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[Senate Hearing 119-504] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 119-504 TESTIMONY OF ANTHONY FAUCI ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ---------- JULY 29, 2026 ---------- Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 64-382 PDF WASHINGTON : 2026 ======================================================================= COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS RAND PAUL, Kentucky, Chairman RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin GARY C. PETERS, Michigan JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma MAGGIE WOOD HASSAN, New Hampshire RICK SCOTT, Florida RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri JOHN FETTERMAN, Pennsylvania BERNIE MORENO, Ohio ANDY KIM, New Jersey JONI ERNST, Iowa RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona ASHLEY MOODY, Florida ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan William E. Henderson III, Staff Director Christina N. Salazar, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel Megan M. Krynen, Senior Professional Staff Member Harry Kazenoff, Assistant Counsel David L. Albright, Research Assistant J. Ryan Arient, Professional Staff Member Dalton W. Barnett, Junior Research Assistant Maximilian C. Diehl, Committee Aide Rachel S. Emmons, Professional Staff Member Paulina Garmute, Research Assistant Adam Hinz, Committee Aide Kilian R. Laverty, Professional Staff Member Joseph A. Martin, Committee Aide Andrew T. Yount, Committee Aide Christopher J. Mulkins, Minority Staff Director Alan S. Kahn, Minority Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel Claudine J. Brenner, Minority Deputy General Counsel Sapana R. Vora, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member Kevin G. McAloon, Minority Senior Investigator Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk Ashley A. Gonzalez, Records Clerk C O N T E N T S ------ Opening statements: Page Senator Paul................................................. 1 Senator Peters............................................... 5 Senator Johnson.............................................. 15 Senator Hassan............................................... 18 Senator Lankford............................................. 20 Senator Blumenthal........................................... 23 Senator Scott................................................ 25 Senator Kim.................................................. 29 Senator Hawley............................................... 30 Senator Fetterman............................................ 34 Senator Moreno............................................... 34 Senator Ernst................................................ 37 Senator Moody................................................ 40 Prepared statements: Senator Paul................................................. 55 Senator Peters............................................... 60 WITNESS WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 2026 Anthony Fauci, M.D., Former Director (1984-2022) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services....................................................... 7 APPENDIX Senator Paul's chart............................................. 63 Senator Johnson's Drug Adverse Event Comparison chart............ 64 Senator Hawley's charts.......................................... 65 Senator Ernst chart.............................................. 70 Senator Moody's chart............................................ 72 Red Folder Contents.............................................. 73 DOE Letters...................................................... 94 CIA Transfer Documents........................................... 96 Haslam & Howard statement........................................ 114 Senator Peters letter to Senator Paul............................ 124 HSGAC Staff Report............................................... 128 Minority Hearing Memo............................................ 370 Minority Hearing Memo Supplemental............................... 391 FactCheck.org Article............................................ 441 Full Measure Article............................................. 462 Dr. Fauci Diary Entry............................................ 477 NIH FOIA Case.................................................... 480 Neuropathic Symptoms Study....................................... 555 Additional Medical Studies....................................... 577 Schertler statement.............................................. 1230 Schertler letter................................................. 1232 International Assessment Report.................................. 1241 Senator Scott's Exhibits......................................... 1246 TESTIMONY OF ANTHONY FAUCI ---------- WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 2026 U.S. Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 8:30 a.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Rand Paul, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Paul [presiding], Johnson, Lankford, Scott, Hawley, Moreno, Ernst, Moody, Peters, Hassan, Blumenthal, Fetterman, and Kim. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PAUL\1\ Chairman Paul. The Committee will now come to order. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Paul appears in the Appendix on page 55. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- One million Americans died from the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Some estimate as many as 15 million people died worldwide from COVID-19. Publicly, Anthony Fauci promoted the theory that the virus arose naturally, while privately he was well aware of a mountain of evidence suggesting the virus originated in a lab. The American people deserve answers. The American people deserve to know why dangerous research was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in a totalitarian country, in a lab that lacked acceptable safety standards. The decision to fund dangerous gain-of- function (GoF) research in Wuhan, China, will likely go down in history as perhaps one of the worst public health decisions. Frankly, the American people deserve an apology. I hope today Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China, admit that the risks of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits, ask forgiveness, and pledge to help our government devise safeguards so a manmade epidemic never happens again. Instead of an apology, you have for years avoided responsibility. Regarding the lockdowns, you argue that you did not personally issue every lockdown order, close every school, or impose every mandate. But officials across the country invoked your authority to justify these decisions, and you presented your recommendations not as judgments open to debate but as dictates of science itself. Your own words demonstrate that you understood the influence you exercised. On March 14, 2020, you wrote that the task force recommendations were ``driven by me, yourself, Deb, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)''. The next day you wrote that you had ``convinced'' Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the New York City schools, so you were involved. That same night, Governor Gavin Newsom's chief of staff told you that the Governor had decided to close California schools, bars, and restaurants after watching you on television. Presidents, Governors, mayors, school boards, corporations, and Congress all bear responsibility for the decisions they made. The COVID lockdown, however, could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime. Children lost years of education. Small businesses built over a lifetime disappeared. Patients delayed cancer screenings and other medical care. Families were separated from dying relatives. Workers were ordered to accept a medical procedure or lose their jobs. Worship assembly, employment, education, and travel were restricted in the name of science. While you did not impose every restriction, you used your public authority to justify them. While you concluded publicly that COVID occurred naturally, your private record tells a different story. In early 2020, your handpicked virologist warned that the virus appeared to have been manipulated in the lab. In a conference call concerning the origin of the virus, all but two of the participants believed deliberate insertion was possible. Your concern was not merely theoretical. That same week you led an urgent effort to determine whether your own agency had funded the research related to these experiments that were now under suspicion. Hours later your assistant reported that the Wuhan experiments had, indeed, been reviewed and approved by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Those were not the actions of officials who believed that a research related to origin was an absurd conspiracy theory. They were the actions of officials urgently trying to determine whether their agency funding was connected to the research under discussion, connected to the pandemic. You could not hide that your agency had funded the Wuhan research or your long history of defending gain-of-function research. The only alternative left was to argue that COVID-19 did not originate in the Wuhan lab. You were not a detached observer. You had an institutional interest in the public believing that federally funded research had nothing to do with the pandemic. It was a conflict of interest from the very beginning. The authors of the ``Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2'' privately had serious doubts about a natural origin. Within days, though, they flipped, and they all wrote in Proximal Origin that the virus was almost certainly not a laboratory construct. That paper was then used by the government and the media and you to discredit Americans who were asking the same questions that you and the authors were asking yourselves privately. You even cited Proximal Origin from the White House podium. You held it out as evidence that the virus could not have been engineered. But you didn't disclose your role and the discussions that proceeded the writing of the paper. You did not disclose the authors' original concerns. You did not concern. You did not reveal that you had been part of the paper, that you had read and offered editorial comments on the paper before it was published, before you began using it as evidence that it could not have originated in the lab. You did not disclose that you had immediately investigated yourself, whether NIAID funding might be connected to the research. You did not tell the American people the full story. Duly released private messages indicate that the doubts with the authors and others didn't disappear after the publication. While this was being waved at the White House to show that it couldn't come from the lab, the authors were still privately continuing to assign a meaningful probability to a laboratory origin, one thing in public and another in private. Some of the same scientists discussed avoiding email and carefully managing communications that might eventually be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The pattern is straightforward. Privately there was alarm, then an immediate inquiry to see if NIAID's possible exposure to funding, then a rapid public declaration of certainty, continued private doubt, and then years of resistance to disclosure. The question is why? The only logical answer is that your primary concern was avoiding culpability. Your primary concern was hiding the fact that you had approved the funding for this dangerous research. Your support of gain-of-function research is extensive and longstanding. In 2011, your agency funded Ron Fouchier's laboratory when it mutated the avian flu until it could spread through the air between mammals. This was the tipping point. This was when others became worried. You funded this. You advocated for this. The Federal Government's own Biosecurity Board, though, recommended withholding the details of these experiments because of the danger the research posed. People were concerned that publishing it was publishing a roadmap to creating bioweapons around the world. But you sided with the gain-of-function scientist Fouchier and argued that the benefits of publishing the research far outweighed the risks. You defended this avian flu transmissibility experiments as critical research. You wrote that even if a scientist became infected and triggered a pandemic, the benefits of the gain-of-function experiments outweighed the risks. In 2014, your agency, NIAID, began funding the Wuhan bat coronavirus work. In 2015, Ralph Baric and the Chinese scientist Shi Zhengli published NIAID-supported research combining a bat coronavirus spike protein with a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) backbone. The resulting virus could infect human airway cells. It is a novel virus that now can infect human cells. It gained transmissibility. It gained function. In 2018, the same group of scientists, EcoHealth, Baric, Shi, and their collaborators submitted the DEFUSE proposal, which involved the insertion of a furin cleavage site into the coronavirus. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) rejected it as too dangerous. When COVID was sequenced, though, early on, in January 2020, within days scientists discovered that, lo and behold, it had a novel furin cleavage site just as had been proposed in the DEFUSE project. This is either an extraordinary coincidence or a smoking gun, evidence that the Chinese had created COVID-19. It made the laboratory origin question more legitimate, and it made your categorial public denials indefensible. On May 11, 2021, you told the Senate, ``The NIH has never, ever, and does not now fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).'' When I gave you the opportunity to correct the record, to reconsider the statement, you responded that you had never before lied to Congress. We were then told that only the government's narrowest regulation of definition counted here, that you could define gain-of-function in one way, in which this wasn't gain-of- function, in which all of the common sense of the world would be thrown out, all of the ideas that the mice were dying and the virus was more transmissible didn't matter because you had a technical definition that allowed you to fund it. But the real question is, was it dangerous? Was it a wise decision to fund this? You haven't deviated from that. You have never admitted that it could have been a mistake funding this research in China. The American people were not asking for a semantics debate over what is gain-of-function. They were asking, does common sense say this research was dangerous in Wuhan? They wanted to know whether their money funded experiments in Wuhan that made bat coronaviruses better able to infect humans. The answer is yes. They wanted to know whether NIAID adequately supervised their work. The answer is no. When you defended this research you described its benefits in the broadest terms. But when Congress demanded accountability you hid behind the narrowest possible definition. You can't have it both ways. Your conduct concerning Federal records raises further questions. It is a crime to destroy Federal records. Yet our investigation reveals your assistant diligently reported that she deleted tons of emails. In 2024, you testified that you did not delete Federal records. Who is telling the truth, you or your assistant? The Committee has obtained repeated instructions from you, telling Federal officials to delete communications. On February 2, 2020, one day after an origins call, you told Francis Collins, ``Please delete this email after you read it.'' The Committee asked for your voluntary cooperation to come today. Your appearance had to be compelled by subpoena. You are here today under duress. You are here today because of the court ordering it. President Biden issued you a sweeping pardon, extending back to 2014, the same pardon he gave to his son, Hunter. A pardon may protect a person from criminal prosecution. It does not rewrite history. It does not erase documents. It does not convert a misleading statement into a truthful one. It does not prevent Congress from establishing what happened. There will be another pandemic. There will be another crisis. There will again be officials who insist that uncertainty must be hidden for the public's own good. They will demand obedience. They will invoke science, I am the science, as though it were a commandment. They will argue that government officials cannot be questioned because questioning them would undermine public trust. They have it backward. It is secrecy that destroys trust. It is arrogance that destroys trust. It is censorship that destroys trust. It is the refusal to admit error that destroys trust. That loss of trust may be your most damaging legacy. Trust cannot be ordered. It has to be earned. No scientist is above scrutiny. No government official is beyond accountability. No public servant has the right to treat the suffering of millions of Americans as a footnote to his preferred version of history. I now recognize Senator Peters for his opening remarks. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\1\ Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) has a long and a very proud history of conducting serious oversight on behalf of the American people. When this Committee has been at its best, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to investigate complicated issues, to follow the facts wherever they may lead, and produce recommendations that actually strengthen our Nation's security and improve government functions. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the Appendix on page 60. