Anthony Fauci refused to answer questions during a tense US Senate hearing on the origins of Covid.

Former US health official Anthony Fauci He refused to answer questions during a US Senate hearing on Covid-19, fearing that Republicans would try to use his testimony to impeach him for perjury.

He invoked the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that “no man shall be compelled to be a witness against himself in any criminal case.”

It may be legally dangerous for him to contradict himself under oath. Fauci said he has testified in several congressional hearings about Covid and its origins.

Republicans have long blamed Fauna for hiding information from the public about the pandemic and lying about its toll.

He denied wrongdoing. He called the accusations against him “simply fake”. In previous testimony to lawmakers.

Fauci, the 85-year-old former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIID), said: “Out of respect for the legislature … on the advice of my attorneys, I am requesting my right to refrain from answering your questions under the Fifth Amendment.”

Taking the Fifth is not proof of guilt—it is designed to protect individuals from coercion, mistakes, and unfairly shifting the burden of providing evidence of wrongdoing.

while he He was given early amnesty With immunity from federal prosecution for actions taken by former President Joe Biden between 2014 and 2025, Fauci can be charged with anything after that date, including his actions on a Senate committee. State or local prosecution may be filed.

In a statement to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who chaired the hearings, said they had an “obvious obsession” with impeaching him, and that Faci refused to answer questions.

“The only conclusion I can come to is that the only reason I’m being called before this committee is to say something — anything — that confirms my repeated public commitment that I ended up, in his words, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.

Paul, who worked as an eye surgeon before joining Congress, declined to answer, but continued to question Fach. He repeatedly invited Fauci to “apologise” and said the committee would vote on Fauci’s contempt of Congress decision next week.

Republicans asked Fauci about health guidelines that changed as health officials learned more about the disease. Fauci has previously maintained his policy stances.

Sitting next to him, David Schertler, one of Fauci’s attorneys, repeatedly tried to intervene during Paul’s questioning and was removed from the room.

Schertler later said in a statement that Paul’s withdrawal of counsel to raise a legitimate point of law was “disgusting,” and that it “confirms the baseless and vindictive nature of this proceeding and Rand Paul’s personal accusation against Dr. Fauci.”

During the hearing, President Donald Trump took to social media to call Fauci “crazy.”

“I’ve said from the beginning that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. Fauci strongly disagrees. He’s always trying to protect China,” Trump said.

With Trump and Fauci in office at the start of 2020, including public health officials, the origins of the pandemic have been hotly debated in America.

The pair sparred a lot on handling the pandemic, including when Trump suggested unproven treatments.

At the trial, Paul Fauci publicly claimed that Covid was naturally occurring, but he privately believed that the virus originated in a medical lab. The senator has repeatedly promoted the lab leak theory that Covid originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

The World Health Organization