Anthony Fauci still isn’t talking.
The former White House COVID adviser walked away from a Fox News Digital reporter outside his residence Thursday when asked whether he regretted invoking the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times before Congress.
“Do you regret the way you handled the hearing, pleading the Fifth so much?” the reporter asked.
Fauci did not respond.
He also declined to answer a question about whether he regretted his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The encounter came one day after Fauci refused every substantive question at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“Although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci said in his opening statement.
Then he did exactly that.
Fauci repeatedly gave senators the same answer as they questioned him about COVID’s origins, school closures, government records and research involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
Republicans accuse Fauci of misleading Congress when he denied that the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci denies lying and has called the allegations “preposterous.” He maintains that critics have distorted the scientific definition of gain-of-function research and turned him into a political target.
Fauci had no legal obligation to answer a reporter outside his residence. His silence also does not establish guilt.
Politically, however, the image was hard to miss.
For years, Fauci appeared regularly on television to defend pandemic policies and criticize those challenging the government’s response. Faced with new questions about his own records, he has now gone quiet before both Congress and the press.
Paul argues that Fauci lacked a valid basis for invoking the Fifth because former President Joe Biden gave him a broad pardon covering possible federal offenses related to his government service through Jan. 20, 2025.
The senator acknowledged that the question may ultimately require a court ruling.
Paul’s committee is scheduled to vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer. Republicans hold an 8-7 majority on the panel, according to the Associated Press.
Fauci left the Senate with more than 100 unanswered questions.
A day later, he added two more.
Watch the clip above.