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- That bipartisan tradition has produced meaningful work following Hurricane Katrina, the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, failures at the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), and countless other matters. Unfortunately, today's hearing is the latest step in the Chairman's sharp departure from that long tradition. This hearing appears to be a culmination of months of biased and selected efforts by the majority, under the guise of a committee investigation, to basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago. In 2021, the Chairman has called for today's witness to be fired, to be arrested, accused him of leading coverups and conspiracies. He has even featured the witness prominently in fundraising emails and on the cover of his book. He has also called for the cancellation of the witness' security detail, despite the fact the witness and his family have received numerous credible death threats. When I served as Chairman, Senator Paul and I launched a bipartisan biosecurity investigation that included oversight of risky research and the origins of COVID-19, because we agreed that the Committee's work would be stronger if we did it in a bipartisan manner and just followed the facts. That was, and continues to be, an area of legitimate and certainly needed oversight. As Chairman, Senator Paul has taken the opposite approach. He has abandoned longstanding practice by blocking minority participation in Committee oversight actions and has chosen to selectively release Committee records that the minority has never had any access to, in order to support his pre-drawn conclusions. The Chairman has repeatedly excluded Committee's minority and withheld documents and evidence from members that are entitled to receive them, disregarding longstanding Senate rules and Committee precedent that have preserved the credibility of our oversight in this Committee for decades. I have raised these concerns directly with the Chairman, because it is not just what we investigate that matters but how we conduct that investigation. That also matters. One-sided investigations designed to validate predetermined conclusions do not serve the American people who sent us to actually undercover the truth and solve problems. I wrote to the Chairman requesting that he adhere to Committee rules, but instead of addressing concerns that I raised he removed part of the Committee's website from the public view. This move not only prevented the public from being able to view those list of concerns, it adds serious questions about the desire for transparency and legitimate oversight of this matter. But what makes today's hearing particularly disappointing is not simply the Chairman's actions but what we could be using this Committee's true and time, oversight responsibilities to accomplish. This Committee has not held its annual threats hearing at all in this Congress. We have not held a budget hearing for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). There are important hearing that we would have the opportunity to discuss as to how to strengthen our homeland security across the board. No hearings on those topics. Instead of focusing on the national security challenges that we are facing in our country right now, today's hearing looks backward, revisiting questions this Committee has already examined, including through bipartisan work that Senator Paul and I conducted together when I served as Chairman of this Committee. But rather than building on that work to strengthen our preparedness against future disasters, we are instead relitigating the past. COVID-19 exposed serious deficiencies in our Nation's public health infrastructure. We know that. More than one million Americans lost their lives, and this Committee should absolutely continue to examine how we can better prepare our Nation against future biological threats. Those are the kinds of forward-looking, lifesaving questions that will help our Nation be better prepared to protect the health and the safety of Americans when the next emergency occurs. Unfortunately, at this precise moment we should be strengthening our capabilities, the Trump administration seems to be doing everything in their power to actually weaken our capabilities. The Administration has hollowed out the public health workforce. They have fired, pushed out, and cut funding for public health personnel, shrinking the CDC workforce by a quarter. Thousands of experienced scientists have left government service, and with them has gone critical institutional knowledge. That cannot be easily replaced, certainly not quickly replaced. The Administration, thanks to political operatives like Russell Vought, has slashed or illegally withheld funding for lifesaving medicines and cutting-edge technologies that let us rapidly develop them during an emergency. Mr. Vought is now further politicizing the Federal grant-making process, proposing to subject all Federal grants, including those for disaster relief, housing development, and cancer research, to the whims of political appointees, not nonpartisan experts. All of this has left the American people more vulnerable to infectious disease threats, and we are already tragically seeing the consequences. Staffing and funding cuts have slowed the Federal, State, and local response to an ongoing outbreak of a food-borne parasite, which has sickened thousands in my home State of Michigan as well as across the country. At the same time, the Administration cuts to global health programs and international partnerships have greatly reduced our ability to contain dangerous diseases like Ebola before they spread to our shores. We should be examining whether our Federal health agencies (FHA) have the personnel and the resources they need to effectively prevent, detect, and respond to these threats. We should be asking how to strengthen our biodefense efforts to deter our adversaries and prevent biological attacks against our country, and how our government can better coordinate and communicate during public health emergencies. These are the kinds of forward-looking matters that are worthy of this Committee's time. Instead, we are here continuing the Chairman's year-long focus on one individual. History tells us, unfortunately, another pandemic is all but inevitable. The question is whether Congress and this Committee will work to better prepare our country for it, or continue looking backward while our public health infrastructure crumbles around us. That is the hearing that we should be having today. Unfortunately, I fear the intent of this hearing is only meant to further a purely partisan agenda and it will not make Americans safer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Paul. The accusation that the Committee has denied access to the minority to records is categorically false. This is the most transparent investigation in the history of Congress. We actually created a website, and we put all of the information on the website. It continues to operate. The reason it hasn't been accessed is because not one Democrat ever signed up for it, not one Democrat. We told them the access code. They never asked for the access code. They have not been on the website because they have not cared about the investigation. It is the practice of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to swear the witness. Dr. Fauci, please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God? Dr. Fauci. I do. Chairman Paul. Dr. Anthony Fauci, you are recognized for five minutes for your opening statement. TESTIMONY OF ANTHONY FAUCI, M.D., FORMER DIRECTOR (1984-2022) NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Dr. Fauci. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Peters, Members of the Committee, I served at the NIH for over 54 years, 38 of those as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Over that period I proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight. In fact, I testified before and/or briefed Senate and House committees well over 200 times over those 38 years. During and after the COVID pandemic I have appeared multiple times for hearings in the Senate and the House, usually under oath, and sat for several days-long, transcribed, sworn interviews, answering questions about the very issues that are now the subject of this hearing. However, 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, in his words, ``behind bars.'' Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. 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 to the Constitution, to refrain from answering your questions. Thank you. Chairman Paul. We will now begin a round of questioning. Dr. Fauci, your testimony today is compelled by a lawful subpoena. As you know, it is a crime under 18 USC 1001 to knowingly make a material false statement to Congress, with the penalty of up to five years of imprisonment. Understanding that you are under oath, the American people would like to understand your reasoning, your rationale, for why you chose to fund the research in Wuhan. There have been, intelligence agencies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Energy (DOE), have all come to the conclusion that more likely than not the virus came from the lab in Wuhan. We would like to know what was the rationale, what was the discussion, what went behind the decision to fund the research in Wuhan? How did you come to the conclusion that a totalitarian country would be capable of doing this, in a BSL-2 lab, a lab that lacked the security? What was the reasoning? Are you sorry, basically, for making the decision? Would you, given another chance, say, ``Well, gosh, circumstances now, as I know it, maybe it wasn't a wise thing.'' Can you explain to the Committee why you chose to fund this dangerous research in China? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. In the red folder on your table is a copy of Section 192 of Title 2 of the U.S. Code.\1\ Your counsel has been provided a copy, as well. That section makes it a crime for a witness appearing under subpoena to refuse to answer any questions pertinent to the question under inquiry. Do you have that in front of you? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The red folder referenced by Senator Paul appears in the Appendix on page 73. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. 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. It is true that you are appearing under direction of our subpoena to provide testimony on matters under consideration by the Committee, including the origins of COVID-19, risky life sciences research in your tenure as a Federal Government employee. Additionally, you have been provided a full and unconditional pardon, dated January 19, 2025, for any offenses against the United States which may have been committed or taken part from January 1, 2014, to the date of the pardon, for a 10-year period, arising from or in any manner related to your service as Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President. Have you refused this pardon, or do you have any reason to believe this full and unconditional pardon, this grant of immunity would somehow require you to plead the Fifth Amendment? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. Based on the facts presented I am going to direct you to answer the questions. The Committee has issued a valid subpoena. They have requested your presence here. The questions are very pertinent to your decisionmaking as head of NIAID as well as a Chief Advisor to the President. Do you still refuse to answer the questions? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. Dr. Fauci, were you ever made aware of gain- of-function research on monkeypox being conducted at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), at Fort Dietrich? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. Dr. Fauci, did the CIA ever transfer funds to NIH under an interagency agreement? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. Dr. Fauci, did the NIH ever conduct research for or in coordination with any element of the intelligence community--CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. The reason why these questions are important is President Trump has done a ban, and we were glad that he did a ban, on gain-of-function research. We are better off than we were when we had an advocate serving as head of NIAID, an advocate for gain-of-function research. There is still, though, a question of whether or not the intelligence community (IC) is adhering to that order. There is a question of whether or not gain-of-function research is still ongoing. These are important questions the American people deserve to know. Dr. Fauci, have been you read into any classified Department of Homeland Security program, any prospective special access program concerning gain-of-function research? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. When we look at the research in China, the gain-of-function research that you have denied was gain-of- function, one of the things that startled the scientists when they saw COVID in the first couple of weeks was when they looked at the sequence of it they said, ``Oh my God, there is a furin cleavage site in it.'' In this particular family of coronaviruses, the sarbecoviruses, they had never seen this before. They were also startled to look at it and see how it was coded for, what the codons were, and to discover that the codons used, out of 36 different possibilities, turned out to be the one that was commonly used in gene manipulation by scientists. Dr. Fauci, were the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology capable of inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. One of the experiments that was pretty common was they would take the backbone of a SARS virus, and this would be a SARS virus that the backbone itself was not that dangerous. But then they would dig through guano, 300 feet underground, bat guano. They would find other viruses, unknown viruses. They would take the S-protein off of an unknown virus and stick it on a backbone. Then they would infect mice that have humanized cells, and they were trying to discover if they could create a virus that infects humans. Now, many people would say, ``Well gosh, that doesn't sound like a really good idea to create viruses that don't exist in nature, to see if they will infect human cells.'' What if one escaped? What if you keep infecting this and do serial passage, you actually adapt the virus to be infectious to humans. The question is, is whether or not Dr. Fauci, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was combining an S-protein with one virus with the backbone of others, and could this lead to a virus-- maybe it wasn't even predicted, but could it lead to viruses that gained in function and then could lead to a pandemic? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. One of the arguments that you and others have made against this virus coming from the lab is it couldn't have come from the viruses that have been published. Nobody is really arguing that. I think from the very beginning people acknowledged that the viruses that have been published are too far evolutionarily distant from a virus that could have become COVID-19. What has never been acknowledged by the side who tries to call the other side a conspiracy theory, which is really something you don't usually see in a scientific debate, this is the first time I have ever seen an article printed in Lancet by your friends who called this a conspiracy theory. These are the kinds of things you see as a screed on a political website. You don't really see this in science. When they released this as being a conspiracy theory, we are wondering that when you do this, when you combine these viruses and are able to grow them in humanized cells, whether or not this kind of risky research, whether or not you call it gain-of-function or not, whether you use the definition of gain-of-function, whether this kind of research should have had more scrutiny. I think in your House testimony you testified that you never traveled to China, and that you were unaware that anybody at NIH ever examined the labs, that you trusted the Chinese scientists. I think you have said that even recently, that with your discretion you trusted the Chinese scientists. The problem is that even in our country we trust our scientists. They are good American scientists, probably doing the right thing for America. But at the same time we have oversight to make sure it is not dangerous research, but we also investigate the lab. I believe Fort Dietrich, was one of our main labs, was closed down in the last year or two because of a research incident that was dangerous, with dangerous pathogens. The American people would want to know how could you approve this dangerous research in China, say that you trusted the Chinese scientists, and then in the end you had to admit that you had never been there and none of your inspectors had ever been there. Dr. Fauci, at any of the labs where this dangerous research was occurring, were any American lab oversight or lab investigators, did they ever appear in these labs to make sure that they were safe labs? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. One of the main theories, for those who have looked at this being created in the lab, was the idea that it could have come from a virus not previously published. Dr. Fauci, are you aware that Dr. Shi, who worked for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was said to, and I think in her own words, to have over 100 viruses that had not been previously published that could have been at close enough relative to create COVID-19? Are you aware of that? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. Under your testimony previously, when you denied ever having funded gain-of-function in China, it was so adamant as to be striking to leave no room for any interpretation of what is or isn't gain-of-function research. But there is another important question. Did you fund gain-of- function research in other bio labs around the world? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. The one research project that we do know you did fund is the one that Ron Fouchier did. It is important to talk about because this sort of was the beginning of the debate over gain-of-function. This was not just me. I was not even aware of the debate 10 years ago. This was other scientists. Over 200 scientists at the Cambridge Working Group signed a protest because they didn't think you should fund the research, and they didn't think it should even be published because it was sort of a roadmap as to how to make a bioweapon. What they did was the avian flu, and this is important. It may be the most important question we get to here today. The avian flu has about 50 percent mortality for humans. The good news, though, about animal viruses is they don't infect humans very well. It will infect humans, but does not go human to human very well. Ron Fouchier, with the money that you provided to him, did an experiment where he caused purposeful mutations to create a new virus, an avian flu that did not just infect birds well but actually infected mammals well. It went ferret-to-ferret in an aerosolized manner. People saw this and were aghast at the decisionmaking process, that you had decided to fund this. But this is when the debate came about, and you wrote in support of this in The Washington Post, and you said even if a scientist is bitten, even if a pandemic should occur, the knowledge is worth the risks. Do you still stand by that? Would you like to qualify at all whether or not the knowledge of gain-of-function is worth the risks, particularly in this case since we now know 15 million people died worldwide, and many people believe this came from the lab. Do you think that the risks really are worth the benefits for gain-of-function research? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. We are going to finish with this question, and it is based really on that statement, that general statement in your support for gain-of-function, the idea that the benefits outweigh the risks.\1\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The chart from Senator Paul appears in the Appendix on page 63. