Walls closing in on Fauci as Senate committee votes to hold disgraced doctor in contempt

Former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted to hold disgraced former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress a week after he appeared before the panel and refused to answer a single question, invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent more than 100 times during the four-hour hearing.

Fauci appeared before the committee under subpoena days after Senator Rand Paul, who chairs the committee, released a series of diary entries Fauci kept on his government computer during the pandemic. The diary entries revealed Fauci to be manipulative, duplicitous and obsessed with his own growing fame in the mass media during the pandemic.

He was called to testify about his handling of the pandemic, but repeated the same line about following his lawyer's advice in response to every question posed by a senator last week. Paul on Thursday argued that Fifth Amendment protections shouldn't have applied to Fauci because of the preemptive pardon he'd been granted in the waning days of Joe Biden's lone term as president. 

“Dr. Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution,” Paul said Thursday, The Associated Press reported. “All he had to do was tell the truth.” Paul noted the contempt resolution in a post on X, saying it was "passed by Republicans on behalf of the millions of Americans and their families still affected years after the COVID pandemic."

According to The New York Post, Thursday's contempt vote could open Fauci, who was granted a sweeping preemptive pardon by Biden, up to the possibility of prosecution, something his detractors have been clamoring for since Fauci began engineering Draconian COVID measures such as mandatory masking, social distancing and coercive vaccination pressure.

The resolution gives JD Vance, the president of the Senate, the authority to refer the case to Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, for possible prosecution. Biden's pardon covered anything Fauci may have done from 2014 through January 2025.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, obtained a copy of the government-owned iPhone Fauci used during the pandemic, which they expect could reveal even more about Fauci's conduct.

Hopefully, this device will address many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing," Johnson wrote in a post on X.

The Journal reported that phone was provided to the subcommittee by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is led by RFK Jr -- one of Fauci's most vocal critics. And more Fauci documents are likely on the way as Paul and Johnson have received even more files that they are reportedly preparing to make public.

Watch below as the committee held the vote and senators indicated whether they voted yea or nay to hold Fauci in contempt.