Fauci's decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment tees up a legal debate and a contempt vote

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Fauci's decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment tees up a legal debate and a contempt vote

2026-08-05 18:38 Last Updated At：18:50

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dr. Anthony Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment before Congress will be put to the test this week as a Republican-led committee prepares to vote to hold him in contempt and refer the matter to the Justice Department.

A contempt finding could open the door to an investigation into whether Fauci had a valid constitutional right against self-incrimination when he refused to answer dozens of questions from lawmakers at a committee hearing last week focused on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republican senators including Rand Paul of Kentucky, who subpoenaed Fauci and has called a contempt vote for Thursday, insist that a pardon the doctor received early last year from Democratic President Joe Biden left him ineligible for Fifth Amendment protections. A Senate resolution released Tuesday asserts that Paul found Fauci's privilege claims “unsupported.”

But some legal experts say Fauci had reasons to invoke the Fifth Amendment, given the threat of potential state prosecutions and questions from President Donald Trump's administration about the validity of Biden's pardons. Any testimony from Fauci could have also prompted false-statement investigations like the ones the current Justice Department has repeatedly initiated against the Republican president's perceived adversaries.

No matter what happens, the episode raises fresh and complicated questions about Congress' ability to compel testimony from previously pardoned witnesses — and the outcome could resonate beyond Fauci.

“This is an important case because I think a lot of people anticipate that President Trump is going to issue similar pardons to many people in his administration who will end up being called before Congress, and the precedent here is important,” said Mark Osler, a St. Thomas University law professor and pardon power expert.

Paul's committee is moving to transmit the contempt referral from his Republican-led committee directly to the Justice Department. Whether the Justice Department would act on the referral is unclear.

Fauci, a longtime National Institutes of Health scientist and the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, left the federal government in 2022 after more than five decades. He was among a group of perceived adversaries of Trump to be pardoned by Biden in one of the Democrat’s final acts in office. The clemency covered acts from 2014 to the date in January 2025 when the pardon was issued.

Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee say the pardon lifted the specter of criminal prosecution and left Fauci without a valid basis to invoke the Fifth Amendment — a bedrock constitutional protection found in the Bill of Rights but one typically available only to those who have a reasonable basis to believe they risk being charged over their testimony.

While a blanket pardon theoretically removes a threat of prosecution, Fauci made clear he thought he had a good-faith basis to fear criminal charges. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights more than 100 times.

Before the hearing. Fauci said that Paul, the committee chairman, had an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution." The purpose of his forced appearance “is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote,” Fauci said.

In the run-up to the hearing, Paul made dozens of Fauci-related posts on X, including ones teasing that he was going to confront the doctor for having earlier given false testimony — something Fauci has denied.

“I think his invoking the Fifth makes sense because he was invited into a situation where everyone in the country understood that Rand Paul was trying to set him up for a criminal prosecution,” said Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor. “In that circumstance, one of the smartest things to do would be to make yourself a very small target and say as little as possible, and that's obviously what he did.”

In announcing the contempt vote, Paul noted on X that “Fauci refused to answer a single question, even though he knew he couldn't be charged for crimes” during the decade covered by his pardon. Fauci's deflections encompassed even seemingly harmless questions, such as the color of the tie he was wearing — a reflection of an apparent belief that it was safer to refuse any testimony.

There are factors that could tilt in favor of Fauci's strategy, including the fact that his pardon would not protect him from potential state prosecutions or from a federal prosecution related to any testimony that investigators deemed false. That may not be an idle concern given the number of false-statement investigations prosecutors have opened against Trump's political opponents.

Trump's administration also has repeatedly called into question the validity of the Biden pardons, given Biden's frequent use of an autopen for official business. Legal experts say the pardons are valid.

“The question is do you have a reasonable fear of prosecution, and Fauci's argument would be — yes, I received a pardon, yes, I believe that pardon covers and prevents prosecution but there have been statements from lots of people including Trump and other administration officials ... raising questions about the validity of that pardon,” said Ross Garber, a lawyer and expert in political investigations who has represented multiple clients who have invoked the Fifth Amendment.

“That,” he added, “is potentially a very viable argument.”