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are many other people who disagreed, and they are not politicians. They are not, I don't know what party they are in. David Relman is probably one of the most esteemed, and he is a scientist at Stanford. He, I think, has classified clearance. He has been a consultant to our government probably for a decade or more. He has written about this publicly. He says the opposite. He said that the risks of this research do not outweigh the benefits. He said we should not do it. Richard Ebright, who has been involved in this debate for two decades, says the same thing, we really should not be doing this at all. There is a quote also by Kevin Esvelt, who is a Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), also wrote about this gain-of-function. ``I implore every scientist, funder, and nation working in the field, please stop. No more trying to discover or make pandemic-capable viruses. No more experiments likely to disseminate blueprints for plagues.'' Dr. Fauci, would you like to at least answer this one question for us today and let us know whether or not you have changed your mind on whether or not the benefits of gain-of- function research outweigh the risks? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. The Chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer him. But you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege, despite the existence of the pardon. The Committee will have to consider, after this hearing, what appropriate actions should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so. It is against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify today. Senator Peters. Mr. Schertler. Chairman Paul, may I make a comment? Chairman Paul. You are not recognized. If you are unruly you will be removed from the proceeding. You are not recognized. Mr. Schertler. Dr. Fauci---- Chairman Paul. You are not recognized, sir. Mr. Schertler [continuing]. On the advice of counsel---- Chairman Paul. Sir, you are not recognized. Mr. Schertler [continuing]. Valid---- Chairman Paul. You are not recognized. Security--we will hold off. But you will respect these proceedings. You were told not to sit at the table. You insist on sitting at the table. We told you you would not be recognized. You were not invited here for testimony, sir. You are being disruptive. Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can't do that today, but I can have you escorted from the premises. I would say, sir, sit quietly and don't say another word. Mr. Schertler. Chairman, I understand. Chairman Paul. I said sit quietly. You are not recognized. Another word and you are gone. Mr. Schertler. Very well. Senator Peters. Mr. Chairman, I would like to hear what the attorney has to say. Chairman Paul. He is not recognized by the Committee or the Chair. If he speaks again he will be removed from the room. This testimony is from Anthony Fauci. This is not a game with his lawyers. He can advise. His lawyers can give him advice. He has a half dozen here. They are all allowed to talk to him. Senator Peters. Yes. Chairman Paul. All right? But the attorney are not recognized. In fact, the attorney was told not to sit at the table, and he is not obeying that recommendation. There is a row behind you, sir. That is where you were told to sit, and you are not. Mr. Schertler. I am happy---- Chairman Paul. Now you are disrupting the proceedings. Look, this is the way Anthony Fauci wants to be remembered, for a lawyer not listening to the rules. That is the way you want to be remembered, and that is what you are going to do? You are not recognized, sir. Mr. Schertler. Will you allow me to make a short statement? Chairman Paul. Security, please remove him from the room. [Applause.] Let the record state that Dr. Fauci will still have the advice of the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today. Senator Peters. Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first or the last public health crisis to impact our Nation. In December 2022, I released a report that identified significant failures in our Federal Government's preparedness and initial response to COVID-19.\1\ This report contained 17 key findings. It is a very large report, which I have right here. It contained 17 key findings and corresponding recommendations, including the need to invest in sustainable domestic manufacturing capabilities for critical medical supplies, fill the infrastructure needed to surge testing capacity for infectious diseases, and robustly fund public health emergency preparedness and responses across all levels of government. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The report referenced by Senator Peters appears in the Appendix on page 128. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unfortunately, multiple administrations, including the current Trump administration, have failed to fund or to reform our health preparedness. This is something that I would hope the Committee in the future would investigate. It needs to be taken a look at. It also feels like a new public health threat is hitting us every month. There is a food-borne parasite affecting thousands of people in Michigan and across the country, and our Federal agencies still have not fully pinned down the source of that outbreak. Measles cases in this country are at the highest they have been in 35 years. More children are getting sick and even hospitalized from this preventable disease. Over 1,000 people have died from the Ebola virus in Africa, and we do not know how widespread this crisis actually is. We have a hantavirus scare on a cruise ship, and though it has not made headlines in the way that the screwworm threatening our food security has, I remain concerned about bird flu, that is also spreading and could one day cause a pandemic. This is also something this Committee should be investigating and holding hearings on. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has taken a number of actions to drastically weaken our ability to fight infectious diseases and biological threats that endanger Americans. These actions are both incomprehensible and are also inexcusable. They include slashing funding for public health and infectious disease research, canceling contracts for cutting-edge vaccine technology, shutting agencies responsible for tackling infectious diseases around the world, firing thousands of Federal employees with keeping our communities and our medicines and our food supply safe, and injecting political appointees in what should be non-political, grant-making functions. That is something this Committee should be looking at. I could go on, on all the topics that we need to be looking at moving forward, to protect this country. We are not doing that in this Committee. That is what this Committee was designed to do. It is what it has done throughout history. It has done it in a bipartisan way. We should get back to that and think about the future of this country and keeping this country safe. When a crisis like COVID-19 strikes we have an obligation to examine what went right and what went wrong, to provide accountability for the American people. Congress certainly has done that. Between the House and Senate, nearly 20 different committees--including this Committee, as I mentioned, have conducted oversight of the COVID-19 pandemic, conducting transcribed interviews, holding dozens of hearings, and released more than 10 reports. Today's exercise, unfortunately, is a stark departure from those largely bipartisan, legitimate efforts. The Chairman has shut the minority out of participating equally in these efforts, withheld information, selectively released documents, actions that completely undermine the credibility of this investigation. I will enter into the record, without objection, Mr. Chairman, a letter\1\ that I sent to you that detailed all of those areas that we have concern with and where we were shut out. We will provide other details, as well. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The letter referenced by Senator Peters appears in the Appendix on page 124. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chairman Paul. Without objection. Senator Peters. I think today's hearing, unfortunately, does real damage. It is tempting to turn one person into the scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across both the Trump and the Biden administration were responsible for handling. It does so in a way that people that are facing death threats. This is only going to, unfortunately, deter other scientific experts from public service, to understand that this is what they would have to go through as they provide their advice to us. We are not going to make our Nation safer, and I hope that we can restore it by doing these kinds of activities, and I hope that we can restore our legitimate, bipartisan oversight that is going to help strengthen our public health and pandemic preparedness and other homeland priorities. That is what this Committee needs to focus on. It has not the last year and a half. Let's hope it does in the future. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Paul. Senator Johnson. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Fauci, I hope the American people listened very carefully to Chairman Paul's opening statement. I think it is a stunning indictment of the actions you have taken that have been so destructive to global health. I certainly understand why you needed a pardon. I certainly understand why, on the advice of counsel, you are not answering any questions, because I think it would be almost impossible for you to answer the questions truthfully, without really demonstrating what you did, your culpability, self- incriminating. We have, all of us, have prepared a lot. I have been deluged with questions to ask Dr. Anthony Fauci. There are so many legitimate questions that deserve answers, and now you are not willing to provide those answers. With my limited time I am going to talk about things that my investigation revealed, that have not been adequately answered, and quite honestly, have not been adequately covered by the legacy media. I will kind of combine the questions into kind of one. Let's put up the last COVID chart.\1\ I was warned pretty early on about the dangers of the experimental gene therapy, that you have called a vaccine, but it really falls under the definition of gene therapy. I was going to ask you, I mean, were you carefully monitoring the safety surveillance systems, like Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and V-Safe that literally were deluged with complaints? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The chart referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix on page 64. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 percent occurred on the day of vaccination, within one or two days, 24 percent, which, by the way, just happens to be the same percentage that a Rasmussen poll pointed out that the American public believe-- 24 percent of the American public believe they know somebody who died of the experimental gene therapy. Again, I was certainly interested in asking you whether or not you were following this as carefully as I was. It was not my responsibility to follow safety surveillance systems, but I did. By the way, this is actual government information. When I published it, and people had me on their shows, they would be censored by Facebook. They would be de-platformed, I think at the behest of actions you took to make sure that this information was not spread. This was not disinformation. This was the truth. I was going to ask you whether you knew Dr. Marks. I think you do know him. He's the head of Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). He is the man who is in charge of approving vaccines and surveilling for their safety. My investigation shows that on March 1, 2021, less than three months after the Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA), he was warned by Dr. Ana Sfarzman, a data mining expert, that the algorithm they were using to analyze VAERS data was going to hide and mask safety signals. Twenty-six days later, and three months consecutively after that, they did data runs with a new algorithm that unmasked those safety signals. They showed dozens of safety signals, including sudden cardiac death, cerebral artery occlusion, basal ganglia strike, agonal rhythm, Bell's Palsy, and pulmonary infarction. Your diaries now show that you actually suffered pulmonary infarction in, I think, probably June 2021. I was just wondering whether it ever went through your mind that maybe that injection, all those boosters you took, might have caused that. I will ask this question. Were you ever made aware of the fact that Peter Marks was warned that the algorithm was going to hide the safety signals, and were you told that senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials were given dozens, shown dozens of safety signals associated with the COVID injection? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Johnson. The next area I want to go through is in that same month of March 2021, an employee at NIH, Dr. Nath, had a team of researchers who were diagnosing and treating individuals who had never had COVID, who were severely injured by the genetic therapy injections. Dr. Nath told those individuals, ``Stay quiet. We want to make sure that we gather all the information, and they release it to doctors so they can treat people like yourself.'' There was a concerted effort, and I will enter this into the record,\1\ it appears, inside NIH to quash Dr. Nast's publishing that study. It finally was put on a preprint server, telling no one, in I think about May 2022. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The NIH study referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix on page 480. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think what is noteworthy about this is Dr. Nath told the injured participants that early treatment, early intervention, was crucial for them to be treated. Yet within the NIH they were questioning what was Dr. Nath doing. They did not want to publish that because--and I do not want to take time searching for it--because publishing it would create vaccine hesitancy, which is what we continue to hear time and time again is the reason they lied about the safety signals they were seeing. Throughout the pandemic I always pushed early treatment. We have things in here where you were really concerned about remdesivir because it was untested, but hydroxychloroquine, yes, it was an approved drug. Maybe some safety issues, but we had a great deal of experience with it. All of a sudden you had the Surgisphere study which was retracted within two weeks because it was completely false, totally blew up the use of hydroxychloroquine.\2\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \2\ The Full Measure article on Hydroxychloroquine appears in the Appendix on page 462. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Then when it comes to ivermectin, which, by the way, because I was contacted by so many people I referred them to doctors that actually had the courage and capacity to treat vaccine-injured individuals, it works. I was going to ask you, were you involved in the FDA attack on ivermectin? You had an interview on Cable News Network (CNN), on August 29, 2021, where--again, I just don't want to take the time to find the exact quote, but you said there's no evidence that ivermectin is helpful. On that exact same day, and I have the studies right here, there was a website that was tracking the random controlled studies. Here they are, showing 60, 70 percent efficacy of ivermectin. The same thing you say there's no evidence. There was all kinds of evidence. Loved ones had to go to--hospitals had to sue hospitals. Would you try it? I would want to know, to what extent were you involved in sabotaging hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and did you do that because you knew the only way you could get Emergency Use Authorization for these drugs, these experimental gene therapy, was if there was no effective treatment to get the Emergency Use Authorization? So is that why you helped sabotage these cheap generic drugs in favor of remdesivir, which, by the way, nurses--are you aware of the fact that nurses called it ``run, death is near''? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Johnson. Let me end on this note, because this just came to light. We have 11 million pages of documents. We also have other people who were in the room. But you actually lied to your own diary. On March 27, 2020, you wrote in your diary,\1\ ``To my surprise yesterday the President of the United States (POTUS) sent a letter to Governors outlining a plan to reopen, county by county, while monitoring the spread of virus in low-risk counties. This was half-baked and never shown to Deb or I before it was sent out.'' --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The diary entry referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the Appendix on page 477. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have evidence that, in fact, you were fully aware of it, and certainly approved it, if not authored it. I would simply ask you, is that true? I mean, did you literally lie to your own diary? Did you know of that letter sent to Governors about reopening county-by-county? Again, Mr. Chairman, I would ask you to ask the witness to just answer that one simple question. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Paul. Senator Hassan. