Senate panel holds Fauci in contempt after 111 Fifth Amendment invocations — and the ex-COVID czar's wife had a gesture for the cameras

Hours after the Senate Homeland Security Committee voted along party lines to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress, the former public-health chief was spotted glumly hauling trash outside his $2.4 million Washington home, and his wife flipped off a photographer on the way out.

The committee voted 8, 5 on Thursday to refer Fauci to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, capping a week in which the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times during sworn testimony. Every Republican on the panel voted yes. Every Democrat voted no. The referral now sits with federal prosecutors, who will decide whether to bring a misdemeanor contempt charge that carries up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Committee Chairman Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who subpoenaed Fauci to testify, has long accused the Brooklyn-born doctor of covering up the origins of COVID-19 and misleading the American public about the disease. Paul hauled Fauci before the panel last week, and Fauci responded to question after question the same way, by invoking the Fifth.

Republicans say Biden's pardon stripped Fauci's right to plead the Fifth

The legal argument driving the contempt vote centers on a pardon that then-President Joe Biden granted Fauci before leaving office. That pardon covered any potential crimes Fauci committed between January 2014 and January 2025, a sweeping shield that, in the eyes of Republican senators, eliminated the very fear of prosecution that the Fifth Amendment is designed to protect against.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri laid out the committee's reasoning during proceedings. The New York Post reported Hawley's argument directly:

"The assertion of a Fifth Amendment privilege only adheres to those instances where the witness has a reasonable fear of future prosecution, and it must be tailored to any such fear."

Put plainly: if Biden already pardoned you for the conduct in question, what exactly are you afraid of? Republicans contend that Fauci's opening statement at the hearing, combined with the pardon itself, made it legally impossible for him to hide behind the Fifth 111 times. The committee treated his refusal to answer as obstruction, not as a legitimate constitutional claim.

Democrats on the panel disagreed, voting unanimously against the referral. But the 8, 5 party-line result sent the matter to the Justice Department regardless.

Fauci spotted at his D.C. home looking grim, wife makes obscene gesture

Just hours after the vote, a photographer caught Fauci outside his home in an upscale Washington, D.C., neighborhood. The former COVID czar was wheeling a recycling bin to the curb, visibly unhappy. He then climbed into the passenger seat of a vehicle driven by his wife, Christine Grady, a Georgetown University faculty member.

Grady, who the Post described as appearing angered by the photographer's presence, made an obscene gesture toward the camera before driving away. Fauci sat in the passenger seat and stared blankly out the window.

The scene offered a striking contrast to the years when Fauci was the most visible face of the federal government's pandemic response, a fixture on cable news, magazine covers, and late-night television. His personal diaries from that era later revealed a man deeply attentive to his own celebrity even as Americans died by the thousands.

Three state attorneys general are also closing in

The Senate contempt referral is not the only legal pressure bearing down on Fauci. Three state attorneys general, whose names and states were not identified in the Post's reporting, have also subpoenaed him as part of a joint probe into his conduct as the government's top infectious-disease official.

Those subpoenas add a second front to Fauci's legal exposure. The federal contempt referral and the state-level probes are proceeding on separate tracks, but both reflect a bipartisan appetite among elected officials to force answers that Fauci has so far refused to give.

Fauci's troubles extend beyond the hearing room. Declassified documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have alleged that Fauci lied to Congress and worked to steer intelligence agencies away from the lab-leak theory of COVID-19's origin, allegations that form the backdrop to Paul's long-running pursuit of accountability.

And the downstream consequences of Fauci's pandemic-era decisions continue to surface. Lawmakers have drawn connections between his advocacy for prolonged school closures and measurable harm to an entire generation of American children, a policy legacy that remains politically radioactive.

Whether the Justice Department will act on the contempt referral remains an open question. The department has not publicly indicated its intentions. If prosecutors do move forward, Fauci would face a misdemeanor charge, not a felony, but a conviction would carry the possibility of jail time.

Biden's pardon created the very trap Fauci now faces

There is a deep irony in Fauci's predicament, and it traces directly back to the man who tried to protect him. Biden's sweeping pardon, covering more than a decade of potential criminal conduct, was presumably meant to shield Fauci from prosecution. But by removing the threat of criminal liability, the pardon also removed the legal foundation for invoking the Fifth Amendment. A witness who cannot be prosecuted for the conduct in question has no reasonable fear of self-incrimination, and therefore, under established law, no valid basis to refuse testimony.

Republicans on the committee seized on that contradiction. Fauci read an opening statement at last week's hearing, then declined to answer 111 questions by invoking a constitutional protection that, his critics argue, Biden's own pardon had already rendered moot.

Diary entries that surfaced earlier showed Fauci recruiting powerful allies, including a former president and a Washington Post reporter, to manage public-relations fallout during previous controversies. This time, no amount of media management can make a contempt referral disappear.

The man who once lectured 330 million Americans on how to behave during a crisis now refuses to answer basic questions about his own conduct, and his wife's response to the cameras captured the household's mood more honestly than any prepared statement could.

When you plead the Fifth 111 times after a pardon already took prosecution off the table, you are not asserting a constitutional right. You are telling the American people you would rather face contempt charges than let them hear the answers.