Sen. Rand Paul is doubling down on his years-long push for Anthony Fauci to face criminal charges, telling MSNBC that lying to Congress and destroying records are felonies that should carry jail time.
The Kentucky Republican appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday and answered directly when host Geist asked whether he still believes Fauci belongs behind bars. Paul did not hedge. He laid out the same case he has been building since 2021, that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases lied to Congress about gain-of-function research, that the lies constitute a felony, and that Fauci should face the same consequences any other citizen would.
The appearance came days after a combative Senate hearing in which Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent more than 100 times before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Paul chairs. Fauci declined to answer questions about his role in the federal government's COVID-19 response, the origins of the pandemic, and allegations that he concealed his involvement in funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The hearing has set off a legal and political chain reaction that now includes a scheduled contempt vote, state-level investigations, and bipartisan cracks in Fauci's political shield.
On "Morning Joe," Geist pressed Paul on whether anyone beyond Fauci should face criminal investigation. Paul kept his focus narrow, returning to the core allegation: that Fauci misled Congress about taxpayer-funded research and that the law treats such conduct as a serious crime.
"That's a good question. Did he lie to Congress? I think he did lie to Congress. And I think, to be fair, that people who lie to Congress should be charged with a felony and, if convicted, go to jail. That's also a felony crime. So I think both destroying records and lying to Congress are serious crimes."
Paul has made variations of this argument for years. In 2021, he told Fox News' "Hannity" that he had already referred the matter to the Department of Justice, though he predicted that the Biden-era DOJ would not act on it.
"We've referred it to the Department of Justice. I don't think Biden's Department of Justice will do anything with it, but yes, it is very dangerous to have public officials who we need to have trust in coming and lying to us, but he has lied dozens of times."
That referral went nowhere under the Biden administration. But the political landscape has shifted. Paul now chairs the committee with subpoena power, and the current Justice Department operates under different leadership.
Fauci's decision to plead the Fifth more than 100 times at the recent hearing stunned even some observers who expected a contentious exchange. He refused to answer not just pointed accusations but basic factual questions about his tenure, according to multiple accounts of the proceeding. Paul responded by scheduling a committee contempt vote for August 5.
The legal question at the center of the dispute is whether Fauci even had the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Joe Biden issued a broad pardon covering Fauci's conduct from 2014 through January 2025. Republicans on the committee argue that the pardon eliminates the threat of federal prosecution for acts within that window, and with it, the constitutional basis for refusing to testify.
GOP senators cited the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Walker, which held that a witness cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment when a grant of immunity has removed the risk of criminal prosecution. Paul and Sen. Josh Hawley both argued that Biden's pardon functions the same way, stripping Fauci of his legal justification for silence.
Paul made the point bluntly at the hearing: "It's against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify."
Hawley went further, framing Fauci's refusal as an act of institutional arrogance rather than legal caution: "This isn't about the Constitution. This isn't about the law. This is about contempt, contempt for this body and contempt for the American people."
Not everyone agrees the pardon settles the question. AP News reported that some legal scholars believe Fauci had legitimate reasons to invoke the Fifth, including the possibility of state-level prosecutions and unresolved questions about the pardon's scope. Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, argued that Fauci "was invited into a situation where everyone in the country understood that Rand Paul was trying to set him up for a criminal prosecution."
But that argument cuts both ways. If Fauci genuinely fears state prosecution, then the pardon Biden issued did not provide the blanket protection it was presumably intended to deliver. And if the pardon does cover all relevant federal conduct, then Fauci's silence looks less like self-preservation and more like obstruction, exactly the framing Paul is using to build his contempt case.
The pardon itself covers acts from 2014 to January 2025 but does not shield Fauci from potential state charges or from any false statements he might make going forward. That gap matters. Florida's attorney general has already opened an investigation into Fauci following his Fifth Amendment invocations at the hearing.
Paul's committee is now moving to fast-track a contempt referral directly to the Justice Department, bypassing a full Senate vote. If the referral proceeds, it would force the current DOJ to decide whether to prosecute Fauci for refusing to testify, a decision the Biden-era DOJ never had to make because the hearing had not yet occurred.
One of the more revealing dynamics at the hearing was what Democrats chose not to do. The Washington Examiner reported that Democratic members of the committee did not ask Fauci a single question. Instead, they used their allotted time to redirect attention to other public health matters, including measles outbreaks.
They did not defend Fauci against the specific accusations Republicans leveled. They did not challenge the legal argument that the pardon strips his Fifth Amendment protections. They simply changed the subject. For a figure Democrats once held up as the face of responsible pandemic management, the silence was conspicuous.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah offered the sharpest Republican rebuke: "The lies of Anthony Fauci were one of the most destructive forces in American life in the 21st century. His blanket pardon from Joe Biden is one of the most disgraceful escapes from justice in history." Rep. Randy Fine of Florida was more direct, saying Fauci "needs to go to prison. NOW."
The bipartisan reckoning extends beyond Congress. Multiple states have launched their own investigations into Fauci's conduct, adding layers of legal exposure that no presidential pardon can reach.
On "Morning Joe," Geist asked Paul whether he believed Fauci had some "nefarious" purpose behind his actions. Paul chose his words carefully, declining to use the word but offering a pointed diagnosis of Fauci's approach to public health leadership.
"I would say it's wrongheaded. I'm not sure I would use the word 'nefarious.' I would say that he is of the belief that the common man can't handle the truth, and that people like him who are the science, the elite, and the experts should make decisions."
Paul went on to describe Fauci's public statements as "lies, platonic lies, because he's one of the philosopher kings. So it really is about an attitude, but it is an arrogance, and it is an arrogance that shouldn't go unchallenged."
That framing, arrogance rather than malice, is consistent with the case Paul has built over the past five years. His argument is not that Fauci set out to harm the country, but that Fauci believed he was above the accountability structures that apply to every other public official. He told Congress one thing about gain-of-function research while his private emails, Paul alleges, said the opposite. Even some Democrats have begun to acknowledge that the early dismissal of the lab leak theory was a mistake.
In 2024, Paul told Fox News' Laura Ingraham that the evidence came from Fauci's own communications:
"I think he lied to Congress, which is a felony. You know, several folks from the Trump administration were accused of lying to Congress and carted off to jail with FBI agents all over the property, host, you know, yanking them out of their house early in the morning. But Anthony Fauci did lie to Congress. We know that from his own words, not because I say lies, but his private email say he was lying. Virtually everything he said in private contradicted what he was saying in public."
Paul told "Hannity" in 2021 that the offense carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. He said at the time that the DOJ referral was unlikely to produce results under Biden. Now, with a new administration, a contempt vote on the calendar, and broad political support for accountability, the calculus looks different.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Fauci and Paul's office for further comment. No responses were reported.
For five years, Fauci's allies treated calls for accountability as partisan theater. Now the subpoenas are real, the contempt vote is scheduled, and the man who once called himself "the science" will not say a word in his own defense. The American public deserves to know why.