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN Senator Hassan. Thank you. Dr. Fauci, I want to start by thanking you for more than 50 years of service to this country at the National Institutes of Health. It is unfortunate that you have been put in the position that are you are in today. It must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you. It must be very frustrating for your attorneys to hear the Chair's mischaracterization of the legal issues and posture that impact your decisions at the witness table today. Meanwhile, I was going to ask you a series of questions about things that are relevant right now to the people of the United States about the State of public health in this country. Since President Trump took office in 2025, more than 4,500 cases of measles have been reported. That is more cases in the year and a half since Donald Trump has been President than were reported from 2000 to 2024, combined. Children are dying because there has been increased vaccine hesitancy, fueled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), and frankly, his entire administration. Thousands of people in the United States of America have been sickened by a food-borne parasite, and the outbreak is nowhere near under control, as staffing at the FDA and other critical public health entities has been slashed by Russell Vought and Elon Musk. Last year, the National Institutes of Health awarded I think it's 201 fewer grants compared to the previous year--207, I am corrected, compared to previous years. As those grants were either canceled or delayed, especially at the beginning of the Trump administration, I can tell you, I call tell my colleagues what the impact was on people in New Hampshire, on scientists in New Hampshire, on clinical trials in New Hampshire, where people's cancer treatment was interrupted because Elon Musk and Russell Vought know better, they say, than the people at NIH, about what to fund. Because they did some sort of word search, it seems, for some of the grants--and boy, oh boy, if you were studying rural health in New Hampshire and trying to understand how to better engage people who need health care in rural America, that was off the table. America is losing researchers and scientists to other countries because researchers and scientists, highly trained, highly qualified, invested in often by the American taxpayer, are finding the hostility from this Administration so strong that it interferes with their science, and they want to pursue science, wherever that science takes them. I also sit on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. We have had a number of hearings with nominees recently to fill critical spots. One of those nominees is Dr. Erica Schwartz, a brilliant woman, medical degree, biomedical engineering degree. I think she also told us she has a law degree and a master's in public health. She was a two- star admiral in the United States Navy, an experienced doctor. Yet when I asked her if she would push back at Secretary Kennedy if he instructed her to suspend the promotion of the flu vaccine as he did at some point in the last few months-- there is an email to prove it--she could not answer that question. She either could not, would not, or had been bullied into evading a question about whether she, as the Director of CDC, would stand up to Secretary Kennedy, the most unqualified Secretary of Health and Human Services this country has ever seen, and more than unqualified, somebody who pursues conspiracy theories, degrades people with disabilities, and continues to promote disproved science. That is the State of health care and public health in this country right now, not to mention the trillion dollars or so of cuts to the Medicaid program that is decimating health care in my State and decimating it around the country, not to mention the refusal of my colleagues and this Administration to extend critical tax cuts for people who are trying to afford insurance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). I just was at one of my community health clinics and they are reporting fewer and fewer people coming in for care, disrupting care, because they can no longer afford health insurance. That is impacting, of course, the revenue stream at the community health clinic, their ability to hire and pay people, their ability to take care of their community. That is what I wish we were having hearings about, in this Committee and in the HELP Committee. That is what I wish we were trying to address in a bipartisan way. But instead, we are here in an attempt to entrap you, because you had a distinguished career, trying to put Americans' public health first. With that I yield. Chairman Paul. Senator Lankford. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Dr. Fauci, thanks for coming today. I know you are invoking your Fifth Amendment right, which you have the right to be able to do constitutionally, but thanks for coming and being a part of this. There are a lot of issues and a lot of questions that have come up, and hopefully in some day in the future we will be able to get all of this clear and be able to pull it together. There were over a million Americans that died from COVID. You know that well. You were tracking the numbers literally every single day, of those affected and those that died, from the earliest days. There were a lot of lessons that we have to learn from this, that we should put into history to be able to determine what happens in the future, how do we respond in the future, how do we deal with something like this again. It was uncharted territory for everyone. But I would tell you, countless families, including my own, watched a loved one die behind glass or through a screen, because we could not get access to them. Children could not get to school. People missed their prom or graduation ceremonies. There were lots of things that happened that dramatically changed the future of the country. The mental health issues that we have continued to deal with from the isolation have been profound. Even something as simple as children that wore masks or were around adults wearing masks for all that time are slower in learning language now because they could not watch someone's lips moving, so they are slower in that. Amazingly enough, churches and places of worship were forced to be closed down. There were even churches that met where the pastor preached in the parking lot and the congregants all met in their cars, with windows up, and police came and scattered them and said, ``You can't be here.'' The simple act of social distancing became an issue, as everyone guess what is the right distance to be away from someone else. Literacy rates have declined. All these things are results, not to mention the loss of lives and the health experiences that have been out there for many Americans. So there are legitimate questions. I wanted to be able to raise some of those, to be able to walk through some of this, because it has been very challenging. As we have gone through some of your notes and your diary and other things that are out there, we are trying to be able to pull bits and pieces of things to be able to learn lessons. On May 6, 2020, you wrote at that time, ``I had a conversation with Robert Redfield,'' who, as you know well, as then the Director of CDC, ``about the fact that greater than one million children worldwide have missed their measles vaccination because of the shutdown.'' You stated, ``This is terrible and needs to be addressed, since on that basis alone there would be far more excess deaths from measles among children than coronavirus deaths among children. I need to bring this up to the the task force (TF). Did you ever have an opportunity to bring up the potential of measles deaths among children and infection rate going around the world for measles based on the fact that so many children would not get their measles vaccine because of the shutdown? Dr. Fauci. I am sorry, Senator, but on the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Lankford. That is your right to do. One of the big issues really coming up is on the lab issue. This was greatly discussed about whether this came from a lab or whether this came from nature. There are obvious issues and differences between the two, to be able to know this. You have had a lot of conversations on this. Scientists around the world were in conversation on this. There are different States that you even made in your private notes and in your public notes on it. on January 26, 2020, this is before we had even our first tragic death of coronavirus in the United States, you write, ``It how appears, using every data, that the genomic data, the first infection was in early December, and was not connected to the market,'' which was the big rumor that was out there, this wet market in China. ``We know the market was not the source. It was the amplifier.'' On January 31st you wrote about a phone call. You wrote, ``The people on the phone felt the mutations in a furin cleavage site of the spike protein could not have occurred naturally since it would require an evolutionary jump that they found nowhere in bat isolates. They bring up the possibility this could have been deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or deliberately released by a crazy person in a lab, the former being the most likely.'' On February 1st, same year, 2020. This is, again, still before our first death. ``There was not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion. Ron said he was sure that this could occur naturally and we should not waste our time and divert our efforts to pursue this. This is expected of him since he was the original gain-of-function person with Yoshi. Also Christian was withdrawn. The rest felt deliberate insertion was possible, and given the fact that Dr. Zhengli Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in gain- of-function in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human H2 receptor, we could not let this go.'' That is a remarkable statement from February 1, 2020, when there had not even been the first death here, but we knew something was moving. You knew well that something was moving. You identified, February 1st, before any of us had even heard of the Wuhan lab, not only the Wuhan lab in the conversation but literally the scientist that you named in your own notes, the lead scientist that was there. It is interesting to me on that, and the questions I was going to ask you was just your background and knowledge about the Wuhan lab and Dr. Shi and all the details. I am aware of where you have been on trying to be able to plead your Fifth Amendment right, which is your right to be able to do. But I also wanted to be able to find out some facts to be able to help us for the future on this. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in May 2020, put out a classified document that has only been recently unclassified on this, that has this statement: ``We assess all the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory-modified coronavirus, specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors, were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid to late 2019.'' Now, the question that I had for you is this. This is May 27, 2020. This is the report that most people will see is this. I have clearance--I serve on the Intelligence Committee--I have actually read this complete document unredacted.\1\ My concern is were you given the ability to see this document unredacted, based on your position? Were you able to see this and to be able to get this information? I could. I could see it, and I know what is here. Everybody else just has their conclusion at the beginning of it, not this. My question to you was going to be did you have access? Because it is important for the future that people in your position do have access to this kind of information and insight? Is there any way you could answer that question? Were you able to get access to this data? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The document referenced by Senator Lankford appears in the Appendix on page 1241. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Lankford. You wrote on January 26, 2020, ``We should be allowed to send our CDC epidemiologists to China to work with them, so they could see the data firsthand.'' You also wrote, February 12, 2020 that you had great concerns about the World Health Organization (WHO) because it depends greatly on China, and as you stated, often bows to them. This is a really important issue that we have to resolve for the future. It is not just our cooperation with Chinese scientists. It's our acknowledgement that China covered up their data, would not allow our scientists to be able to come in. They cleaned up the wet market. They cleaned up the other areas. They would not allow you to get access to all the other scientists who were there, including their health records, what happened to them, or even all the sequencing that they had done in advance. For the future of our research and our cooperation with any scientist around the world, I think it is really important that we resolve, if we are going to fund research and cooperate with you, we have to have certain things from you. If things go sideways, we have to have access to all information and all places. You were nothing not only that China was affecting the World Health Organization and that China was bending them to their will, so the World Health Organization was putting out data that you saw, at least, at that point, as being from a Chinese perspective covering up what was going on, but you also noted, we weren't able to get access to all this information. We have to be able to figure this out for the future, to be able to make sure that research that is done, we have access to all information if something goes sideways at some point, which clearly it did at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That being, as was noted by many people, the only lab in the world that was doing research like this that had a lower standard of actually their security standards there than many other labs around the world, yet they were doing this very dangerous research. What can we gain and what advice could you give us to say in a future setting we have to make sure that we actually get information from people and we can be guaranteed that we are going to get that insight? Yes, sir. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Lankford. I yield back. Chairman Paul. Senator Blumenthal. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BLUMENTHAL Senator Blumenthal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the darkest days or times in our history. Hospitals were overflowing. Navy medical ships were docked in the Hudson River. Emergency rooms were forced into unprecedented triaging. During the worst week of the pandemic, which happens to have the last week of President Trump's first term, more than 25,000 Americans died of COVID-19. Easy to forget those dark days, but for the past 18 months, the Trump administration has been engaged in a campaign to rewrite this history, and today's proceeding, I fear, is part of that effort, one of the darkest days in our Senate's history. The Trump administration has launched a baseless set of smears against vaccines that helped pull us out of that public health crisis, vaccines that are undoubtedly President Trump's greatest accomplishment. It has slashed funding to local public health departments that were on the front lines of the pandemic, and those health care workers are heroes. It has disparaged those heroes as woke or wasteful. It has used a politicized Department of Justice (DOJ) to target the researchers who helped us track and understand the novel virus. Today's hearing is another page in that playbook, sadly, tragically. Dr. Fauci, you have spent five decades in public service, including nearly four decades in leadership at the National Institutes of Health, helping to conquer COVID-19, but also Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), swine flu, Zika, Ebola, and other epidemics, with real-life results saving human lives. Put aside all the flowery rhetoric that we hear in the U.S. Senate--Dr. Fauci has saved lives, as have public health officials in the United States and throughout the world. Today we are demeaning and degrading their lifesaving service. Republicans are eager to rebrand you as a villain in order to distract from their own failure to protect Americans from soaring health care costs. They have been rising astronomically in the last couple of years. From unsafe food, which has caused cyclospora to spread. And resurgent measles as a result of the anti-vaccine policy. This hearing is the culmination of a years-long crusade, which started more than six years ago when Dr. Fauci dared to contradict President Trump. The campaign to vilify you, Dr. Fauci, is just one part of this larger campaign against science and facts, a campaign that has made Americans less safe. It is shameful that in a country like ours, a dedicated public servant like Dr. Fauci has experienced persistent threats to his life since the pandemic because of the lies that are told about him. His attorney has been gagged, thrown out of this hearing room. But he has written a letter to the Chairman that is an explanation for the reasons why Dr. Fauci is, in fact, invoking his constitutional right. It is a right. I would ask that this letter from David Schertler and Danny Onorato be made a part of the record.\1\ Chairman Paul. Without objection. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The letter referenced by Senator Blumenthal appears in the Appendix on page 1232. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- His attorneys also issued a statement, within the last half hour, I believe, that sets forth, again, the reasons that he is here, to help protect his client's rights. I would ask that that statement be made part of the record,\2\ as well, Mr. Chairman. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \2\ The statement referenced by Senator Blumenthal appears in the Appendix on page 1230. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chairman Paul. Without objection. Senator Blumenthal. Let's be very clear. The Fifth Amendment is a right of everyone appearing before an authority like this one. It should be respected. The reason that Dr. Fauci has invoked it, in the words of his attorney, quote, ``During and after the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Fauci appeared at least a dozen times for congressional hearings in the Senate alone in answer to questions about the very issues on which you purport to seek information. He has been thoroughly transparent and consistent in providing factual information to the Congress, and he is deeply familiar with the processes and protocols of sharing information with the Legislative Branch.'' Then referring to the Chairman, ``This years-long public crusade against Dr. Fauci makes one thing clear. This is not a serious effort to seek information from Dr. Fauci, in a transcribed interview, for a valid legislative purpose. You are single-mindedly fixated on seeing Dr. Fauci prosecuted for imaginary crimes, and you are so invested in that outcome that you have created a personal brand around it.'' Those are the words of his attorney, and he cites, as well, the statements of the Chairman, which indicate a clear intent that the result of this proceeding be a prosecution. Quote, ``The power of some of us must be used for good, like putting Fauci in jail.'' That is from December 23, 2025. ``I want to give him a subpoena and a jail cell,'' also from December 2025. The first was 2024. Those kinds of statements by the Chairman of a committee in tweets certainly provide a well-founded fear that the proceeding underway is simply an effort to trap Dr. Fauci in some kind of criminal wrongdoing. That is not the purpose of a congressional hearing, not the valid purpose of a congressional hearing. During some of the dark days in this body, under Senator Joe McCarthy, it became standard operating procedure (SOP) to seek that kind of prosecutorial objective. We should not be part of a rerun of that kind of effort. This attempt to rebrand one of the most challenging times in our Nation's history is a short-sighted act of desperation that will leave us less prepared for the next pandemic. It is an insult to the memory of more than one million Americans who died from COVID-19. If there are valid scientific questions about the origins of this pandemic, COVID-19, about the kinds of steps that we are taking to counter it, about the need for more preparation, they should certainly be addressed. But not in a show trial, not as part of a continuing vendetta against a single individual. Unfortunately, I fear that is what we are seeing today. America deserves better. