October 1, 2026
WASHINGTON (AP) — Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from senators during a committee hearing about the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci appeared after being subpoenaed by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has repeatedly questioned Fauci’s role in the pandemic response and the origins of COVID-19. Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has denied accusations that he lied to Congress or helped conceal information about the origins of the virus.
The hearing reflected continuing disputes between Fauci and some Republican lawmakers over federal pandemic policies, research funding and whether U.S.-funded research in China may have played a role in the emergence of COVID-19.
In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has shown an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.” Fauci said he was following the advice of his attorney in invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said.
In the combative hearing, Paul and other Republicans accused Fauci of lying in earlier testimony about the origins of the coronavirus, something the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has forcefully denied. Democrats called the hearing a politically motivated attempt at entrapping Fauci and praised the scientist for his work during the pandemic.
With Fauci declining to answer questions throughout, Paul dominated the approximately three-hour hearing, listing accusations and detailed questions.
“Today will be the capstone to Anthony Fauci's 40 years of abuse of power at NIH,” Paul said. “History will judge, but the facts as we now know them paint a sordid tale of dishonesty, misjudgment and ultimately the hubris, the likes of which the world has never seen.”
In one heated moment of the hearing, Paul ejected Fauci attorney David Schertler from the room after he tried to speak without being recognized. In a statement, Schertler said the removal was “outrageous and demonstrates the completely biased and baseless nature of this proceeding.” In another statement, he called Paul’s accusations about Fauci “false and disgraceful.”
Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s ranking member, criticized the hearing as partisan and said the committee should focus on current national security challenges rather than revisiting past disputes.
Before the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary from the pandemic years. Referring to notes about early efforts to understand how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”
Some of the diary entries, including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s early days as scientists sought to understand the virus and how to limit its spread, were previously reflected in Fauci’s 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.
The entries have drawn attention from critics who blame Fauci for federal guidance and policies related to masking, school closures and other pandemic measures.
Ahead of the hearing, President Donald Trump wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci during the pandemic because he disagreed with Fauci’s recommendations on masks, shutdowns and other issues.
In a statement, Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, called Paul’s accusations “false and disgraceful” and said Fauci would review his legal options.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long criticized vaccine policy, said Monday that his department gave the diary entries, which were created on a government computer, to the committee. In an interview with Fox News Channel, Kennedy said he believed Fauci could face perjury exposure if he lied to the committee, despite a preemptive pardon issued by former President Joe Biden.
A central issue in the hearing was whether research funded by the National Institutes of Health in China may have played a role in the start of the pandemic.
Many scientists say available evidence supports the theory that the virus emerged in nature and spread from animals to humans, possibly through a wildlife market in Wuhan, China. Others, including Paul, have argued that the virus may have leaked from a laboratory. A Republican-led House subcommittee that examined the issue in 2024 did not present evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.
Fauci has long said he remains open to both theories but believes the strongest evidence supports a natural origin for the virus, similar to other viruses that have spread from animals to humans.
Republicans also have accused Fauci of misleading Congress about whether NIH funded gain-of-function research at a lab in Wuhan. Gain-of-function research can refer broadly to experiments that alter organisms, but it is often used in policy debates to describe higher-risk research that may increase a pathogen’s ability to spread or cause disease.
The NIH provided grants for years to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that used some funds to work with a Chinese lab studying bat coronaviruses. Fauci has previously said he was referring to the higher-risk definition of gain-of-function research and argued that the experiments in question could not have produced the virus that caused the pandemic.
Trump last year paused some federally funded gain-of-function research, and his administration announced new oversight rules Tuesday.
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