As PJ Media previously reported, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee voted along party lines on Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress and refer him to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.
The vote came a week after Fauci sat before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times.
“Today’s partisan committee vote is a crude political stunt intended to punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights,” Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, said in a statement before the vote. “The Senate should reject Senator Paul’s meritless and politically-motivated contempt resolution. For years, Senator Paul has proclaimed to anyone who would listen that Dr. Fauci should be prosecuted and put in prison. Dr. Fauci has committed no crime – and Senator Paul knows it.”
Committee chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued that Fauci had no real basis for pleading the Fifth. Fauci received a sweeping pardon from former President Joe Biden the year before, Paul noted, which erased any genuine threat of federal prosecution over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Dr. Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution," Paul said at the hearing. "All he had to do was tell the truth."
Fauci and the committee's Democratic members saw it differently. They argued he had a legitimate fear of self-incrimination given how often Republicans have said publicly that they want him prosecuted. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) made that case directly before Thursday's contempt vote.
"We should hear from his counsel before we move on this motion so that we can hear his side of the legal argument here," Blumenthal said. "And I would simply predict, Mr. Chairman, based on the long history of assertion of self-incrimination rights, that there is virtually no chance that a court would actually approve any contempt because he had a well-founded fear of self-incrimination, which entitled him to invoke the Fifth Amendment. And we should hear from his counsel."
Paul didn't let that comment pass quietly. He flagged it on X, pointing out that Blumenthal had just conceded the very thing Democrats spend most of their time denying.
"The Dems even know Fauci is evading the law, yet they sit here and play games…" Paul wrote.
Moving to kick the Fauci Contempt Vote:
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) August 6, 2026
"He (Fauci) had a well-founded fear of self-incrimination..."
WELL-FOUNDED FEAR?
The Dems even know Fauci is evading the law, yet they sit here and play games... pic.twitter.com/kyEfhfAbG2
If a court would actually find Fauci in genuine legal jeopardy, as Blumenthal predicted, that jeopardy has to come from somewhere. A man with a full pardon covering his actions from 2014 through January 2025 doesn't have much left to fear from federal prosecutors.
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Paul was careful to frame the vote narrowly. He said it had nothing to do with Fauci's past pandemic policies, his opinions, or anything he'd said in earlier appearances before Congress. The question was simpler than that.
"We are voting on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a sweeping pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence," Paul said.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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