Sen Rand Paul questions whether Fauci's invoking the Fifth Amendment was valid after Biden pardon

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., raised doubt on whether Dr. Anthony Fauci had the legal right to plead the Fifth Amendment 111 times at a heated congressional hearing Wednesday after receiving a presidential pardon.

"The legal question is, if you're pardoned, can you really claim the Fifth?" he said on "The Will Cain Show." "The Fifth Amendment is to claim immunity from self-incrimination. But if you've already been given immunity, you can't self-incriminate unless you lie.

"I don't know how you plead the Fifth Amendment to something you've already been granted immunity for."

Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is moving on a vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to answer any questions about his COVID-19 pandemic response or gain-of-function research.

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Fauci was pardoned by former President Joe Biden in January 2025 after Biden said the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases could potentially face "unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions" by the incoming Trump administration.

Paul’s comments come days after he released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary entries spanning 2019 through 2022.

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The journals chronicle Fauci's day-to-day life during the COVID-19 pandemic, detailing his apparent obsession with newfound fame and his belief that it was "not hyperbole" to say he was "the most famous and talked about person in the country." The entries also discuss his beliefs about the origins of COVID-19.

"We saw a constellation of what he was saying privately, and then what he was saying publicly," Paul said on "The Will Cain Show." "In January of 2020, he was saying privately, ‘We now know that the earliest cases did not come from the wet market.’

"But he then argued for years and years publicly, ‘Oh no, it came from the market. It came from the wet market, because that supported a natural origin which went against the laboratory origin, which he bore some responsibility for because he funded this lab."

SLACK MESSAGES RELEASED BY RAND PAUL APPEAR TO SHOW AUTHORS OF KEY COVID-19 ORIGIN PAPER HELD PRIVATE DOUBTS

At Wednesday’s explosive hearing, Paul accused Fauci and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of misleading Congress and destroying records, which he said fractured the public’s trust over the nation’s handling of COVID-19.

Fauci, under guidance from his lawyers, did not answer a single question from Paul or others on the committee, protecting himself from self-incrimination.

When asked whether he plans to challenge the legal viability of Fauci’s pardon, Paul said he intends to prepare a brief arguing that the Fifth Amendment is not appropriate for someone who has received a pardon.

"That's why I think it needs to be pursued in court whether or not a pardon, you can continue to claim the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination when you've been given immunity. So, I think there are some really important legal questions here," Paul told Fox News.

Paul, who has referred Fauci to both the Biden and Trump Justice Department, said he was "disappointed" by the hearing and expected the former NIH head to apologize.

The Republican senator went on to criticize his Democratic colleagues over their questioning of Fauci, asking why they were not more "upset" about the government’s handling of the disease that killed more than 1 million Americans.

"They don't seem to care about the truth. I think they want to defend the government more than they want get to the truth of: Did your government actually fund something that led to a pandemic that killed a million Americans?" Paul said.