Senate Republicans voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he declined to answer lawmakers’ questions during a fiery hearing last week.
Fauci, who has been a target of the right since he served as a top health official during the Covid pandemic, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment right during the hearing, explaining in his opening remarks that he believed Republicans would try to use his testimony to prosecute him.
Now, Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have pushed to do just that with the 8-5, party-line vote.
“We are voting on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a sweeping federal pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence,” committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., said in his opening statement at the meeting. Paul was referring to a pardon that then-President Joe Biden gave to Fauci and several others just prior to leaving office, which Biden said was to protect them from potential politically motivated prosecutions.
The committee can refer the contempt of Congress resolution directly to the Justice Department or request that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., hold a full Senate vote. Paul said yesterday that the “first thing we will do” if the resolution was approved would be to refer the matter to the Justice Department.
Paul said after the vote that the committee would hand-deliver the referral to the Justice Department.
“We will hand deliver it today to the attorney general, and we will hand deliver it today to the District of Columbia, to the U.S. attorney there,” Paul told reporters.
If Paul did ask the full Senate to vote on the resolution, it probably would not have enough support to clear the 60-vote threshold that would be needed for the measure to pass in the narrowly divided chamber.
If Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, chooses to try to prosecute the case, her office would need to secure an indictment from a grand jury in the district, where she has a mixed track record.
In a statement, Fauci’s lawyer called the vote “a crude political stunt intended to punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights.”
“Today’s resolution is a continuation of Senator Paul’s personal vendetta against Dr. Fauci, who spent 50 years in public health and has saved countless lives,” the lawyer, David Schertler, said. “It is shameful and wrong that Senator Paul is abusing his power by trying to weaponize the Justice Department against an honorable public servant.”
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said in his opening remarks at the meeting that the committee vote would create a “damaging precedent” that would cause future congressional witnesses to resist providing congressional testimony.
“If this committee now seeks to punish a witness for asserting their constitutional protected Fifth Amendment rights, future witnesses will argue that appearing before Congress exposes them to punishment, regardless of whether they comply with the subpoena and invoke a constitutional protection,” said Peters, the top Democrat on the committee.
“They will point directly to this vote, this vote, as a justification for refusing to appear at all,” Peters said.
As the meeting progressed, Democrats called for votes to table the contempt resolution five times — a push that was rejected along party lines.