, it’s a request,” Moreno said. “All you have to do is look up from your lawyers and look at the people who were absolutely shamed for saying what we now know to be the truth.”
Johnson on the pardon and Fauci’s health
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) also referenced Fauci’s pardon directly, telling him: “I certainly understand why you needed a pardon. I certainly understand why under the advice of counsel you’re not answering any questions, because I think it would be almost impossible for you to answer truthfully without demonstrating what you did.”
Johnson also asked Fauci about diary entries reportedly showing he suffered a pulmonary infarction in 2021. Fauci gave the same Fifth Amendment response he’d used throughout the hearing.
Gain-of-function questions go unanswered
Sen. Paul returned to longstanding questions about NIH’s funding of gain-of-function research at a lab in Wuhan, including whether the lab had the capability to engineer novel spike proteins onto SARS-related coronaviruses, and whether NIH did classified work for U.S. intelligence agencies. Fauci did not answer.
That line of questioning stretches back to May 11, 2021, when Fauci testified to Sen. Paul under oath that NIH never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But in 2023, the Government Accountability Office confirmed NIH funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan University combining bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS to create hybrid strains — gain-of-function research, by definition.
Furthermore, in 2024, NIH’s Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress the U.S. government had funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan. Records show Fauci’s agency sent EcoHealth Alliance $3.1 million in grants, including $750,000 that went directly to the Wuhan lab.
Sen. Paul has referred Fauci to the Justice Department multiple times for lying to Congress — a crime with a five-year statute of limitations. That window closed on May 11, 2026.
In yesterday’s hearing, Paul also referenced a 2012 op-ed in which Fauci argued the risks of gain-of-function research were worth taking, including the risk of sparking a pandemic, and asked whether that risk had ultimately materialized. Fauci again declined to answer.
The committee chairman closed by announcing a vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress: “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress and there will be repercussions for your refusal to testify today.”
Absolutely disgusting that someone like Fauci waas elevated to such a high position permitting him to take advantage of the American people. He is totally responsible for all the millions of injuries and deaths, because of his support of Wuhan's Gain-of Function nefarious research and his own ready and waiting health destroying patented vaccines
Fauci proclaims he never ordered lockdowns, but in his diary entries, he praises himself for convincing agencies to lockdown. Fauci is correct only that he did not speak directly to every person to be locked down, but his coercive comments to agencies persuaded them to lockdown. This is similar to the 8,500 service personnel who were fired for not taking the COVID shot. Biden did not speak directly to each person firing them, but his words to the heads of each military branch were instructed to fire them. The military finally accepted defeat and made a lame apology for wrongful discharges and said those who were discharged could come back into the service. The lamestream Google AI, even today, claims that Fauci had nothing to do with lockdowns.