Anthony Fauci sat before a Senate committee and turned the proceeding into a farce.
Not one. And the man who spent years lecturing the country about science, trust, and transparency invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times.
Now even Bill Maher is saying what conservatives have been saying for years — and the left doesn’t know what to do with that.
The Hearing That Changed the Conversation
Maher railed against former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr Anthony Fauci just days after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times during a Senate hearing over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci was subpoenaed to testify under oath by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has long had an antagonistic relationship with Fauci. The committee, which Paul chairs, had been armed with something new going into the session.
Paul entered the hearing with a treasure trove of diary entries from Fauci, documenting the infectious disease director’s day-to-day life throughout the course of the pandemic. Those entries turned out to be explosive — not because of what they revealed about the science, but because of what they revealed about the gap between what Fauci said publicly and what he wrote privately.
Some entries appeared to show Fauci taking credit for influencing policies that closed schools during the pandemic. He told the House Oversight Committee in January 2024, however, “I did not close the schools.”
That contradiction is exactly the kind of thing that has fueled legitimate public anger at Fauci for years. And now it has a paper trail.
Fauci spent a congressional hearing that spanned well over two hours uttering only a single, 24-word sentence: “Under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”
Paul told Fauci: “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify.”
And Fauci’s own attorney didn’t make it out of the room. Fauci’s attorney was removed from the hearing room at the direction of committee chairman Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).
Maher Calls It What It Is
During an episode of HBO’s *Real Time*, Maher called out Fauci for telling “actual lies” about the origins of the virus following Fauci’s Senate hearing. “He was caught in actual lies,” Maher said, adding, “The big issue to me is the origin of this, which is very important.
Maher didn’t stop at the general accusation. He went straight to the diary.
“He was telling people up front when it first began [that] it was from the wet markets. It could not — that’s a conspiracy theory — if you say it escaped from the lab,” Maher said. “And he knew better,” Maher continued. “Because we have him in his diary telling us what he was saying to other scientists, who were saying, ‘No, absolutely.'”
That’s a remarkable thing to hear from a liberal HBO host. Maher is not a conservative. He has spent years defending Democrats and mocking the Right. But the Fauci situation has apparently pushed him past whatever loyalty he had left to the establishment public health apparatus.
Maher continued, “And the real issue here is the gain of function research, and again, if we weren’t so partisan, we could just say gain of function research, Obama told them not to do it. I would only have said don’t do it. But it’s a viable debate, it’s a reasonable debate. Should we soup up something that’s bad, this bacteria, to study it? Maybe if it got out, it would be even worse. I think that’s what did happen.”
That last line deserves to sit there for a moment. Maher is saying, on his own show, that he believes a souped-up pathogen escaped from a lab in Wuhan. That was a “conspiracy theory” not long ago. People lost jobs, platforms, and reputations for saying it. And now Bill Maher is saying it on HBO.
He went further and explained why the lab leak question got buried in the first place.
“Because we make everything about race. And this is one of the repercussions of this. You couldn’t say it escaped from the lab, because that was the racist point of view, somehow, that the entire Asian continent would have been, somehow, complicit in this, because it escaped from the — it was ridiculous. But that is where they went, you were racist if you said this escaped from a lab.”
This isn’t the first time Maher has broken with his own political tribe on COVID. Earlier this year, Maher asserted that anti-COVID lockdown advocates who argued that closing schools for an extended period of time would cause more harm than good to children “were right,” adding the Wuhan lab leak theory “wasn’t a conspiracy theory” after all. But the timing of this latest commentary — right on the heels of Fauci taking the Fifth 111 times — makes it land differently.
What Comes Next for Fauci
The political and legal fallout from the hearing is already moving fast.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, scheduled a vote on a resolution to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.
But contempt may not be the only consequence Fauci faces. A reintroduced bill is targeting Fauci for invoking his Fifth Amendment right by barring federal government workers from refusing to answer certain questions from Congress. Rep Rich McCormick’s STOP the SWAMP Act, first introduced in 2024, authorizes lawmakers to refer witnesses who unlawfully withhold information to the Justice Department.
“If you can hide from Congress, you shouldn’t be able to work for the federal government,” the Georgia Republican said in a statement. “Congress has a constitutional duty to conduct oversight, and federal employees have a duty to tell the truth. Full stop. If someone lies under oath or refuses to cooperate with a lawful investigation, there should be consequences.”
Paul has also raised the question of whether Fauci’s Fifth Amendment claim even holds up legally. Paul said it was an open question whether Fauci, who received a preemptive pardon from former President Joe Biden, could be prosecuted for contempt but said he plans to make the referral. “We believe that with his … immunity from criminal liability, that he didn’t need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn’t attach when you have a pardon in place,” Paul told reporters after the hearing.
That is a serious legal argument. Biden issued Fauci a broad preemptive pardon in the final hours of his administration. Biden’s pardon covers only federal offenses, not state charges. Fauci can still be prosecuted for perjury if he lies under oath, pardon notwithstanding — central to why Republicans argue he has no valid basis to plead the Fifth.
And Fauci stayed silent even when asked the most basic question of all. Fauci also stayed silent when asked if he regrets the decisions he made as the public’s health leader during the pandemic. “Is there anything you would do different on COVID sir?” Fox News Digital asked after Fauci refused to answer questions about his Senate hearing.
Not a word. The man who told the country to trust the science refused to answer whether he had any regrets about how that science was applied to the lives of millions of Americans.
The lockdowns destroyed small businesses. The school closures set a generation of children back in ways researchers are still measuring. The mandates cost people their jobs and their livelihoods. And the official who sat at the center of those decisions now won’t say a single word about any of it under oath.
Bill Maher noticed. A lot of people are noticing. And Rand Paul isn’t done yet.
Sources: Fox News, Breitbart, NewsNation, The Hill, Colorado Politics, Washington Times, Just the News