Dr. Anthony Fauci returned to Washington to answer questions before a Republican-led Senate committee examining his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The session quickly turned into a contentious hearing, one of the most closely watched showdowns yet over the government's pandemic response.
But lawmakers looking for answers did not get any. Time and again, Fauci responded with the same line, saying that on the advice of counsel he respectfully declined to answer. In all, he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights more than 100 times during the hearing.
The proceedings grew heated when Fauci's own attorney tried to speak on his behalf. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky shut him down, telling him, "You are not recognized, sir. Security, please remove him from the room," and the attorney was escorted out.
Paul chairs the committee and issued the subpoena that ordered Fauci's testimony. For years, the Kentucky lawmaker has accused Fauci of deceiving Americans about the origins of the pandemic, and the hearing became the latest venue for that long-running dispute.
To bolster his claims, Paul released 1,100 pages of Fauci's private diary. According to that material, Fauci has held that a natural spillover from an animal to a human is the most likely explanation for the outbreak, while Paul argues the virus may have leaked from a lab. "The COVID lockdown could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime," Paul said.
In his opening remarks, Fauci cast the hearing as driven by what he called Senator Paul's prosecutorial obsession. "The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars," he said.
The hearing also drew reaction beyond the committee room. President Trump told reporters he had watched all of the testimony and summed it up by saying COVID was a disaster but that Fauci did not help, while some Republican senators went further and called the doctor's actions criminal. Fauci, a Brooklyn native, is the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who led the nation's pandemic response.