Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said following the hearing that the panel would vote next week on whether it would recommend to hold Fauci, an infectious disease expert who helped lead the country’s pandemic response, in contempt of Congress after he pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times.
The Fifth Amendment was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. It stipulates multiple key legal protections for Americans, including that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” In other words, the amendment establishes the constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.
“Pleading the Fifth is not an admission of guilt—it is a constitutional protection designed to prevent coercion, mistakes, and unfair burden-shifting,” Whalen Law Office, a criminal defense law firm based in Texas, writes on its website.
Why did Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment?
“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.
Shortly before former President Joe Biden left office, in January 2025, he preemptively pardoned Fauci. Biden said he was issuing the pardon to shield Fauci from “politically motivated prosecutions.”
The pardon only protects Fauci from being charged for events or actions that happened before it was issued. He is not protected under the pardon for anything that happens after January 2025. He could therefore be at risk of legal consequences if he were accused of a crime that occurred after that date—for instance, if he were accused of lying under oath.
Senate Democrats criticized their Republican colleagues’ actions during the hearing on Wednesday. Instead of questioning Fauci, they thanked him for his years of work in public health.
Can Fauci be held in contempt of Congress?
Paul said that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote next week on whether to recommend holding Fauci in contempt of Congress. If the panel votes in favor of doing so, then the issue would go to the entire Senate to vote on.
Paul told CBS News after the Senate hearing one Wednesday that he believes “there is a very real chance that [Fauci] could be prosecuted” for refusing to answer the panel’s questions.
“We are completely confident that Dr. Fauci has a valid Fifth Amendment privilege here and is on solid legal ground in asserting it,” Schertler said in an email to CBS News. “Rand Paul may be a doctor, but he is not a lawyer.”
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