WASHINGTON – In a dramatic turn at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime face of the federal COVID-19 response, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions from Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
Fauci, appearing under subpoena, told lawmakers that Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution” and the recent public release of more than 1,100 pages of his private pandemic-era diary left him no choice. “Although 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 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci said in his opening statement.
Paul pressed ahead anyway, grilling Fauci on gain-of-function research, COVID origins, and discrepancies between the former NIAID director’s private notes and his public statements. Fauci repeatedly declined, citing the Fifth.
The hearing comes just days after Paul released Fauci’s personal diary entries spanning late 2019 through his 2022 retirement. The documents have ignited fresh scrutiny of Fauci’s leadership during the pandemic, highlighting private doubts about the virus’s origins, a fixation on media attention and fame, and personal health issues that were never shared with the public while he urged widespread vaccination.
One of the most striking revelations involves the origins of SARS-CoV-2. In a January 26, 2020, entry, Fauci wrote that “we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” referring to the Wuhan wet market, and noted the first infections occurred weeks earlier and were unconnected to it. Days later, after a conference call with top scientists, he recorded that only two of roughly a dozen experts believed the virus was purely natural; “the rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible.”
Yet publicly for months afterward, Fauci and allies strongly downplayed the lab-leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory while promoting a natural-origin narrative. Critics, including Paul, argue this gap fueled years of delayed investigation into potential NIH-funded research links at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Among the most eye-opening entries is Fauci’s June 19, 2021, account of a personal medical emergency that occurred roughly five months after he received his Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses (first in December 2020, second in January 2021). While he continued publicly declaring the shots “safe and effective” and pushing mandates and boosters, the diary shows he experienced a serious health event he kept confidential.
Here is the passage in Fauci’s own words:“Horrible roller coaster day – Due to some acute transient right posterior chest pain 2 days ago, Ted Li order a CT scan. - I got a call from the radiologist at Sibley hospital where I had gotten a chest CT in the morning telling me that I had a lesion in my right lower lobe that he felt was a cancer (non-small cell carcinoma). I felt like I got hit like by a Mack truck. Doctor Li quickly followed up on this and show the film to Andrew Lerner at Sibley who is a pulmonologist specializing in pulmonary nodules.
Doctor Lerner felt that it was more likely an inflammatory lesion and there were multiple other lesions that were very small throughout the right lower lobe. In addition, I had a pulmonary infarct in the right lowest segment that was definite.
Again, Dr. Li called David Hellmann, who was with his son, who is an oncologist who looked at it and said that it looks more benign then neoplastic and felt that it did not look like a non-small cell carcinoma.
Finally, they showed the films via computer to Dr. Elliot Fishman who is the top radiologist at Hopkins. He agreed that it was more likely inflammatory and that the only definite thing on the film was the pulmonary infarct. He recommended a follow-up CT in three months and begin anticoagulation immediately with Eliquis.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. highlighted the entry on Fox News, noting the timing after Fauci’s highly publicized vaccination and calling the pulmonary infarction (lung tissue damage from blocked blood flow) one of the adverse events health agencies had acknowledged as possible with the shots. Kennedy said Fauci “never told anybody” and received private treatment from top specialists while simultaneously assuring Americans such events were not a concern.
The diary itself does not attribute the infarct to the vaccine, and medical experts note that pulmonary infarction can stem from various causes, including age-related risks (Fauci was in his early 80s). Causation remains unproven. Still, the secrecy stands in sharp contrast to Fauci’s public role promoting the vaccines without disclosing his own experience.
The diary and subsequent scrutiny have amplified long-running debates over COVID vaccine transparency. Fauci and federal agencies repeatedly stated the shots were safe for nearly everyone and highly effective at stopping infection and transmission—claims later revised as real-world data showed limited durability against infection and transmission, particularly with variants.
Documented rare side effects include myocarditis and pericarditis, especially in young males after mRNA doses, with some regulatory reviews acknowledging links to a small number of pediatric deaths. Excess mortality analyses and VAERS reports have fueled ongoing questions about broader impacts, though large studies continue to show overall mortality reductions from vaccination in high-risk groups and no clear causal link to widespread sudden deaths in younger populations.
Fauci’s private notes also reveal frustration with vaccine rollout timing under the Trump administration and internal debates over efficacy messaging that differed from public assurances.
Paul and other Republicans argue the diary proves a pattern of selective disclosure that eroded public trust. Democrats on the committee dismissed the hearing as partisan score-settling. Fauci’s decision to take the Fifth ensures the full story of those private-versus-public gaps will remain contested for years to come.
The American people deserve complete transparency on pandemic decisions that upended lives, economies, and schools. Fauci’s silence under oath only deepens the questions his own handwritten words have raised.
