Rand Paul Had Fauci's Lawyer Removed From the Room
The chairman denied the privilege, threatened contempt, and argued a pardon kills the Fifth — over a question about labs nowhere near Wuhan.
Rand Paul called security on Anthony Fauci's attorney Wednesday morning and had him escorted out of a Senate hearing room, minutes after Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment on that attorney's advice.
Narativ captured the four and a half minutes as they aired.
The question that drew the first invocation was not about Wuhan. "Did you fund gain-of-function research in other bio labs around the world?" Paul asked. Fauci answered: "On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution." He repeated it word for word. Then again.
Over two hundred scientists at the Cambridge Working Group signed a protest against the avian-flu research NIAID money supported, Paul said, because it read as "a roadmap as to how to make a bioweapon." That flu kills roughly half the humans it infects. "It may be the most important question we get to here today," Paul said.
Then he ruled from the chair.
"The chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege despite the existence of the pardon," Paul said. Joe Biden pardoned Fauci preemptively on January 20, 2025, covering conduct from January 1, 2014 forward tied to his NIAID and task force service. Paul's argument is that the pardon removes the exposure and with it the privilege. A chairman denying a privilege does not settle it — contempt runs through a committee vote, then the floor, then a Justice Department that has to want the case.
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