Sen. Rand Paul has issued a subpoena compelling Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify publicly before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and he is not being quiet about it. "Anthony Fauci will answer to the American people," the Kentucky Republican posted on X on June 28, adding a date and time: "7/29 at 10 AM."
The subpoena marks the first Paul has issued as committee chairman. It came after Fauci backed out of a prior agreement to appear voluntarily, a move Paul described as deliberate foot-dragging.
At stake is whether the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases misled Congress about U.S.-funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and whether federal officials worked to suppress evidence pointing to a lab origin for COVID-19. More than 1.2 million Americans died from the virus, and the World Health Organization puts the global toll above 7 million. Years into the pandemic's aftermath, the public still lacks a definitive, transparent accounting of how it started, and who, if anyone, bears responsibility for the research that may have made it possible.
Paul laid out the sequence on Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. The investigation, he said, has been running "for several years," but the Biden administration stonewalled it.
"The Biden administration's stubbornness wouldn't give us any of the documents. The Trump administration has been very cooperative; they've turned over virtually everything."
That cooperation includes the declassification of a several-hundred-page intelligence report on Fauci's tenure, his role during the pandemic, and the unresolved question of the virus's origin. Former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard ordered the release, Just The News reported, calling it a matter of transparency and accountability.
Fauci, for his part, had initially agreed to testify. Then he pulled out. Paul told Fox News he had spent months negotiating for both documents and testimony.
As Paul told Breitbart: "Last week, Anthony Fauci notified us that he will not voluntarily testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, even though he had previously agreed to do so. Therefore, today we have issued a subpoena for him to publicly testify."
He added: "With this subpoena power, we will bring him in, unless he fights this in court."
The core allegation has not changed since Paul first confronted Fauci in a heated 2021 exchange. Paul contends that Fauci funded research that made viruses "more lethal, more attachable to human cells, and more infectious", the textbook definition of gain-of-function work, and then denied it under oath.
On Fox News, Paul went further. "What we know now, beyond a reasonable doubt, is that Anthony Fauci did, indeed, fund gain-of-function research," he said.
Fauci has previously denied that U.S.-funded research directly caused COVID-19 and has maintained the virus emerged naturally. During a 2021 congressional hearing, Fauci fired back at Paul directly: "If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you," the New York Post reported.
That sharp denial now faces new pressure. Declassified DNI files show Fauci met with CIA officials on June 4, 2021, weeks after denying NIH funding of gain-of-function research, and, per the files, redirected focus away from the lab-leak theory. A whistleblower complaint filed during the Biden administration alleged Fauci lied to Congress about that research, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.
Federal health agencies have maintained that grant oversight procedures were followed. But the distance between that bureaucratic assurance and the growing documentary record is becoming harder to bridge.
Paul's investigation has not relied on documents alone. A CIA whistleblower with firsthand knowledge testified before the committee, alleging that intelligence officials buried evidence, altered conclusions, and worked to conceal the true origins of COVID-19 from the public.
"For years, Americans were told to stop asking questions about COVID's origins," Paul said at that hearing. "Today, a whistleblower with firsthand knowledge will testify that intelligence officials may have buried evidence, altered conclusions and concealed the truth from the public."
On Fox News, Paul cited an internal CIA assessment. "A scientific commission within the CIA voted 6 to 1 to say it came from the lab," he said. He alleged that position later shifted "under pressure," though he did not specify the source of that pressure. The CIA adjusted its public stance in 2025, assessing with low confidence that a research-related origin is more likely than a natural one.
Separately, declassified memos have shown that Biden-era officials diverted a whistleblower complaint alleging Fauci lied to Congress, raising questions about whether the prior administration actively shielded him from accountability.
Whistleblowers also allegedly testified that intelligence analysts who challenged the natural-origin theory faced retaliation and career consequences, Newsmax reported. If true, the suppression was not passive, it was enforced.
Hanging over the entire investigation is the pardon former President Joe Biden issued to Fauci in his final hours in office. Paul described it as "a ten-year pardon on nonspecific crimes", an extraordinarily broad grant of clemency that, by design, covers conduct that may never have been formally charged.
Paul has suggested the legality of that pardon "could be challenged in court." He and Sen. Ron Johnson have pressed the Trump Justice Department to do exactly that.
The statute of limitations for charging Fauci with lying to Congress about gain-of-function research has expired. Paul acknowledged as much but framed the hearing as something larger than a criminal proceeding. "The DOJ may never act, but the American people know the truth: Fauci misled and defrauded this country," he said.
The pardon complicates any criminal path. But it does not, and cannot, block a congressional subpoena for testimony. Fauci can be compelled to appear. Whether he invokes the Fifth Amendment, contests the subpoena in court, or sits down and answers questions remains to be seen.
Fauci is not the only figure in the crosshairs. The Department of Justice indicted former Fauci adviser David Morens for allegedly using personal email to hide communications related to a coronavirus research grant involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That indictment, detailed here, suggests a pattern of concealment that extended beyond Fauci himself.
Rep. Darrell Issa has separately demanded a perjury investigation against Fauci following the Gabbard declassification, arguing the documentary record now contradicts his sworn testimony.
Paul, for his part, is not content with a hearing that produces headlines and nothing more. He wants the record set, permanently.
"He has not really gotten his just desserts on this, and we want to make sure that the American public and that history records that he was involved with funding this dangerous research that led to a pandemic that killed 15 million people; there needs to be repercussions."
Paul's figure of 15 million deaths exceeds the WHO's official global count of more than 7 million. The discrepancy likely reflects estimates of excess mortality rather than confirmed cases, though Paul did not specify his source for the higher number.
The scheduled hearing date gives Fauci roughly a month to comply, negotiate, or fight the subpoena in court. Paul has made clear he expects a public appearance, not a closed-door session and not written answers.
Several questions remain unresolved. What specific grants connected Fauci's agency to gain-of-function work in Wuhan? What do the newly declassified documents contain beyond what has been publicly summarized? And will any court entertain a challenge to Biden's sweeping, preemptive pardon?
"This was all misdirection. This was a conspiracy," Paul said on Fox News, summarizing what he believes the evidence shows: a coordinated effort to steer public understanding away from a lab origin and toward a natural-spillover narrative that the data did not support.
Fauci has denied wrongdoing at every turn. He will now have a chance, under oath and under subpoena, to do so again, this time with years of declassified records, whistleblower testimony, and a DOJ indictment of his former adviser forming the backdrop.
The American people paid for the research. They buried the dead. They deserve to hear from the man who ran the agency, not on his terms, but on theirs.