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Paul. In no courtroom in America can you have your witness plead the Fifth Amendment and then your attorney gets to testify. That is what that letter is. The attorney is complaining and testifying, saying, ``He didn't do it. The prosecution is unfair.'' You don't get to do that. That is one thing you give up. When you take the Fifth Amendment you say, ``I'm not going to testify. I'm not going to give you any information.'' You don't then get to put your lawyer forward to justify. He can do it in the press, but you can't come and testify. He was not invited to testify, and he was out of order, and it was appropriate to have him ejected. Senator Scott. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SCOTT Senator Scott. Chairman Paul, thank you for doing this. I know in my State people have been asking questions about Dr. Fauci for years. Dr. Fauci, your entries made clear that you love being a hero, a celebrity, and having the eyes of the world upon you. You loved every newspaper profile, every photo shoot, every fancy dinner with the elites. To many Americans who lost family members, who lost trust in our Federal Government, you are not a hero. Unfortunately, you are a villain. You made yourself the story and abandoned the American people to serve your own ego. To begin, I would like to talk about your relationship with David Morens. He was the senior advisor in the NIAID, Office of the Director, your office for 16 years. He was your friend. He was a frequent guest at your house. You reportedly co-authored over 50 scientific articles with him. You turned to him first right after COVID-19 first occurred. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice charged him with conspiracy against the United States, in addition to other charges, as part of a conspiracy to conceal information and falsify records to suppress alternative theories about the origins of COVID-19. Now, you publicly kicked this man to the curb, saying, ``Dr. Morens was not an advisor to me on Institute policy or other substantive issues.'' So let's start with the use of personal Gmail accounts and David Morens relationship with Peter Daszak. David Morens tells Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, and you have this in front of you--it is Exhibit 1,\1\ and it is already in the record as part of this--it says, quote, ``P.S. I forgot to say that there is no worry about FOIA. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.'' --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The exhibit referenced by Senator Scott appears in the Appendix on page 1250. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Fauci, did Dr. Morens' relationship with Peter Daszak concern you? Yes or no. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did David Morens ever bring documents to your house? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did you ever receive a text about your work at NIAID to your personal cellphone? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did any texts about your work at NIAID that went to your personal cellphone ever become part of Federal records? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did you maintain a personal email account while serving as Director? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did you ever receive work-related communications on that Gmail account from David Morens? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did you preserve any work-related communications on that Gmail account from David Morens? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did David Morens ever provide you with documents outside of those two ways that would violate NIH policy for FOIA compliance? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Now let's look at two other communications. You emailed David Morens on January 26, 2020, ``It is important that I speak with you tonight. Please call me at home.'' This is part of Exhibit 2 that you have in front of you. This email is sent the same day, the exact same day you write in an internal document, ``Now we know the market was not the source. It was the amplifier.'' Would you call the origins of COVID-19 a substantive issue? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did you discuss COVID-19 origins with David Morens on this phone call? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Now let's take a closer look at the last time you testified before Congress. This is part of what you have in front of you as Exhibit 4, which is part of the record. In June 2024, you testified that Dr. Morens, ``was not an advisor to me on Institute policy or other substantive issues. Furthermore, his office is located in a different building from that of the NIAID Director.'' Is that still your testimony today? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. So today under oath your testimony remains that Dr. Morens was not an advisor to you on Institute policy or substantive matters. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. I have Exhibit 5, which you have in front of you. On October 24, 2021, David Morens texted you to provide information about an advocate for the controversial EcoHealth Alliance grant. You thank him and tell him you will check the information. Would you agree that this shows an advisory relationship between David Morens and yourself? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Would you agree that you two were discussing a substantive issue? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. If documentary evidence establishes that Dr. Morens advised you regarding EcoHealth Alliance, COVID origins, or grant policy, then your June 2024 testimony would have been inaccurate. Correct? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Is there any document in your possession today that would contradict your prior congressional testimony? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Have you deleted, destroyed, or instructed anyone to destroy records after learning Congress was investigating these matters? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Are you aware of anyone who did? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. As you know, Dr. Morens now faces charges related to destroying records while you distanced yourself from him. Is that fair to a decades-long friend? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. When is the last time you spoke to him? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. In hindsight, are you disappointed in how you handled COVID? Do you have any regrets? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Dr. Fauci, I want to close with this. Here is how you impacted my family and people close to me. I have daughters with children. You cannot imagine the questions they had around vaccines for their kids and themselves, and the pressure, the unbelievable pressure to make the right decision for their health. I can tell you pregnant women who worked with me were so scared because every time they went to the doctor they were told something different about taking the vaccine, and you caused this. Imagine being a mom trying to protect their kids or an expectant mother trying to figure out what to do? Every three weeks a doctor tells you a new set of guidance on a vaccine. The haphazard information you released and pushed on the American people, with little research, is appalling, and why there is so much distrust in our institutions today. That trust is crucial to public health, and you, more than any person or event in my lifetime, have destroyed that trust for millions of Americans. You lied to hundreds of millions of people amid the worst public health crisis in a century. You failed to follow your own guidance. You forced people to watch their loved ones die alone over the phone. It is disgusting. You destroyed the Federal Government's credibility when it comes to public health. We have entire generations of Americans who rightfully so do not trust our institution to keep people safe because of you. This has destroyed decades of progress and lifetimes of work because you wanted to fuel your own ego and be the center of attention. What would you do differently, knowing what you know today, Dr. Fauci? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. All of the evidence is right here and you still cannot bring yourself to tell the truth or apologize because you received an autopen pardon from a staffer in the Biden White House. If we have another pandemic tomorrow, millions could die because of what you did, what you did to make Americans lose trust in their government when it comes to medicine and health care. How many families have you apologized to, who had to watch their loved ones die alone? You breached public trust and now you are hiding behind a fraudulent pardon. Your legacy will not be as a man who has saved America from COVID but as a man who destroyed the public trust in America's public health institutions in exchange for five minutes of fame. This is how history will remember you. I yield back. Chairman Paul. Senator Kim. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR KIM Senator Kim. Thank you, Dr. Fauci, for coming out in front of this Committee. I know it is not what you would want. It is not what you deserve. I just want to say, and start by just saying thank you to you for your service to this Nation. I did not know much about you prior to the pandemic. I came to learn about you as many Americans did, but I also had the opportunity to talk to you and engage with you as someone who is a member of the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis over in the House of Representative. When I learned about your background, 38 years as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, appointed by President Reagan, served under seven Presidents, four Republicans and three Democrats, I admire that greatly. I myself had a chance to serve in the Executive Branch, serve in government under both a Republican President and a Democratic President. I believe that we need more of that, more of that type of work, a place where we can understand our jobs not as coming from a place of partisanship and politics but that of just public service. Right now I feel the hyper-partisanship growing in this country in dangerous ways. I feel it much more present here on the Hill than I did back when I served as a nonpartisan career public servant at the State Department. I worry about it. I worry about what kind of trajectory we are on as a country and what this causes when it comes next for public service and those willing to step up for our Nation. It is not just in the attacks, but we see it brought out with the cuts to funding, to the firing of Federal workers, to the demonization of their motivations, people calling our public servants ``criminals,'' thinking that they are there solely to undermine others that are trying to engage. I look at it right now. It is not just that the people are being attacked, our public servants being attacked, but that it is undermining the very nature of the work of governance. These cuts to HHS funding, to NIH funding, to the grants, cuts to the researchers doing the critical work to find cures and medicines. These firings and these cuts, they are creating a chilling effect, honestly, a chilling effect for the next generation of people who might consider stepping up to serve our Nation, to be the next generation of researchers, who now are wondering whether or not this is the right thing for them to do at a time when they see some of their colleagues or those that they looked up to being attacked, their funding being cut. Researchers that I talked to, who are now either leaving the country or considering leaving the country to do their work, because of the sheer unpredictability of America, that this Nation so great, so powerful, has now been crippled with this sense of unpredictability and unreliability. That is not the type of country that I hope we strive to be. I raise this because these attacks upon Dr. Fauci, it is not just about him. It is sending signals to others, others who are thinking about serving our country, our scientists, our doctors, our health care professionals, our researchers, trying to show to them that if you do not get in line with the politics that you will also potentially be subject to attacks. From the work that he has done from HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) to Ebola to COVID, we have seen him try to engage in these crises. They are not easy, especially when it is a novel disease, when you do not know what comes next. A lot of unknowns. Having to make decisions without the full breadth of knowledge we always wish we had in hindsight. But there is nothing perfect, no perfect clarity when it comes to pandemics, when it comes to crises. I worked in national security in wars and crises. I made judgment calls, gave my best advice to generals, to Ambassadors, even to a President. Did I get it all right? No. Did I do my best? I did everything I thought I could with the information that I had. The public servants, they do this work because they love this country and that they strive to improve it. It is not an easy job, but it is because there is so much at stake in our country. But these public servants do it because they are in the arena. I just want to end by just reading a portion of this, because I think it is important as we are thinking about how to be able to treat public servants to this country, to think through this. In the words of Teddy Roosevelt saying, ``It is not the critic who counts. It is not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.'' Thank you for your service, Dr. Fauci. I yield back. Chairman Paul. Senator Hawley. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Nothing says honesty like taking the Fifth, huh, Doc? Let's try something. What day of the week is it today? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. What color tie are you wearing? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. What color is the carpet in front of you? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. Let's just get one thing straight. You do not have any rights under the Fifth Amendment, because you have been pardoned, as you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century or more, Brown v. Walker, 1896, when he has been pardoned he may not stand upon his privilege. You know that. Your lawyer is sitting behind you, now shifting nervously in their chairs. They know it. This is not about the Constitution. This is not about the law. This is about contempt, contempt for this body and contempt for the American people. But I think I know why you are doing it. It is because you do not want to answer questions. It is because you did all kinds of terrible things. It is because during the pandemic you got rich, didn't you? You got rich while people were dying, hundreds of thousands of Americans, over a million in the end, and you were getting rich. Not only were you doing that, you were using Federal employees, with taxpayer money, to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you, personally, cash prizes, totaling over a million dollars. You did all of that during the pandemic, didn't you? That is a question. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. Do you remember Greg Folkers? Who was that? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. Your chief of staff is the answer. Do you remember Patricia Conrad? Who was that? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. She was your personal assistant. What were these individuals doing in the depth of the pandemic, in November 2020, when millions of Americans were suffering from COVID? What were they doing? I tell you what they were doing. Folkers was, on your behalf, soliciting and gathering information for a cash award.\1\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The chart referenced by Senator Hawley appears in the Appendix on page 65. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's look at it. We have his email right here, right over my shoulder. Folkers says, ``I'm working on this nomination for the Dan David Award for Fauci. We need to beef up the COVID part. Do you have language in the can that you can share that delineates how we responded in new ways to COVID?'' He send this to multiple Federal employees. What was the Dan David Award? Do you remember, Doc? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. It was a $900,000 cash award, $900,000 cash award. And he got it, because he used Federal employees to get it. This was not the only award, was it, Dr. Fauci? In fact, you applied for and received at least eight other Federal cash prizes, on Federal time, using Federal employees and Federal resources. Here they are over my shoulder. Besides the Dan David award you have the Partnership for Public Service (PPS). You have the Adelson Prize. You have the Smithsonian Award. You have the National Academy of Medicine Award. You have the CDC Foundation. In fact, you turned your staff into a full-time application machine. You actually wrote to people and said, ``Do you think maybe I would qualify?'' And you got cash for all of this. It was not just one or two employees, was it? In fact, you used eight separate Federal employees, on Federal time, using Federal resources, to solicit cash awards. Isn't that true? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. Here they are right over my shoulder. Here is all of them, the people that you used, Federal employees, so that you could go and get cash money. The most hilarious part is that you were not content to even dragoon them into applying for all of these cash awards. You then had them go out to the ethics agencies and ethics watchdogs and demand that you be able to get the money. That is right. We have it in your emails. Your staff and employees, on Federal time, using Federal resources, being paid with Federal dollars, are soliciting cash for you, and then they are turning around and saying to the agency, ``We don't want just an answer. We want to get to yes, because Fauci wants the money. He wants it. We want to get to yes, and yes takes time.'' This is your chief of staff again, using Federal email to pressure the agency's own ethics people, so that you could get money, so that you could get rich. It violated the law, didn't it, Dr. Fauci? Didn't it? It violated the law, didn't it? Dr. Fauci. Is that a question? Senator Hawley. It is a question. You can answer. Go ahead. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. Federal law, as you very well know, prohibits the solicitation of cash awards or other personal benefits for Federal employees, and it certainly prohibits using your own employees to do this. 5 CFR 2635.205(b), it says it right there in black and white, you cannot use Federal resources, Federal dollars, Federal employees, Federal offices, Federal email, Federal time to solicit cash awards, and you did all of it. The worst part is, thousands of people were dying while you were doing It. You were supposed to be the Nation's doctor, and you are playing one on TV, but this is what you were doing with your time. Isn't that true? