WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is charging forward with his effort to prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci after the latter invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times on pressing questions about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic during a heated Senate hearing Wednesday.
Paul has sought at least three prior criminal referrals to prosecute Fauci: two under former President Joe Biden and one renewal under President Trump. But the doctor’s shocking non-answers in the most recent hearing prompted him to fast-track a motion for contempt of Congress.
“In the past, often, contempt messages go from committee to the floor, but I don’t think there’s any rule that says it has to,” the Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman said Thursday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
“I think it’s less likely to pass on the floor. I think we can pass it out of committee,” he added. Almost every Democrat on the Homeland Security panel denounced Paul’s efforts to force Fauci’s testimony the day before.
“And, from there, I plan on sending it directly with a legal brief supporting the arguments to the Department of Justice,” Paul continued.
Contempt of Congress is a criminal misdemeanor that could earn the former White House COVID czar between one to 12 months in prison and a $100,000 fine upon conviction — but has to be approved by a committee, followed by the full chamber in which it originated.
If the Senate is out of session, however, the upper chamber’s president — in this case Vice President JD Vance — can certify the contempt citation. Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is expected to send his chamber into recess at the end of next week.
David Schwartz, a New York-based criminal defense lawyer, told The Post that Fauci’s decision to make an opening statement before pleading the Fifth definitely constituted contempt in the stunning hearing Wednesday.
“You can’t just sort of testify through your opening statement and then invoke the Fifth Amendment,” Schwartz noted, adding that Fauci was in a tough spot because he could have faced state-level prosecutions for any false statements he may have made to the committee had he chosen to testify.
Paul has for five years claimed that Fauci, the former head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), should be prosecuted for an alleged false statement to Congress in May 2021 that the NIAID’s parent agency “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Here’s the latest on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Senate testimony over his COVID leadership:
Fauci, 85, maintained in congressional testimony and interviews both before and after leaving his post at NIAID that the experiments didn’t constitute gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city where SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019, despite other officials claiming they did.
His attorney David Schertler, who was booted from Wednesday’s hearing for trying to speak on Fauci’s behalf, wrote in a June 16 letter to Paul: “NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as that term has been defined by preeminent experts in the field after a thorough deliberative process.”
“Your allegation that Dr. Fauci provided false testimony to Congress is, in and of itself, absolutely and demonstrably false,” added Schertler in the missive. “Nor, as you have contended elsewhere, was Dr. Fauci involved in any ‘cover-up’ with regard to the origins of the virus.”
In that hearing, Paul added to those accusations that the ex-NIAID director and an assistant had deleted federal records in an attempt to cover up details about COVID origins.
The Senate Homeland Committee chairman also claimed Fauci should be held in contempt of Congress for declining to testify after receiving a sweeping pardon from Biden that wouldn’t have made him liable for confessing to any potential crimes in the hearing.
In his opening statement, Fauci had rebuked Paul for his “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution” as well as the committee’s release of an “unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me.”
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said before then taking the Fifth.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who sits on the panel, said that he had served in the House when Republicans similarly referred IRS official Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress after she “gave an opening statement and then took the Fifth Amendment.”
“The committee then held her in contempt for that, saying, ‘You can’t do both,’” he recalled.
The Justice Department under then-Attorney General Eric Holder ultimately decided not to bring charges after a two-year investigation into her targeting of conservative groups’ tax-exempt status as head honcho of the IRS.
Either way, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s Office would make the final decision to prosecute Fauci for contempt of Congress.
On Wednesday, she posted a video clip on X of a sketch from “The Dave Chappelle Show” of the eponymous comedian playing an alleged crack cocaine dealer pleading the Fifth before a Senate subcommittee.
“I have sent a criminal referral on Anthony Fauci twice under Biden and twice under Trump. Now I would be sending the committee’s product. That’s probably what happens. I can’t guarantee that we’re going to win the vote, but I’m pretty certain we can win the vote next week.”
Fauci’s ex-senior adviser David Morens was indicted in May for concealing and destroying federal records related to a grant for coronavirus research in Wuhan — and the grantee that oversaw those experiments and had earlier proposed a “blueprint” for a virus with the same features later observed in SARS-CoV-2.
The CIA, Energy Department and FBI have all determined an accidental lab leak most likely caused the pandemic, whereas other agencies have argued for a natural spillover from animals to humans.
Fauci has consistently favored the latter theory and claimed that a Wuhan wet market, where animal-to-human transmission can occur, likely spawned the coronavirus pandemic — though in one of his diary entries he denied this as a possibility, referring to one of the markets as a potential “amplifier” not a “source.”
Fauci’s attorneys and reps for the US Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
