Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the US government response to the Covid-19 pandemic, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, refusing to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. Fauci cited what he characterized as the Republican chairman’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution” as his reason for refusing to speak.

Background

Fauci, the face of American infectious disease research, has appeared more than 250 times before Congress, and this is the first he’s invoked the Fifth Amendment. The 85-year-old former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has previously appeared before lawmakers to deny, under oath, allegations brought by Sen. Rand Paul of obscuring the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and controversial infectious disease research.

Pressure from Paul and others led President Joe Biden to preemptively pardon Fauci during his last days in office, shielding Fauci from charges pertaining to any comments made in previous years. However, he faced a new threat after Paul became chairman of a major Senate committee: that Republican senators and others, including US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would endeavor to find new ways to pursue perjury charges against him.

Committee Reaction

The committee’s highest ranking Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters from Michigan, lamented that Paul was focusing on Fauci at the cost of the committee’s other priorities. “Instead of focusing on the national security challenges that we are facing in our country right now, today’s hearing looks backwards, revisiting questions this committee has already examined,” Peters said in his remarks prior to Fauci invoking the 5th amendment.

Original reporting: KTVZ (Central Oregon) — read the source article.