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. Yes, I can see why. I can certainly see why. You know what I cannot quite figure out is why you were so obsessed with it, because you were already rich. I mean, your scheme worked here. I mean, your net worth now is north of $12 million. You got over a million dollars in cash awards during COVID, during a 12-month, 24-month span during COVID. A million bucks you knocked down in cash money, using Federal resources. Now you are worth more than $12 million. You have a pension that in its first year paid out north of $400,000 a year. A million people dead. You are getting rich. A million people dead. You are using Federal employees to get cash awards for you. A million people dead, and you are here taking the Fifth, because you do not want to admit that what really happened in all that time was a multi-month, multi-year course of self- dealing. Isn't that true, Dr. Fauci? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Hawley. Yes, well, silence is admission. Here is the real thing. At the end of the day it was not just about the money, really, was it? It was really about a power trip. I mean, through all of this you want to be the most famous scientist in the world. You were so focused on getting every award and every drop of cash that you could, all because you wanted to be on TV, you wanted to be the Sun God of Science, you wanted to be the guy who was in charge of it all, you wanted to lambast Trump, you wanted to make sure that nobody else stole your spotlight. You wanted to be the guy. You had time to sit for In Style magazine. Here is what you were doing with your time. You could sit for In Style magazine, but you cannot answer questions to the American people. You could sit for In Style magazine, but you are here taking the Fifth. You could sit for In Style magazine and get a million bucks in cash awards, but now the cat's got your tongue. I bet he does. I tell you what. Here is my conclusion from all of this. This was really all about you the whole time. Somewhere along the way you lost your way. You may have been a good public servant at one time. I don't know. But I can tell you from reading your emails now, from looking at what you did, how you used your employees, somewhere along the line it became all about you. You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar. You have lied to the American people, and you have lied to this body. You have disgraced your profession by doing it. You called yourself the most famous scientist in the world. You have done more to harm science than anybody in my lifetime, and I hope you will go home and write that in your diary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Paul. Senator Fetterman. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR FETTERMAN Senator Fetterman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Fauci, I am not here to perhaps attack you or defend or anything. It is really just more, honestly, I just want to acknowledge, I have had members of my family die from COVID, and now I also grieve for people that I have met that have lost their business through the pandemic, and they will never be the same. During the pandemic I was the Lieutenant Governor, so we were in the middle of all of that maelstrom, trying to find the right balance between protect life and protect the economics for all of it. I am not sure if we got it all right or wrong, but without a doubt I continue to question myself. One, it is not about much more your regrets, but I have one, and that is early on that there was the theory that the virus could have emerged from the lab, and early on that became like a right-wing kind of theory, and I thought it seemed to make sense. Now, there was a really advanced lab that was close by, and then you have this unknown virus out. But that became a very partisan thing, and it seems now it is more and more emerging theory that that would have come from the lab. Now, I hope, I think that the next time our Nation is facing something like this we are not becoming, as I might have been, blinded by the partisan idea that maybe the truth might come from a side that is different than you are. But I think we should really be willing to pursue truth, no matter where that may have emerged after all of that. I now cede the remaining back to the Chair. Thank you. Chairman Paul. Senator Moreno. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MORENO Senator Moreno. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will echo Senator Johnson's comments about your opening statement, Mr. Chairman. I think it was dead on, very well done. Mr. Fauci, do you know who David Schertler is? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. What does the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution say? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. No. I am just asking you what it says. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. I am going to give the Constitution to my aide. He will bring it over to you so you can have it for future reference. I think it something that every American should know what the Constitution says. Do you know who wrote the Fifth Amendment? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. So you are invoking a right that you do not know who wrote it or what it says. Is that correct? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. Wow. Let me tell you who David Schertler is, for the audience, because he was ejected by the Chairman. He is a high-profile criminal attorney. He has represented some really great people, like Senator Bob Menendez. Maybe that is somebody who my Democrat colleagues may remember, took gold bars as bribes from the Egyptians. There is an article here in the Washington Free Beacon that talks about why you would hire a guy like David Schertler. The comment is, ``If you are in deep shit, that is who you call.'' Do you feel like you are in deep shit? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. Clearly what you think today is that somehow you are above reproach. Somehow you feel like you don't need to be treated like a normal American. Can you do me a favor, in the audience, and stand up if during the time of the COVID pandemic you were called a racist for calling the virus the ``Wuhan virus'' or the ``China virus,'' if thought the six- foot rule was total crap, if you thought the vaccine was not something that you should take, if you thought it was outrageous the way the mask policy was rolled out, if you were fired from your job for not taking that vaccine, including members of the military, if you thought closing schools was catastrophically stupid, and that you thought that during these times, saying these things made you somehow a lesser human being? Dr. Fauci, could you just turn around and look at the people behind you? You are not willing to do that? It is not a question, not a question. To your lawyers, it is not a question. It is a request. All you have to do is look up from your lawyers, and look at the people who were absolutely shamed for saying what we know now to be the truth. You can't even look at them? That is a question. Are you able to look at them? You can sit down, in the audience. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. There was a mom in Ohio during the depth of the coronavirus pandemic. She decided to go to a high school football game for her son. They had not been out much. The kids had been learning at school, and then the school got shut down. They had not really gotten much out of that education, as any parent knew that remote learning was no learning at all. It was a Friday night. Her son wanted to go watch a buddy go play football. So they went to the stadium. They sat alone, far from everybody else, just a mom, a dad, a few kids. They didn't feel they needed to wear masks, because it was stupid, because they were outside, they all lived together, they are not near anybody. Dr. Fauci, do you know what happened to that mom and that family? That is a question. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. They were dragged out of that stadium and arrested. Those policies were put in place because you had moronic politicians that listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people. That is you. Your advice to communities like that, to idiotic politicians who enforced those rules, arrested that mom for watching a football game with her own family, outside. When that story broke, I said to myself, I cannot stand idly on the side and watch this happening. It was about six years ago today that I decided I am going to give up my businesses, sell them all, run for office, run for the U.S. Senate. Here I am, sitting in front of you, six years later, saying, ``Who the fuck do you think you were for doing that?'' It is a total disgrace what you did to this country. If my Democrat colleagues are standing there defending you, I hope the voters of the United States of America (USA) watch the clips of every one of you doting on a guy who was more interested in being a celebrity than saving American people. I will make it my mission to make certain that every single one of those Democrats who did that will see that clip over and over and over again, because there is no defense of what you did. You may have had a 50-plus year legacy of public service, but it ends in total and complete disgrace. Let me ask you, an opportunity to answer one question. Will you apologize, just apologize, to the people who you harmed through your actions? Do you have the dignity to just say you are sorry? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. You won't apologize to the military members who Joe Biden summarily dismissed from the military for not taking a vaccine? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. Will you apologize to the business owners that lost their business, shattered their lives, and they will never recover? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. Will you apologize to the moms who had to force their infant children, two, three, four-year-olds to put masks on, and what that did and how that traumatized those kids? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. Will you apologize to the family members of the people who died because they took your advice and not only got the first vaccine but the five, six other boosters, that they did not need? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. Will you apologize that that mom from Ohio for being arrested for watching a football game with her family? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moreno. So you did not know who wrote the Fifth Amendment. It is James Madison. Lived in this town. I could only wonder what he would think of somebody like you, invoking his writings to shield culpability for the actions that you took. It is no secret why you have to hire the biggest dirtbag attorney on the planet, because of what you did. I hope you are paying him well. I hope that, one way or the other, somewhere, sometime, you answer for your crimes. Chairman Paul. Senator Ernst. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ERNST Senator Ernst. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing today. Dr. Fauci, Americans have not forgotten the tragic stories of people who lost loved ones during COVID and those that were denied a chance to say goodbye to their family members that were in hospitals or residing in nursing homes, because of the COVID-19 protocols. Americans have not forgotten the mandates, the adverse reactions to vaccines, the government misinformation, social media censorship, hotlines to tattle on their neighbors, the forced school closures, the tragic rise in suicides, or those businesses that were forced to close during lockdowns.\1\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The chart submitted by Senator Ernst appears in the Appendix on page 70. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Americans have not forgotten the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by taxpayers for COVID relief, stolen by fraudsters who bought Rolls-Royces and yachts. These were taxpayer dollars. Americans have lost trust in science and government after the COVID response, trust which will be incredibly difficult for us to gain back. Dr. Fauci, you have said that the science was evolving and that your recommendations evolved with it. But Americans remember you as the public face of the coronavirus response. As one of the Nation's most trusted voices, you urged policies you said were absolutely necessary, even when those policies came at an enormous human and economic cost. Americans deserve answers about reports that you may have worked with others to pressure the President into adopting the ``slow the spread'' strategy and why you later sought an unconditional pardon for crimes you may have committed, dating back to 2014. Dr. Fauci, in 2022, you had a taxpayer-funded salary of $480,000 a year. You were, in fact, the highest-paid Federal employee in the entire Federal Government, even making more than the NIH Director and the President of the United States. According to now public documents, that was due, in large part, to your work on biodefense. Unreported is how NIAID spent over $1 billion from 2009 to 2026, in biodefense and influenza Federal contracts and subcontracts. My office uncovered records on USAspending.gov, that show from 2015 to 2020, NIAID paid out $515,418 in subcontracts to Harbin Veterinary Institute in Harbin, China, including $100,000 a few days after it opened a BSL-4 biolab in 2018. That very same institute was criticized for doing gain-of- function bird flu research in 2013, and yet you were funding them for years after that, sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to China. These contracts, which we also traced to NIAID, show U.S. taxpayers funded gain-of-function researchers in the Netherlands and in Wisconsin, funding the same folks whose controversial work led President Obama to pause this exact type of dangerous pandemic research. Dr. Fauci, did you know that the NIH's billion-dollar Sears contract programs were funding gain-of-function researcher in China, the United States and in the Netherlands? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Ernst. Dr. Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx wrote in her book that you and President Obama's former CDC Director were at a Saturday, March 14, 2020, meeting at her home, two days before the President announced his 15 Days to Slow the Spread effort. Your now-released diary said the meeting was a week before that. Dr. Birx said you all were trying to trap the President into having no other options. She wrote your plan was to, ``block any of the President's escape routes'' so, ``he would have no choice but to agree to our flatten-the-curve measures.''\1\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The book citation referenced by Senator Ernst appears in the Appendix on page 71. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes or no, Dr. Fauci. Did you try to block or trap President Trump into the Slow the Spread, flatten-the-curve measures in March 2020? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Ernst. When the COVID-19 virus broke out in Wuhan, China, you, Dr. Fauci, knew pretty much right away that NIH had funded Chinese labs, including those doing coronavirus research. There is email traffic from early January 2020, where your staff was flagging for you that NIH funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab through EcoHealth Alliance, yet few Americans knew we funded the Wuhan because the funding went through a sub-award and was not reported to the public database, like USAspending.gov, as it should have been. Also, EcoHealth violated Federal law by failing to report, in its research papers, how much taxpayer funding it spent on that research. At my request, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) helped track down that $1.4 million of U.S. taxpayer money that was sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, both by you, Dr. Fauci, and through USAID. But first it passed through EcoHealth Alliance, which I helped to get defunded through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Dr. Fauci, did you intentionally use sub-award funding to obscure NIH funding of Chinese biolabs and coronavirus research? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Ernst. NIAID awarded multimillion-dollar grants to a number of scientists shortly after they wrote publicly in the Proximal Origins paper that the COVID virus likely came from nature. Though documents Chairman Paul released last week show in private those same scientists were much more open to the virus being from a lab. In 2023, Representative Jordan insinuated that you basically gave a $9 million bribe in the form of an NIH grant to NIH-funded virologists to say the virus likely was from nature. Dr. Fauci, yes or no. Did you reward the Proximal Origin authors by giving them NIAID grants or contracts? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Ernst. Dr. Fauci, we have learned that U.S. coronavirus researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) shipped, ``humanized or transgenic mice to China by around 2017 for use in their dangerous coronavirus work.'' Under your NIAID coronavirus, researchers also used aborted baby body parts in mice research, and taxpayers paid for them to do that. NIH-funded coronavirus researcher Dr. Ralph Baric and his colleagues at UNC put parts of livers, thymuses, and human fetal lung that they got from aborted, almost five-month- old human babies. They put those parts in their research mice. They disgustingly named them BLTL mice, and wrote they had created a, ``sandwich'' of aborted body parts in the mice. Get it, folks? BLT. A BLT sandwich. Your Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) lab employees in Montana also ordered and used aborted baby body parts in their taxpayer-funded research, and emails show how they planned to use those mice for post-COVID work. NIH funded putting aborted babies' fingers and scalps off the heads of aborted babies and putting them into the backs of research mice. The scalps later grew fine baby hair in the mice. They even included those disgusting photos in their research paper that you funded. Not all of those were research on coronaviruses, but some were. Thankfully, the current NIH Director has said no more of this. Dr. Fauci, yes or no. Do you think that human aborted parts should be put into mice for coronavirus research? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Ernst. Mr. Chairman, would you direct the witness to answer the questions that we have been asking? Senator Johnson. He probably would if he was here. I can direct it, but I think we understand his answer. Senator Ernst. We do understand that Americans are asking for accountability, Dr. Fauci, and your silence is very telling. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Johnson [presiding.] Senator Moody. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MOODY Senator Moody. