The US Senate Homeland Security Committee has voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt after the former White House coronavirus czar refused to answer questions on the origins of Covid-19 at a hearing last week.

The Republican-led committee voted 8-7 along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt on Thursday. The committee’s Democrats introduced five motions aimed at postponing the vote, but all were shut down by the Republican majority.

Fauci appeared before the committee last Wednesday, where he was grilled on his role in funding dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, his knowledge that Covid-19 was likely created in a laboratory, his work with US intelligence agencies, and his promotion of ineffective vaccines against the virus.

The former bureaucrat refused to answer any questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment right to silence more than 100 times. Fauci pleaded the Fifth despite having already received a pardon from former President Joe Biden shielding him from criminal prosecution over any offense committed between January 1, 2014  – when the US first outsourced gain-of-function research to China – and January 20, 2025.

“More than a million Americans died from Covid,” committee chairman Rand Paul said before Thursday’s vote. “Many of them died alone. Workers were forced to choose between a mandate and a job they needed. Businesses closed and never reopened. Americans lost the freedom to work, to worship, and to decide what went into their own bodies.”

“Dr. Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution,” Paul continued. “All he had to do was tell the truth.”

Although Fauci is immune from prosecution for any misdeeds that he committed between 2014 and 2025, his pardon does not cover any crimes committed at last week’s hearing. Contempt of Congress is a criminal offense, and Paul referred Fauci’s case to the US Justice Department immediately after Thursday’s vote. 

Should the department choose to prosecute, Fauci could face a fine of up to $100,000 and a prison sentence of up to 12 months.

Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, both former aides to US President Donald Trump, were jailed for contempt of Congress by Biden’s Justice Department. Navarro and Bannon both spent four months in prison in 2024.

Fauci served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, and as chief medical adviser to Biden from 2021 until his retirement in 2022. In the latter role, Fauci became the face of Biden’s heavy-handed response to the pandemic, advocating mask and vaccine mandates and lockdowns, and dismissing opposition to these measures as “anti-science.”