Kennedy says Fauci 'knew that he was lying' as newly disclosed communications surface
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says newly disclosed private communications prove Dr. Anthony Fauci deliberately misled the American public during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a Biden-era pardon may shield him from prosecution.
Kennedy made the accusation Friday on "The Alex Marlow Show," describing what he called a gap between what Fauci told himself privately and what he told the country from behind a government podium. The charge lands as Fauci faces a congressional contempt finding, refuses to answer senators' questions, and declines even a voluntary appearance before a second Senate panel.
The former infectious disease chief, who once served as the public face of America's pandemic response, now sits at the center of an escalating standoff with Republican lawmakers who say the evidence of deception is growing, and that Fauci is hiding behind legal technicalities to avoid answering for it.
Kennedy: 'Something about his character' made deception acceptable
Kennedy, who wrote a book sharply critical of Fauci before joining the Trump administration, told Marlow that the newly surfaced communications confirmed his longstanding allegations. He did not name the specific documents or describe how they were disclosed, but he was blunt about what he said they showed.
"He knew that he was lying, and there was something about his character that made him feel that that was OK."
Kennedy went further, describing what he characterized as Fauci's daily internal contradiction, a man who understood one thing in private and said something different in public.
"There was just this massive delta between what he was telling himself every day and then what he was telling the country."
The HHS secretary also pointed to what he described as Fauci's motivation. In Kennedy's telling, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director was less interested in honest public guidance than in compliance and personal celebrity.
"It was all, 'Make people do what we want them to do,' and then, you know, enjoy the fame."
That characterization tracks with a broader pattern that has emerged through congressional oversight. Previously released diary documents, as National Review reported, revealed Fauci privately gave more credibility to the lab-leak hypothesis for COVID-19's origin than he ever acknowledged publicly, a gap between private assessment and public messaging that reinforces Kennedy's central accusation.
Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times, then refused to come back
Kennedy's remarks came against the backdrop of Fauci's increasingly combative posture toward Congress. On July 29, Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. He refused to answer substantive questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
How many times? The counts vary slightly by source, Fox News reported 111 invocations, while the Washington Examiner put the figure at approximately 115. Either way, the former pandemic czar answered almost nothing.
His refusal extended to questions about gain-of-function research, the practice of studying how pathogens behave under modified conditions, which carries the risk of creating more transmissible viruses. That line of inquiry sits at the heart of the unresolved debate over COVID-19's origins and whether U.S.-funded research may have played a role.
Fauci's own statement at the hearing framed his appearance as a political setup. He told the committee:
"Given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution...the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, behind bars."
Paul was unmoved. He announced a contempt vote on the spot, telling Fauci directly: "Because you refuse to answer, citing a privilege that is unsupported because of your pardon...this committee has scheduled a vote next week on a resolution certifying your contempt."
The committee followed through. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8, 5 along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. Every Republican voted yes. Every Democrat voted no.
Biden's pardon creates a legal paradox Republicans want resolved
The legal fight now turns on a question that sounds simple but carries real constitutional weight: Can a pardoned man still plead the Fifth?
Before leaving office in 2025, President Biden issued Fauci a preemptive pardon covering potential federal offenses between 2014 and the end of Biden's presidency. That pardon, in theory, eliminated the risk of federal criminal prosecution for anything Fauci did during the pandemic years.
Republicans, led by Paul, argue that the pardon therefore strips Fauci of any legitimate basis to invoke the Fifth Amendment. The constitutional right protects against compelled self-incrimination, but if a pardon has already removed the possibility of criminal liability, there is nothing left to incriminate against. Paul has pushed to fast-track a criminal contempt referral directly to the U.S. Attorney's Office, as the New York Post reported, potentially bypassing a full Senate vote.
Paul described the legal question as worth pressing. "It's a good legal discussion, and we will make those legal points to DOJ in sending the referral over," he said.
Fauci's legal team sees it differently. His unnamed attorney argued that compelling further testimony would "impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes." The attorney also maintained that Fauci could face potential legal exposure stemming from new testimony, a position that, if accepted, would allow the pardon to shield him from past accountability while the Fifth Amendment shields him from future questioning. A convenient arrangement for a man who refuses to answer anything.
Kennedy acknowledged the legal obstacle plainly on Marlow's show: "The problem with prosecuting Dr. Fauci is that the Biden administration gave him a full pardon. So it makes it difficult."
The broader accountability effort extends beyond Capitol Hill. States including Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana have launched their own subpoena-backed investigations into Fauci following the contempt vote, a sign that even if federal prosecution remains blocked, Republican officials at the state level are unwilling to let the matter drop.
Those state-level probes echo the same frustrations that have driven other Republican senators to demand a special counsel investigation into Fauci's conduct.
Kennedy frames the stakes beyond prosecution
Kennedy, for his part, argued on Marlow's show that the significance of the newly disclosed communications goes beyond whether Fauci ever faces criminal charges. The deeper issue, he said, is public trust in government health agencies, trust that he believes Fauci's conduct shattered.
"It's absolutely critical that people believe the government agencies when they say something. And that means that the government agencies have to trust the people and trust that they can tell them the truth."
That framing positions Kennedy not just as a Fauci critic but as someone trying to rebuild the credibility of the institutions he now leads. As HHS secretary, Kennedy has made challenging the public health establishment a central part of his tenure, a posture that began long before he entered government. His book on Fauci laid out many of the same accusations he now says the private communications confirm.
Kennedy's broader agenda at HHS has included overhauling the childhood vaccine schedule and pressing for transparency in areas the previous administration preferred to leave unexamined.
Meanwhile, declassified documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have added another layer to the case against Fauci, with allegations that he lied to Congress and steered intelligence agencies away from the lab-leak theory. Taken together, the picture is one of a senior government official who shaped the national narrative on a deadly pandemic while privately holding views he never shared with the public.
Fauci, through his attorney, has declined to appear voluntarily before Sen. Ron Johnson's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Johnson chairs that panel and has been conducting a renewed inquiry into Fauci's pandemic-era conduct. Whether the subcommittee issues a subpoena remains an open question.
The contempt referral to the Justice Department also remains pending. Paul has signaled urgency, but the mechanics of a referral, and whether the DOJ under the current administration would act on it, are unresolved.
A man who spent years telling 330 million Americans what to do, what to wear on their faces, and when they could leave their homes now refuses to tell a Senate committee what he actually knew. The public deserves better than silence from someone who demanded so much obedience.