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know I am the most junior member of the Senate here, showing from where I sit. I just got here last year. Many of you may remember I was the Attorney General (AG) in Florida who fought back against the lockdowns, the school closures, the church closures, everything to embrace sanity and science. We fought back. We got ridiculed for it. We did not just call people names. We actually empaneled a grand jury, of people of all walks of life, all political persuasions. So that is how I came here, fighting for a free State amongst States that had locked their own people down. We are now called the Free State of Florida, and I believe our responsibility here is to make sure that government remembers the people are our bosses, that we report to them, that we are accountable to them. Government should not operate for itself. Government operates on behalf of and for the American people. Any time we get close to reporting back to our bosses about what government has done or how it has been abused or how individuals who are employed by the government had acted in their own self-interest or against the interests of the American people, every time we get close, if we start uncovering outrageous fraud, we will have a hearing, and the tactics have been to not show up. So you will have all of us over here trying to drill down on why we have been giving money that actually works against American citizens, and no one shows up. Today, there seems to be a different tactic. Today, we have Democrats showing up and trying to spin why we should not even be having this hearing, to report back to our bosses. As one said, ``Today's hearing does damage. It will deter others from public service.'' Another said, ``This hearing is designed to entrap you.'' One fell all over himself flattering you, thank you for your service multiple times, quoting Man in the Arena. Another said that ``we are demeaning first responders, and today is a sad play in a repeated playbook.'' I mean, all of their time was used on why we should not be having the hearing, to report back to our bosses, and give the people accountability. I would like to talk about that, because I believe that the trust the American people place in our public health institutions, and what happened to that trust during COVID, is important, because in a public health emergency they are asked to make extraordinary sacrifices, based on advice given to them by the government that are supposed to be working for them. For that system to work, the public has to be able to trust the people giving them instructions. That trust depends on candor. Would you agree with that, Dr. Fauci? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. When the evidence is uncertain, officials need to say so, and recommendations are based on assumptions rather than hard data. They need to say so. When they get something wrong, they need to own it. When the trust is lost and the consequences extend far beyond any single pandemic, the next time public health officials genuinely need Americans to listen, millions of people may simply ignore them, or not believe them. Dr. Fauci, you were undeniably the face of the Federal Government's COVID response. You said so yourself in your diary. You said, ``It's not hyperbole to say I have become the most famous and talked about person in the country.'' I want to understand how we got here. Let's start at the beginning. On March 8, 2020, you appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss the spread of COVID-19. You were specifically asked to clear up the confusion and misinformation surrounding masks. You told the American people, ``Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with a mask.'' The interviewer immediately stopped you and said, ``Are you sure of it, because people are listening really closely to this.'' Instead of walking back or qualifying your statement in any way, you doubled down. ``There's no reason to be walking around with a mask.'' When you are in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask it might make people feel a little better. It might even block a droplet. But it's not providing the perfect protection that people think it is. Often there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with their mask. They keep touching their face. Just a few weeks later the CDC released its guidance, recommending that Americans wear masks in public. You were asked to explain your original recommendation. You emphasized a very different consideration. You said, ``Well, back then the critical issue was to save the masks for the people who really needed them, because it was felt there was a shortage of masks.'' I want everybody to sit with that. The critical issue driving your initial recommendation to the American public was scarcity, logistics, not medical evidence. So when you told the American people there was no reason to wear a mask, what was your principal objective, giving them an honest assessment of the medical evidence or discouraging them from consuming a scarce supply of masks? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of a broader pattern. Let's talk about the six-foot distancing rule. On April 5, 2020, in an interview on Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), said, ``Every time I get to that podium in the White House briefing room I always essentially plead with people, 'Please take a look at those very simple guidelines of physical separation,' and they are very clear. Physically separate six feet away.'' Yet when Congress finally asked you, in 2024, what science supported that evidence, six- foot distance rule for COVID, you admitted you were not aware of any studies supporting it. Incredibly, you said the six-foot rule sort of just appeared, and described it as an empiric decision that wasn't based on data. That rule had real consequences. Schools did not open back up. Businesses did not open back up. Churches did not open back up. I could go on and on and on. Americans were kept physically separated from one another during the most difficult moments of their lives. Many lost loved ones during that time. Dr. Fauci, did you have any evidence to support a six-foot separation rule when you gave that advice to Americans? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. All right. Let's look at the lockdowns then. By 2022, the consequences of prolonged COVID lockdowns on our children were clear, from delayed development to social isolation, which is probably why you were asked in July 2022 whether you would recommend locking down schools again, and you said, ``First of all, I didn't recommend locking anything down.'' But now we have your diary, and it tells a very different story from the one you told the public. I will quote, ``I spoke with Bill Di Blasio, the mayor of New York City (NYC), and convinced him, based on what I was saying publicly in my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools. He had already decided, based on what I was saying on TV. I went on to tell him he should close the bars and restaurants in NYC, and he said he would do this, based on my recommendation.'' You even said that you told the President we should shut the whole country down. Dr. Fauci, how do you square telling the American people publicly that you did not recommend locking anything down, with our own diary entry, kept on Federal Government equipment, saying that your recommendation is what convinced the mayor and the President to lock things down? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. Now I just want to make clear that when, in Florida, we were pleading with people to give us advice based on scientific evidence, that we were getting these conflicting statement by you that did not match scientific data. In fact, when we empaneled a grand jury, the grand jury's conclusion, not surprising to anyone--and by the way, we are still the only State to have empaneled a grand jury. I was the only Attorney General to do this. We did this in 2023--that conclusion was the lockdown, mask, and social distancing advice administered by Federal agencies and implemented by certain local, State, and Federal agencies was not based on the best available scientific data. In fact, many recommendations in their accompanying mandate departed significantly from available research. Again, people from all walks of life, all political persuasions, that is what they found. Yet, during that time, while you were giving those statements, knowing there was no scientific basis for it, and we know now you knew it because we have your diary entries, you called the Governor that I worked with, to fight to keep Washington D.C. out of our State, so that we could indeed respect the rights of our citizens. You called our Governor, Governor DeSantis, and I am going to quote this so I get it right, right out of your journals, ``a total jerk,'' that he is ``a complete disgrace,'' that he ``is blocking local authorities from mandating masks in various locations, including schools.'' You were very concerned and upset that we were actively, and I am going to quote, ``criticizing you,'' and we talked to virtually every day about being wrong on everything. What is astounding is that you wrote you feared because of that, because we were questioning our government, because we were fighting back for the truth from our government, from scientifically based recommendations, because we were pushing for that, you said you feared that our democracy is in dire danger. Thank goodness we have people up here that I work with who understand our role, which is to report to our bosses, the people, because they are in charge. Calling for our government to be honest with us and transparent with us and accountable to us, that is a democracy. What you did is the opposite, and I cannot believe I have to explain this to someone who represented our government and some of the most important issues for so long. Before I conclude, if I can just put up our pardon.\1\ This is a pardon you have heard so much about. Dr. Fauci, the only other person that got a pardon like this, I believe, had a last name of Biden. This pardon goes back to, and if you will see, January 1, 2014. Did you talk to President Biden and ask for this pardon? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The pardon referenced by Senator Moody appears in the Appendix on page 72. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. Who did you talk to in the White House about this pardon? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. Did you specifically ask that it be dated back to the beginning of 2014? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. Did you do that so that you would be given immunity going back to the beginning of 2014? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. I am just very interested why it was this date. Did it have anything to do with the fact that 2014 was also the year that the NIAID or NIH began funding EcoHealth Alliances, understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence grant? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. This is the same grant that funded the work on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Millions of Americans are questioning what happened during COVID, why we were given misleading information, misleading advice, why you gave conflicting statements, based on, I guess, how you were feeling that day. Americans, rightfully--we lost over 1 million Americans--they should be insulted when the Democrats insult our Chair, that he is doing this because he is on an obsessive mission to go after one man. Could his obsessive mission be to find out why a million Americans died, and who might be responsible for that, and where that started? Could that be his mission, Dr. Fauci? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Moody. After everything we have just walked through, can you sit here today and tell the American people, our bosses, that you bear no responsibility for their collapse in trust of their government? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul [presiding.] Time is expired. We are going to do another quick round for those who remain, about five minutes. Any questions that have not come up that are pressing. Let's try not to re-go over territory that has already been done. I will begin by asking unanimous consent (UC) to insert into the record documents that show that the CIA transferred funds to NIAID through interagency agreement.\1\ Hearing no objection, so ordered. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The documents submitted by Senator Paul appears in the Appendix on page 96. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We had hoped to hear testimony from Anthony Fauci today. We haven't. But I think it is important that we do hear from him, so we will have a video we will play in a moment. For years, Anthony Fauci has been the public face of saying this, in all likelihood, came from nature. He kept saying, ``It's the marketplace. It's the marketplace. It's the marketplace.'' He has been saying that on television up until recently. But what we find is that what he was saying in public is different than what he was saying in private. In January, in private, he wrote, that ``It looks like the wet market was a superspreader event. It didn't originate there. We know that some of the earliest deaths and sickness came from somewhere else.'' But then for years and years we got dishonesty. So let's play the video so we can see a little juxtaposition of the problem we are dealing with. [Video plays.] So repeatedly he is saying in public something different than what he believed in private. Now, this is interesting because the first SARS outbreak in 2000-2003 was traced to a wet market, to animals there. But interestingly they had evidence. They had evidence that the animals had the disease. They also had evidence that the handlers had a disproportionately high number of antibodies to the disease. So there was evidence, and the evidence was presented. When this came out, the same thing happened again. They did look at the wet market. They looked at the wet market and tested, I think, 80,000 animals, and did not find any animals that had COVID-19. When they did find COVID-19 in trace samples there they found that the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or the ribonucleic acid (RNA) was consistent with human spread. This was known not later on. It did not take years. It was known in January 2020. Dr. Fauci says privately he knows it did not come from the wet market, but as you saw, those were over a multiyear period. One of the other discussions I have had with Dr. Fauci over the years is about natural immunity. Most infections you get a degree of immunity, not perfect. Some fairly perfect. Smallpox you just do not get again. George Washington knew this. He had his wife get vaccinated but he didn't because he had already had smallpox. But there is one particular story that a man came up to me who had lost his wife to COVID. He said, ``We all got it. We all got sick, and my wife ended up getting sick enough to go to the hospital. But they had recovered in two weeks. She was still alive two to three weeks later. We had all recovered, and they wouldn't let us be with her.'' To this day it is one of the saddest things and it's just, I think all of us should think about this. They were not allowed to visit their mom. He wasn't allowed to visit his wife in the hospital. But based on this misunderstanding of natural immunity, that for some reason two weeks later they were a problem. But this was all promulgated by you. We had the workers in the meat factories. They were essential. They had to keep working. Most of them got COVID. They got it within the first couple of weeks. Most of them were younger. The reassurance should have come from public health. The reassurance should have said, ``Congratulations. You have recovered.'' It also should be acknowledged, what is the No. 1 thing we can do if we get another pandemic, before we have a vaccine, before we have monoclonal antibodies? It would be to utilize natural immunity. Instead of the advice you were giving to Cuomo and others in New York that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, or tens of thousands of people, you could have been saying, ``Maybe the nurses taking care of the elderly should be people who are two weeks out from COVID infection.'' We could have used natural immunity as somewhat of a block or protection. Imperfect, but the only protection we had and the only thing we could have done. Instead, the nursing homes were seeded with people who had COVID. I think the discussion of natural immunity is one where there was not sufficient honestly, humility. There was not enough presentation to encourage people. That was the only encouraging thing we had for a while is you have got it. You are very, if not impossible, close to impossible chance that you will die if you get it again. Everybody could have been reassured. Nobody was reassured. It was like, well, we don't know. We just don't quite understand natural immunity. My favorite quote from that is from Martin Kulldorff from Harvard. You called him one of the people that you had to take down, the fringe epidemiologist, which I have never, ever heard a scientist call another scientist that. But he jokingly said, on Twitter, he said, ``Yes, we knew about natural immunity from 486 B.C., from the time of the Athenian Plague. We lost all knowledge of it in 2020.'' The good news it is slowly coming back 2024 to 2025. We are beginning to understand what natural immunity is again. Not something perfect, but a useful tool that could have been used, but also something that could have helped people by telling the public, ``My goodness, you are not going to die now. You have a chance.'' If you have it already and you are 85 years old and you are at risk for it and you are wanting to feed your wife, and they are telling you to wear four masks and not be around your wife when you have already had it, it made no sense. I visited with a man whose mom was 83, and she was dying from COVID. They go to the hospital in Orange County. They won't admit her to the hospital until she is vaccinated, because ``we have a policy that everybody in the hospital must be vaccinated.'' She's got COVID and they wanted to vaccinate her again. At one point in time the CDC understood this. They told people, ``Don't get vaccinated if you have had COVID within three months.'' Why? Because it may give you a heightened immune response when you have already got a heightened immune response. But giving a person very sick--and many of the people who died from COVID died from some of this storm of response, this immune storm--the answer would not be try to stir up their immune response more by giving them a vaccine. The answer was actually steroids. Good old-fashioned steroids, a 37 percent reduction in death. It turned out to be of way more value than remdesivir, way more valuable than any of the other treatments. But I don't remember ever hearing a complimentary word on natural immunity or steroids or