Biden’s Pardon Can’t Protect Fauci From Legal Consequences
31st July 2026
Dr. Anthony Fauci may have believed his Fifth Amendment marathon at the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday would shield him from prosecution, but he miscalculated.
Before he refused to answer questions from the committee, Fauci did deliver an opening statement, during which he attacked Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and explained his decision not to answer any questions.
“Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and, recently, his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, 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,'” Fauci said. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect 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 Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”
And so he did, an estimated 111 times, but it won’t protect him completely.
On Jan. 20, 2025, his last day in office, Biden granted Fauci a full and unconditional pardon covering any offenses he may have “committed or taken part in” tied to his government roles between Jan. 1, 2014, and Jan. 19, 2025. The broad preemptive pardon Joe Biden handed him on the way out the door covers federal charges alone, and it leaves him exposed to the state charges that may arrive sooner than his lawyers expected.
Florida wasted no time proving the point. State Attorney General James Uthmeier announced an investigation into the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) after Fauci declined to answer lawmakers’ questions on Wednesday.