Former top US health official Anthony Fauci refused to answer questions at a US Senate hearing about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, saying he feared Republican lawmakers would seek to trip him up and use his testimony to prosecute him for perjury.
He invoked the amendment to the US Constitution, which states that no individual can be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”.
Days before the hearing, Republican Senator Rand Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s pandemic-era writings, in which he mused about fame and the origins of Covid.
Fauci said Paul has a grudge against him. He said he previously testified about Covid under oath at several congressional hearings.
“Although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government … under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” said, Fauci, the former leader of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Taking the Fifth is not an admission of guilt – it is designed to protect individuals against coercion, mistakes, and unfair burden-shifting.
Fauci said Paul’s “obvious obsession” with pushing for Fauci to be prosecuted had led him not to answer questions this time.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something – anything – that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.
Paul continued questioning Fauci despite his refusal to answer. The hearing grew tense at times, including when one of Fauci’s lawyers who was seated next to him repeatedly tried to interject during Paul’s questioning. Paul directed a security guard to remove him from the room.
During opening remarks, Paul claimed Fauci’s diary entries contradicted what he told the American people about the origins of the virus.
Paul suggested that while Fauci said publicly that Covid originated naturally, he privately believed the virus originated in a medical lab. The senator has repeatedly promoted the lab-leak theory that Covid came from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Many scientists favour a theory of “animal spillover”, meaning the virus began when an animal carrying the virus infected a human. However, scientists and evidence have not definitively coalesced around either theory.
Fauci’s diary entries reflect openness at the start of the pandemic to two possible theories about Covid’s origins – including natural origins and a lab leak – before he appears to become more convinced it had a natural origin.
