Fauci Refuses to Answer Questions before U.S. Senate
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who labelled himself “The Science” during the Covid era, pleaded the Fifth 111 times.
Anthony Fauci, the long-serving director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and one of the architects of the country’s Covid-19 lockdown policy, was due to give evidence yesterday before the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs regarding his actions at the time, but the hearing essentially came to nothing. The reason was Fauci’s refusal to answer any questions whatsoever. To justify his refusal, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, under which one can refuse to give evidence if the opposite could lead to self-incrimination.
Fauci’s string of lies
Fauci presumably has good reason for such a tactic, as a number of questions have arisen regarding his actions both during the Covid crisis and prior to that. For example, the committee’s chair Senator Rand Paul published Fauci’s diary from the pandemic period prior to the hearing; entries made in early 2020 show that, in private, Fauci estimated the mortality rate of the disease to be significantly lower than he claimed whilst answering questions before the US Congress just a few weeks later.
“The stated mortality over all of this when you look at all the data including China is about three percent. It first started off as two and three,” Fauci said in a testimony before the House Oversight Committee on March 11, 2020. “I think that if you take into account all cases with minimal symptoms or no symptoms at all, the mortality rate will probably fall to around one per cent, which means it is 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu,” he said. “I think that’s something people can easily understand.”
But on Feb. 8, 2020, about a month before that congressional testimony, Fauci had privately expressed the belief that the virus’s mortality rate is much lower.
“[Former CDC Director] Tom Frieden called me this AM and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak,” Fauci wrote. “He and I are on the same page in thinking that this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 (above) making the case fatality rate (CFR) more like 0.2-0.3% rather than 2.0%.”
Dangerous experiments in Wuhan
In essence, this gives grounds to believe that Fauci has lied to the Congress, which is a criminal offence.
Moreover, this is not the first time Fauci has been caught lying to the Congress. In May 2021, whilst answering questions from Senator Paul, Fauci lied about the circumstances surrounding coronavirus gain-of-function research carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, and the funding for that research. It is highly likely that the virus that caused the crisis originated from that very laboratory.
The US government has now published documents on the matter which show how the NIAID, led by Fauci, allocated millions of US taxpayers’ dollars, including approximately $600,000 via EcoHealth Alliance – an organisation that came to prominence during the Covid pandemic – so that experiments could be carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s laboratory in order to study coronaviruses derived from bats and to enhance the virulence of these viruses. Fauci essentially denied to the Congress that such experiments had ever been carried out during his supervision.
Took the Fifth 111 times: to avoid further lies
Fauci was pardoned by President Biden in January 2025, and the Trump administration has not yet charged him with any crimes. That said, if Fauci continued to lie before Congress, Biden’s pardon would not have saved him.
In total, Fauci invoked his right to refuse to answer 111 times during the hearing, citing the Fifth Amendment. As his refusal applied to every question, it led to a number of awkward situations. For example, Senator Paul drew Fauci’s attention to the fact that a folder containing documents relating to the use of the Fifth Amendment had been placed on the table in front of him, and asked if he could see it. Fauci refused to answer this question as well, invoking the provisions of the Fifth Amendment, whereupon Senator Paul asked for the following to be recorded in the minutes: “Let the record record that the witness has refused to answer whether there is a folder in front of him based on his Fifth Amendment right.”
Senator Bernie Moreno, on his part, cited a news story from six years ago: in 2020, a woman was arrested at a high school football match in Ohio for refusing to wear a mask. According to Moreno, it was precisely this kind of abuses of power during the pandemic – fuelled by Fauci’s messages – that led him to decide to sell his businesses and stand for the Senate. During the session, he asked bluntly: “Here I am, sitting in front of you six years later, saying: who the fuck do you think you were for doing that?” Moreno has now faced criticism for such somewhat uncensored language.
Senator Ron Johnson highlighted several points he would have liked to have asked of Fauci. For example, in the Covid years, Fauci spoke disparagingly about ivermectin, a drug that had been derisively dubbed ‘horse dewormer’ at the time. Johnson pointed out that whilst Fauci was publicly stating that there was no evidence that ivermectin was beneficial, a string of scientific studies had already been published showing the opposite – an effectiveness of 60–70 per cent. Johnson asked Fauci why he had sabotaged ivermectin in this way. “Did you do that because you knew that only way you get emergency use authorization for these drugs, this experimental gene therapy (referring to mRNA vaccines – HS), was if there was no effective treatment?”
In addition, Johnson, who has long advocated for the many people suffering from Covid vaccine side effects, presented statistics on them from around the world. “Currently, worldwide, there have been almost 1.7 million adverse events reported to the VAERS system. Of those, over 39,000 were deaths. And of those deaths, 24% occurred on the day of the vaccination, or within one or two days,” he explained.
As Fauci again exercised his right not to testify, he did not comment on these issues.
Fauci sees himself as a victim of a witch hunt
Fauci justified his refusal to testify by stating that this was a witch-hunt organised against him, orchestrated by Senator Paul, the chair of the committee. “Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my 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 invoking the Fifth.
Paul, however, proposed that Fauci, who refused to answer the posed questions, be held in contempt of the Congress. Specifically, Paul argues that the pardon issued by Biden means Fauci cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment. Consequently, the same committee will vote next week on Fauci’s non-compliance, and if he is found in contempt, he could face a fine of up to $100,000 and up to one year in prison.