Dr. Anthony Fauci went scorched earth on Republicans and accused Sen. Rand Paul of being obsessed and unhinged before invoking his Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to answer questions after being hauled in for a hearing on Capitol Hill.
Fauci, 85, is the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who led the U.S. through the coronavirus pandemic and was initially hailed as a hero before being vilified by the right.
He appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday after being subpoenaed, where he blasted the committee’s Chairman Rand Paul.
“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. “Therefore, 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.”
When it was time for questioning, Fauci also refused to respond as Paul started asking a series of questions.
“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment,” Fauci said, before repeatedly invoking his rights multiple times.
The showdown on Capitol Hill came after Paul released over 1,100 pages of Fauci’s personal diary entries ahead of the grilling, detailing his daily life between December 2019 and December 2022 when he retired from the NIAID.
The documents were posted over the weekend, then taken down on Monday evening and reposted again on Tuesday with redactions. Paul also released some 465 pages of Fauci documents from 2001 through 2015, including records and emails. Paul accused Fauci of writing one thing and giving the country “two different stories.”
This story will be updated.