anything else. I wish we could have done more today. I would have been willing to accept an apology today. I am sorry I made mistakes. We all made mistakes. At the time I thought the gain-of- function research, the risks of it were worth the benefits. But I have reassessed since 15 million people died. People say, well gosh, these things never happen. We know it happened in 1977. We know with 100 percent certainty a virus escaped. In 1977, there was something called the Russian flu. Nobody is exactly positive how it got out. But when they sequenced it they found out that a flu in 1977 had exactly the same RNA as a 1954 one that they had in a lab and that they created a vaccine for. In fact, it turns out anybody born before 1954 was immune, and the only people who got it were people who were born between 1954 and 1977. But it was identical. The genetic sequence was identical to this vaccine or the virus from 1954, and that does not happen because these respiratory viruses are always mutating. To be identical means it had to have leaked from the lab, proof positive that it had. So we know this happens. An author by the name of Young wrote a book and said there were 1,200 cases of significant accidents that have occurred. We knew all of this, and yet it was completely discounted because I think you were worried that if it was seen that you funded dangerous research that started the pandemic you would get blamed. It was a concerted effort. It was not just you. It was anybody associated with the funding, decided we needed to protect ourselves. Senator Johnson. Senator Johnson. Mr. Chairman, you mentioned that we lost knowledge of natural immunity. I didn't. Dr. Fauci did. I suppose I had an asymptomatic case of COVID because of the very faulty Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test. I never got vaccinated or injected. There is no way I would have done that because I found out enough about the Messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) gene therapy. But you also brought up the issue of hospital protocols. I am going to be holding a public event on hospital protocols. We have already received a couple hundred testimonies. They are heart-wrenching. Here is an excerpt from the testimony of the staff surgeon, very experienced, doctor for decades, at Providence Regional Medical Center, Everett, Washington. Quote, ``After our hospital was given remdesivir by the CDC we were provided misleading/inaccurate information about the drug by medical leadership. When I had a young trauma patient who was a perfect candidate for remdesivir, the infectious disease doctor on call told me to not give it to her because, 'she seemed like a nice girl.' '' He concludes, ``It was known early that remdesivir kills.'' I said, ``Nurses referred to it as 'run death is near.'' Again, it never made sense to me that we put all of our eggs in the experimental gene therapy which, if you knew anything about it would have avoided it like a plague. We sabotaged early treatment. But the only treatment we really approved, monoclonal antibodies, which I think basically work pretty well, but those were not particularly available. They were denied to an awful lot of patients. It was all remdesivir. Based on a study that the NIH changed the endpoint from mortality, because it had no impact on mortality, to days recovery. A drug that the WHO recommended against its use in COVID in November 2020, but a drug that cost over $3,000 for a course of treatment, versus things like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, who even Dr. Fauci--I should have gotten that one out because I want to take this time to enter things in the record--said we need to have a very tight protocol on remdesivir because it is unknown, but hydroxychloroquine, that is approved. Some side effects but we have a long history of it. Let's put up my latest chart. Again, I was tracking adverse events on the experimental injection. But I use this chart as a comparison. So you have ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine. Again, VAERS does not prove causation, but there is correlation. It is therefore safety signals. So ivermectin, over 30 years of FDA reports, 17 deaths per year. Hydroxychloroquine, over 38 years of reporting, 142 deaths per year. Remdesivir, over five and a half years, 546 deaths per year. The COVID injection, almost 7,000 deaths per year. Which is safest? What did the FDA freak us out about ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, when they turned a complete blind eye for the injection of gene therapy. I want to enter the quote from the surgeon. By the way, here is the answer. Cheryl Atkinson in an interview said that when it comes to money we check financial ties, and my experts on the government panel, devising coronavirus treatment guidelines, which have the effect of dialing back hydroxychloroquine use and giving edge to remdesivir. We found the 11 members reporting links to a drug company. Nine of them named relationships to remdesivir's maker, Gilead. Seven more, including two of the committee leaders, have ties to Gilead beyond the 11 months they had to disclose. Two were on Gilead's advisory board. Others were paid consultants who received research support and honoraria. By the way, within the study, I think one of the study participants was an employee of Gilead. A bunch also had conflicts with Gilead. I wonder why. There are conflicts of interest. Gilead made billions of dollars off remdesivir, and people died. In terms of ignoring safety signals--you can probably put that down now--this has come to light. This is Dr. Drew Weissman who got the Nobel Prize for the mRNA platform. He wrote to Dr. Fauci on February 8, 2020. ``Tony, I wanted to alert you to some new data we generated with our mRNA outer membrane protein (OMP) vaccine. Now, it was a higher fold dose, but that mRNA lipid nanoparticle (LNP) go to the placenta and fetus, measured by translation of the mRNA and cause of immune response in the amniotic fluid.'' That same day, Dr. Fauci responds, ``It would be interesting to see what human dose levels given intermuscular do.'' About a month later, Dr. Weissman replies. He says, ``We still have some concerns over the data after they tested it IM.'' Now again, there is more documentation in terms of the FDA. They blew it off. They said, don't worry about that. That waws the whole thing. That is what Peter Marks did when he was showing his algorithm was going to mask safety signals. The last thing I want to enter into the record here--and I want to make the point. Why is this important? They buried the treatment of severely injection-injured. The fact that we have not acknowledged these injection injuries, these people cannot get treatment. They are being gaslit by their doctors, saying it is all in your head. The rate of the injection injured, of suicides, is increasing because they have given up hope, because our medical staffs and Federal health agencies are failing to acknowledge it. Again, Dr. Nath was treatment, diagnosing and treating injection-injured in March 2021. This concerned people. So you have Dr. Walter Koroshetz writes Dr. Fauci. One of the points he made, ``There has been a steady, slow stream of reports to me of post-vaccination neurological conditions. Dr. Nath has been collecting a bunch. He has reports sent out to publish.'' That alarmed everybody. Boy, you can't let the public know what is actually happening. You can't actually let the public know what the science is showing. On April 29th, an email from Francis Collins, head of NIH, to Dr. Koroshetz, says, ``I find this approach troubling and will have the main consequence of feeing vaccine hesitancy and social media overreaction.'' Then, Dr. Lawrence Tabak writes to Francis Collins, ``I don't understand why Walter does not shut this thing down.'' Why don't you shut down that, Dr. Nath, who is actually treating injection injured? Why? Because of vaccine hesitancy, and because we have any knowledge of that. The reason I have been advocating for this is because I know the injection injured. I know people who lost loved ones within days of the injection. We have turned our backs on them. They deserve acknowledgement. They deserve to be heard, seen, and believed, so they can get treatment. I also know the doctors whose careers were destroyed because you denigrated things like ivermectin, and denied ivermectin to people in hospitals who got their kidney knocked out by the remdesivir but got put on ventilators, never got to hug their loved ones goodbye because of those hospital protocols. That is what your science did to people. Dr. Fauci, my only question is, based on your lack of testimony here today, based, quite honestly, on our investigation into the cover-up of safety signals and injection injuries, we have issued letters to a number of former FDA officials to come in for transcribed interviews. You will be getting a letter today, asking for a volunteer transcribed interview. I would be asking, will you comply or will I have to subpoena you? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Johnson. Expect a subpoena. Thank you. Chairman Paul. Senator Scott. Senator Scott. Dr. Fauci, did you personally receive any royalty payments connected to COVID-related intellectual property? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Given that NIH receives royalty payments from certain pharmaceutical companies, why would any American believe these financial ties did not include decisions about which treatments were promoted or restricted? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Why doesn't NIAID publicly disclose these payments? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did you partner with Bill Gates on global health initiatives or vaccines? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. How much did Bill Gates' entities provide in funding to NIAID collectively since 2005? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. To your knowledge, did Bill Gates partner with China on sensitive research? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Specifically dual-use research such as countermeasures or gain-of-function? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Do you know if Bill Gates partnered with U.S. Government classified programs? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Do you know if Bill Gates maintains an active national security clearance? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did you advocate or request for Bill Gates to receive a security clearance? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Do you have any knowledge that NIAID or NIH, through HHS, sponsored or requested a security clearance for Bill Gates? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Around 1922, my understanding is that the government shifted its approach to biodefense countermeasure research to NIAID under your leadership, partnering with the Obama White House or any other U.S. Government classified entities on sensitive countermeasures or research? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did your office take steps to drive biological research investments? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. What was private industry's take on the type of research in the 2010 timeframe and before? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Was it considered too dangerous to conduct and an industry was hesitant to take this on and invest in? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Why did you take steps to mature the government's approach to biodefense? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Were there any specific lines of effort or actions you felt were needed during this time to improve the research, development, and fielding model? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. How was dual use and gain-of-function incorporated or accounted for in maturing biodefense countermeasures? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did you ever discuss moving gain-of-function countermeasures research out of government space to private industry space? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. How were these private organizations regulated through government oversight while conducting risky research including gain-of-function and gene editing technology? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Did the Obama White House or any government entities take steps to inject funding into private industry? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. How do you ensure that our national security public health is protected when private organizations work with foreign countries of concern and have no government oversight, such as the EcoHealth Alliance research grant you funded in a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military lab? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Give the culture of the pay-to-play at NAIAD, did you or anyone acting on your behalf make any payment or enter any arrangement in any way or fashion to secure or influence the broad pardon you received from President Biden? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Senator Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Paul. I would like to ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter from the Department of Energy\1\ that confirms during Anthony Fauci's tenure that Bill Gates was given security clearance from 2014 to 2021. Without objection that will be entered into the record. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The letter from the Department of Energy appears in the Appendix on page 94. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would also ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the contents of the Folder of Authorities provided to Dr. Fauci, including the pardon.\1\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The Folder of Authorities provided to Dr. Fauci appears in the Appendix on page 73. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let it be clear today what we have seen. I really did want to hear from Dr. Fauci. I wanted to hear perhaps an apology, perhaps some semblance of being sorry for what happened, or that judgment errors were made. We did not hear any of that. But he was subpoenaed here to testify. He refused to answer any questions, even after being directed by the Chair, and being advised of the law requiring him to do so. He has cited a privilege that is unsupported because of his blanket pardon and because he waived the privilege by testifying at the start. I am going to give you one more opportunity to comply with the law. Limited to the period of your pardon, at any point between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025, did you destroy any Federal record or tell anyone else to? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. Given that you have an unlimited Presidential pardon, what is your specific objection that you are making? Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. My question was limited to the period of your pardon only. I find your objection unsupported, and direct you to answer the question. Dr. Fauci. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Chairman Paul. Because you refuse to answer, citing a privilege that is unsupported because of your pardon, and after being denied to do so, this Committee has scheduled a vote next week on a resolution certifying your contempt. I think we have another question or two from Senator Lankford. Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, really this is a question for you, and it is a question to try to figure out how do we get a good answer on this. Because clearly Dr. Fauci's attorneys are saying that he has a Fifth Amendment right. We have also subpoenaed him to be able to compel his testimony to be able to be here. I happened to be in the Committee where we were also dealing with Lois Lerner. Lois Lerner came and testified, gave an opening statement, and then took the Fifth Amendment. The Committee then held her in contempt for that, saying you can't do both. You can't both testify and say I am not going to answer questions. So the parliamentary question that I think we have to be able to deal with is, is this consistent with Lois Lerner, what she also did when she came before Congress, gave an opening statement, testimony, so made a statement and then refused to answer questions. Are we dealing with the same issue here? You can't make a statement and say I'm not going to make statements at the same time. Chairman Paul. I think it is a very good question. I think that is something that all of us will examine over the next week. We are going to have a vote next week on contempt. I think there is another legal question that the courts may have to decide upon, and that is whether or not a Presidential pardon that offers you complete immunity, that you can still claim that you need protection from immunity when you have been protected. Because Dr. Fauci is not liable for anything, as long as he tells the truth, even if he admits that he destroyed records on a routine basis. His assistant said she destroyed a ton of emails. I think it was a routine thing. I think he destroyed throughout his career there probably thousands of emails. Even if he did that, as long as he answered truthfully--yes, I did, I didn't think that was important, I made a mistake--you can't be prosecuted for it. Many of the things are outside the statute of limitations, as well. All he had to do today if he wanted to testify was to be honest. As long as he was honest, even about committing a crime, he would have no jeopardy. But I think the pardon has given him more immunity than most people would ever get. Like if you offer a witness immunity in exchange for testimony, he has blanket immunity. The President gave him blanket immunity for virtually anything he could have possibly done while at NIH. I think we all have to individually answer this question. We welcome you to be part of helping us figure out the question. But there will be a vote. At least right now we plan for there to be a vote next week on contempt. Senator Lankford. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Paul. Today will be the capstone to Anthony Fauci's 40 years of abuse of power at NIH. In the end, we must imagine, Fauci believes he got away with it. But still, late at night, even the guilty must become anxious, rerunning the scenarios through his mind, wondering, latching on to lingering doubts, and worrying, did his actions lead to the largest manmade plague in human history? Are the millions dead the result of his experiments or experiments that he approved, that increased the pathogenicity of deadly viruses? History will judge, but the facts, as we now know them, paint a sordid tale of dishonesty, misjudgment, and ultimately the hubris the likes of which the world has rarely seen. If everyone will remain seated for a few minutes we are going to let Dr. Fauci exit. Thank you. [Whereupon, at 11:28 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.] A P P E N D I X ---------- [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] [all]