(Headline USA) Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from senators at Wednesday’s much-anticipated hearing about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci, who had already accepted a preemptive pardon from outgoing President Joe Biden last year, was set to answer lawmakers’ questions after being subpoenaed by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth, at least for now, sidesteps calls for his prosecution if he is caught lying at Wednesday’s hearing, part of a yearslong campaign for his arrest spearheaded by some Republicans in Congress. Paul promised “repercussions” for Fauci’s refusal to testify.
BREAKING: Dr. Anthony Fauci invokes the Fifth Amendment during his opening statement during the Senate hearing on the origins of COVID-19, declining to answer lawmakers’ questions.
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In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”
“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, adding that while it pains him to do so, he is following his attorney’s advice by taking the Fifth.
Paul releases some of Fauci’s diary
Paul in his opening statement sought to build the case that Fauci helped produce the COVID-19 pandemic by approving funding of research on virus mutations and then covered up his complicity.
Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”
Among the entries, Fauci acknowledged that the theory COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan laboratory was plausible, despite publicly dismissing the theory as fringe during the pandemic.
The diary also undercut Fauci’s claims to the media that he had “nothing to do” with widespread school closures. In one entry, Fauci wrote that he “convinced” then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to “close the NYC schools.” He added in the same entry that “he should close bars and restaurants in NYC.”
Ahead of the hearing, President Donald Trump wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt Fauci made bad decisions on masks, shutdowns and other issues.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that his department gave the diary entries, which were created on a government computer, to the committee. He told a Fox News Channel host that he thought Fauci might lie before the committee, opening him to perjury prosecution despite his preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
The hearing was still ongoing as of the publication of this article.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
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