Paul said in an interview with Fox News Channel last week that he did not think “there's any rule" requiring that a contempt referral from a committee go through the entire Senate. His committee is instead working to send the referral straight to the Justice Department.

The contempt resolution states that the president of the Senate, Vice President JD Vance, “shall certify” the committee’s referral and the accompanying report to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

That fast-tracking of the process avoids the need for a vote in the full 100-member Senate, where Republicans likely lack the 60 votes required to move a contempt referral to passage.

Gene-edited beagles may offer a future option for people with dog allergies

NEW YORK (AP) — Matt Walker couldn’t pet a dog without sneezing — until he and other scientists used a gene editing technique to produce a hypoallergenic beagle named Bailey.

Now, he can feed Bailey spoons of peanut butter while she lies on his lap and play fetch with her in Central Park. His allergies didn't go away: Bailey's saliva and hair no longer contain a key allergy-causing protein.

“The feeling right now is sort of a mix of relief and awe and gratitude that it worked,” said Walker, a geneticist. His company, Kindred Companion Sciences, created Bailey and her twin Alfie using a Nobel Prize-winning technique called CRISPR.

It'll take years before the millions who suffer from dog-related allergies can walk into a pet store and buy a pooch like Alfie or Bailey.

Scientists have to monitor the long-term health effects of the genetic tweak, and find ways to commercialize the approach to make it affordable. And experts not involved with the effort say it could hurt shelter and rescue animals waiting to be adopted.

“It opens the door to a lot more people being able to own pets. On the negative side, it may discourage people from trying to use strays and unwanted animals that are not engineered to be allergy-free,” said bioethicist Arthur Caplan with New York University's Grossman School of Medicine.

Researchers have tried to create hypoallergenic pets before, mostly using cloning. But this led to sicker pups that were too genetically similar. Two years ago, researchers used CRISPR to reduce levels of an allergy-causing protein in a cat named Alsik. But it's not yet clear whether this technique is safe to be tested on other cats.

Dogs that shed less, like poodles, are often thought of as hypoallergenic. But these pups still produce allergy-causing proteins that end up in their saliva, hair and dander, so they can still make people sniffly.

To create Alfie and Bailey, scientists started in the lab. They edited the genetic code inside dog skin cells, switching off the main gene responsible for producing allergy-causing proteins. Then they transferred the edited genetic code into eggs that went into a beagle surrogate that gave birth to two healthy female pups in September 2024. Scientists tested their saliva and fur and didn’t find signs of the allergy-causing protein.

They also performed an allergy test, pricking Walker's skin with extracts from Alfie and Bailey's saliva and dander. His skin reacted to samples from a poodle and goldendoodle, but not from the beagles.

The research, published Wednesday in the CRISPR Journal, is the first time such an approach has been tried successfully in dogs.

Walker says all dogs have the same allergy-causing gene that was edited in Alfie and Bailey. Kindred Companion Sciences hopes to test the technique on other dogs and service animals to see if they can breed an allergy-free line of pups beyond beagles.

Future research should test the gene-edited hypoallergenic dogs on more people with pet allergies to be sure they can soothe symptoms across a broader swath of the human population, said Dr. Jeff SoRelle, a pathologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Since the switched-off gene is the main — but not the only — allergy-causing culprit in dogs that was tested, “we don't exactly know just how effective or broadly useful this could be for stopping dog allergy in humans,” said SoRelle, who had no role in the study.

Bailey lives with Walker in New York, and Alfie lives in Florida with another Kindred scientist. The edit made to their genes is rare but does occur naturally in some dogs, so Walker said it's unlikely to have any negative effects on the pups. But it will still be important to monitor them at routine vet visits and make sure they stay healthy.

Walker has had Bailey for a little over a year and says she's become a member of the family.

Despite being a lifelong dog lover, his allergies kept him away from pups growing up. Even breeds that were supposed to be more hypoallergenic, like his family's goldendoodle, gave him itchy eyes and painful rashes.

But he and Bailey can play tug-of-war together in his living room, and she snuggles at his feet to comfort him when he’s sick.

“It feels just amazing to get to have a dog,” Walker said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.