Fauci pleads the 5th, refuses to answer any questions from senators on Capitol Hill

Anthony Fauci pleading the Fifth Amendment.

Former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment during his opening statement at a hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning, and repeatedly refused to answer questions from U.S. senators, citing his Fifth Amendment right.

Fauci, who was granted a preemptive pardon by former President Joe Biden, was appearing under subpoena from U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who earlier this week released diary entries recovered from Fauci's own government computer showing him to be manipulative, duplicitous about what he really thought of COVID-19's origin, as well as obsessed with his own exploding fame as he became a darling of the mainstream media. 

"It pains me to do so because of the respect that 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 during his opening statement.

Later, when he was asked a series of questions from senators Rand Paul, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who inquired about Fauci having pushed the new vaccines over widely-accessible therapies, like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, Fauci repeatedly responded that, on the advice of his lawyers, he would decline to answer the question. Meanwhile, Democrats largely tried to run cover for Fauci, and brought up a rise in measles cases across the U.S. during the second Trump administration, a number of cases that is a tiny fraction of the number of Americans who were infected with COVID.

Watch a highlight below of Fauci dodging questions from Rand Paul, and keep an eye on the live proceedings here. 

At one point, Paul directed Capitol Police to remove Fauci's attorney from the hearing after he sat in the wrong seat and kept speaking out and disrupting the proceeding. Paul received a round of applause after ordering the lawyer to be ejected. Watch below.