We know why former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard felt sick watching Dr. Anthony Fauci last Wednesday, when he was skinned alive by Senate Republicans over his handling of the COVID pandemic. Fauci’s hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was a spectacle, one where we finally saw this egotistical little elf get chopped down at the knees.
Fauci’s 'performance' today made me sick. Smug arrogance. Zero remorse. Zero accountability. He refused to answer a single question.
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) July 30, 2026
Sharing this again as a reminder: He used your tax dollars to fund the coronavirus lab research in Wuhan—and worked with the IC to cover it up. We… pic.twitter.com/LPnmsKpg6v
Indictments?
There should be, but for now, I was enjoying the whipping. The process is the punishment, and there’s nothing more devastating to someone like Fauci than seeing his work and legacy be burned to ash. He pleaded the Fifth over 100 times.
Before the hearing, Republicans posted his diary entries, which he made on government computers, totaling some 1,100 pages found on the servers of the Department of Health and Human Services under RFK Jr. They showed he knew the lab-leak theory for COVID was the likely source two months before he went gung-ho on lockdowns.
Will it save him? Unlikely. NYU Law Professor Ryan Goodman thought it made things worse, questioning the legal advice he had received before the hearing. Contempt is next, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said a vote on that is coming this week. There is precedent here: in 2013, during the IRS targeting scandal, director of the Exempt Organizations Unit Lois Lerner also invoked her Fifth Amendment rights after she read prepared remarks, just like Fauci. It didn’t save her, though the Obama Justice Department didn’t prosecute. The path is there, though, regarding Fauci, as Catherine Herridge reported Sunday:
If the contempt vote passes, the committee’s GOP Chairman Rand Paul has already promised to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department for prosecution.
The move is not without precedent. Trump associates Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon were held in contempt of Congress and jailed as a consequence.
Taking the Fifth in a congressional hearing is not a legal strategy without risk. It has potentially opened the door to multiple legal actions against Dr. Fauci at the federal and state level.
[…]
The decision to make a narrowly tailored opening statement may be a critical legal error that partially waives Fauci’s Fifth Amendment privilege.
There is precedent.
More than a decade ago, during the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, she gave a brief opening statement to a House oversight committee. It was later argued that Lerner had partially waived the privilege for topics she touched on in the prepared statement.
Lerner led the IRS, which at the time was accused of targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Senator James Lankford explicitly stated at the Fauci hearing that Lerner had taken the same legal strategy in 2013 and was later held in contempt. Lawmakers argued the witness can’t play it both ways: though the DOJ declined to pursue charges against Lerner.
[…]
In his opening remarks, Senator Paul stated that it is a crime to destroy federal documents. The senator pointed to Fauci’s own records, including a February 2020 email in which it is alleged Fauci told then-NIH Director Francis Collins, “Please delete this e-mail after you read it.”
Every good investigation builds a timeline.
According to the records, the “delete this e-mail” is alleged to have occurred just after a phone call where the origins of COVID-19 were discussed. What we know thanks to the HHS records, and records declassified by then DNI Tulsi Gabbard, is that U.S. taxpayer dollars funded the high-risk gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, which is widely blamed for the COVID-19 virus. Fauci had a conflict of interest.
We’ll know soon enough whether Fauci is put through the legal meat grinder.