On The Hill

TONY TONGUE-TIED: Fauci Takes the Fifth at Rand Paul COVID Hearing [WATCH]

posted by Hannity Staff - 7.29.26

Dr. Anthony Fauci came to Capitol Hill Wednesday, attacked Sen. Rand Paul as “unhinged” and then invoked the Fifth Amendment.

The extraordinary scene unfolded at the start of a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing examining the pandemic, risky virus research and Fauci’s previous statements to Congress.

Paul, the committee’s Republican chairman, subpoenaed the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director to appear.

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Fauci made clear from the start that the senators weren’t getting answers.

“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.

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he continued.

Fauci said it “pains” him to refuse questions because of his respect for Congress and his decades of previous cooperation. But on his attorneys’ advice, he invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

He then took the Fifth at least a dozen more times as Paul pressed him about gain-of-function research in China and the sweeping pardon former President Joe Biden issued during his final hours in office.

Watch the clip below:

This story is developing…