On Thursday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee passed a resolution, along partisan lines, to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to testify at a hearing last week about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, citing his Fifth Amendment protections.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was a key figure during the coronavirus pandemic, often appearing next to President Donald Trump in daily press briefings. But as Fauci’s findings began to contradict Trump’s baseless claims about the virus, Trump began to distance himself from him, prompting right-wing voices to attack Fauci’s credibility by pushing unfounded conspiracy theories about him.

Fauci appeared last week before the committee but invoked his Fifth Amendment right to protect himself from self-incrimination, believing that Republicans on the committee were intending to trick him into accidentally lying under oath. Thursday’s vote featured all eight Republicans on the committee voting to find Fauci in contempt, with all five Democrats voting against the measure.

The committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), will forward a recommendation to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to consider charging Fauci with criminal contempt of Congress charges. Typically, a full Senate vote would need to be adopted for the resolution to have the full force of a “contempt of Congress” recommendation, but the DOJ could view the committee’s vote as sufficient to pursue charges.

Paul claims that Fauci’s presidential pardon, granted during the last days of the Biden administration, precluded him from being able to claim Fifth Amendment protections, characterizing the contempt vote as being “on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a federal pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence.” However, that view is debatable, as former President Joe Biden’s pardon protects Fauci from charges relating to “any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon,” which was January 19, 2025.

“Today’s partisan committee vote is a crude political stunt intended to punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights,” said David Scherler, an attorney representing Fauci.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan), a member of the Homeland Security Committee, also panned the vote.

“Criminal contempt is punitive. It does not compel a witness to answer questions or produce the documents we’d all like to see,” Peters pointed out. “What it will do is create a damaging precedent that future witnesses will use to resist legitimate congressional oversight, and weaken this committee’s ability to compel testimony.”

For many years, Paul and other Republican lawmakers have tried to claim that COVID-19 originated from a lab in China — a claim that Fauci and other leading experts have said is unfounded. A World Health Organization report in 2025 shares the same view, noting that the “weight of available evidence” supports the position that the pathogen originated from animals, not a lab.

As part of supposed evidence supporting his points, Paul released portions of Fauci’s private diary to the public last month. The entries from Fauci do not indicate that he believed the lab theory while touting other ideas — rather, it only shows that he gave it basic scientific consideration.

If the DOJ decides to pursue contempt charges against Fauci, he could face up to a year in prison if he’s convicted. He could also be forced to pay a fine of up to $100,000.