Dr. Anthony Fauci declined to answer questions before a Senate committee focused on the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a tense hearing that highlighted the enduring political divide over the origins of COVID-19.
“Although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government, and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci said before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist during the pandemic, was subpoenaed to appear by committee chairman Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. Paul has long sparred with Fauci over the origins of the coronavirus and whether it escaped naturally from a wildlife market or leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
Days before the hearing, Paul released over 1,000 pages of Fauci’s private diary entries spanning December 2019 through 2022. The senator alleged the notes showed Fauci privately considered the lab leak theory while publicly supporting the natural origins hypothesis. Paul initially posted the documents over the weekend, took them down Monday evening, and reposted them Tuesday with redactions.
At the hearing, Fauci accused Paul of being fixated on seeing him prosecuted. Fauci’s legal team wrote in a letter to Paul last month that the senator was waging a “years-long public crusade” against Fauci, according to documents reviewed by NPR.
Fauci noted he has answered similar questions in previous testimony before Congress. His invocation of the Fifth Amendment marks a sharp departure from his earlier cooperative stance with lawmakers.
The diary entries show Fauci wrote on Feb. 1, 2020 that “there was not total agreement” among scientists about the virus’s origins during a conference call. In later entries, Fauci wrote he was “almost certain that the virus evolved naturally from a species jump” while keeping “an open mind about the possibility of a lab leak.”
Many scientists say Fauci’s private notes accurately reflect how scientific consensus evolved as understanding of COVID-19 developed. The current consensus, as stated by the World Health Organization in June 2025, is that the weight of available evidence suggests zoonotic spillover, either directly from bats or through an intermediate host.
However, some U.S. government agencies remain divided. The Department of Energy and the FBI support a lab origin theory, though the former expresses “low confidence” in its conclusion, meaning the information used is considered scant or fragmented under federal definitions.
The hearing represents the latest chapter in a years-long battle between Paul and Fauci over pandemic accountability. It also reflects broader divisions within the Trump administration over COVID-19 origins, with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. referencing digging the documents “out of 11 separate servers” in a video posted Tuesday.
The WHO continues to appeal to China and any other country with information about the pandemic’s origins to share data openly. “All hypotheses must remain on the table, including zoonotic spillover and lab leak,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stated.
— Pulse Of Nations Wire Desk