Capitol Police physically removed Dr. Anthony Fauci's lawyer from a Senate hearing Wednesday after he repeatedly defied the chairman's orders, and Fauci himself refused to answer a single question, invoking the Fifth Amendment roughly 111 times.
The nearly four-hour confrontation before the Senate Homeland Security Committee left Fauci facing a contempt-of-Congress vote and raised fresh questions about why a man shielded by a presidential pardon would still refuse to speak. Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the committee, ordered the removal of attorney David Schertler after Schertler ignored repeated warnings that he was not authorized to address the panel.
Fauci appeared under subpoena. He brought roughly half a dozen lawyers. And he answered nothing.
Schertler, a high-powered defense attorney whose past clients include convicted former Sen. Bob Menendez, sat himself at the witness table beside Fauci despite being told to sit in the row behind. When he tried to speak on Fauci's behalf, Paul cut him off.
"You will respect these proceedings," Paul told Schertler. "You were told not to sit at the table. You insist on sitting at the table and we told you you would not be recognized. You are not invited here for testimony, sir. You are being disruptive."
Paul drew a pointed comparison to a courtroom: "Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can't do that today. But I can have you escorted from the premises."
Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, asked that Schertler be given an opportunity to speak. Paul denied the request. When Schertler continued to interject, Paul gave the final order.
"You are not recognized, sir. Security, please remove him from the room."
Capitol Police escorted Schertler out. Paul then noted for the record that Fauci still had the counsel of "the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today."
Schertler is no stranger to clients who decline to cooperate with Congress. In July 2025, he represented Dr. Kevin O'Connor, former President Joe Biden's personal physician, who refused to answer a single question about Biden's health and cognitive decline during congressional testimony.
Schertler also represented Menendez and his wife Nadine on federal bribery charges. Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison in January 2025 after a case that involved gold bars, cash, and a luxury car linked to Egypt. The pattern is consistent: Schertler's clients sit before Congress, and Congress gets silence.
After his removal Wednesday, Schertler told reporters that Fauci "has a valid 5th Amendment privilege and he has the right to assert it and that's what I was trying to tell the committee." In a written statement, he called his ejection "outrageous and demonstrates the completely biased and baseless nature of this proceeding."
With or without his lead attorney in the room, Fauci's strategy did not change. He invoked the Fifth Amendment approximately 111 times, refusing to engage with questions from senators of both parties. He avoided every question thrown his way over nearly four hours.
Fauci read a prepared statement asserting that Paul's "obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution" left him no choice. Breitbart reported Fauci's full statement, in which he claimed "the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, behind bars."
That framing conveniently sidesteps the substance of the committee's inquiry. The hearing was not an abstract political exercise. It followed Paul's release earlier in the week of more than 1,100 pages of Fauci's own typewritten diary entries from the pandemic era, notes that, as Just The News detailed, reignited scrutiny of the gap between what Fauci told the public and what he recorded privately.
The diary contradictions sit at the center of the committee's interest. National Review reported that the entries reveal Fauci privately believed COVID-19's mortality rate was 0.2 to 0.3 percent, yet he testified before Congress that the rate was 1 to 3 percent, or ten times more lethal than the flu. That is not a minor discrepancy. Public policy, school closures, business shutdowns, emergency mandates, turned on those numbers.
The diaries also documented a February 1, 2020, conference call in which 10 of 12 scientists told Fauci they believed "deliberate insertion was possible" as an explanation for the virus's origins. Eight days later, Fauci publicly dismissed the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy theory. The committee wanted to know why. Fauci would not say.
Sen. Roger Marshall asked the obvious question: "Why are there so many discrepancies in what was in his diary versus what he told us, what he told the public?" Fauci offered no answer, only the Fifth.
The release of those diary pages followed months of broader scrutiny. Earlier declassified documents on COVID origins, released by former intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard before her departure, had already deepened public doubt about Fauci's candor during the pandemic.
Paul's central legal argument is straightforward. Former President Biden gave Fauci a sweeping preemptive pardon before leaving office. The Fifth Amendment protects individuals from being compelled to incriminate themselves. But if a pardon already shields Fauci from prosecution, Paul argues, there is no self-incrimination risk left, and no valid basis to invoke the privilege.
"The chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer them, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege despite the existence of the pardon," Paul told Fauci directly.
Fauci's legal team disagrees. Schertler maintained that the Fifth Amendment privilege remains valid regardless. But the committee sided with Paul and formally denied Fauci's assertion of privilege, directing him to answer. He refused.
Paul made the consequences explicit: "It's against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today."
The question of whether a pardon eliminates Fifth Amendment protection is not settled law in every circuit. But Paul's position carries a common-sense force that will resonate with most Americans: if you cannot be prosecuted, what exactly are you protecting yourself from?
Paul announced that the committee will vote on a resolution certifying Fauci in contempt of Congress. Fox News reported Paul's direct warning to Fauci: "Because you refused to answer, citing a privilege that is unsupported because of your pardon, and after being denied to do so, this committee has scheduled a vote next week on a resolution certifying your contempt."
If the measure clears the committee, it must pass the full Senate. After that, the Justice Department decides whether to pursue charges. Contempt of Congress carries one to twelve months in jail and fines up to $100,000.
Paul framed the stakes plainly: "All he had to do today was tell the truth. If he testified and told the truth, even if he admitted to destroying thousands of records, which we think happened, there's no penalty attached. It would just be the truth."
That reference to destroyed records points to a broader pattern. Fauci's former senior adviser, David Morens, pleaded not guilty to charges of destroying COVID-era records. And Fauci's own diary entries have raised questions about whether his sworn testimony about Morens was truthful, contradictions documented in detail before Wednesday's hearing ever began.
Wednesday's hearing produced a striking tableau. A former government official armed with a presidential pardon, flanked by half a dozen lawyers, sat before the elected representatives of the people he once advised, and said nothing of substance for nearly four hours. His lead attorney refused to follow the rules of the room and had to be physically removed. A Democrat asked for leniency; the chairman said no.
Fauci's diaries suggest he knew things he did not share with the public. His testimony before Congress included mortality figures that diverged sharply from his private estimates. Scientists told him a lab origin was plausible; days later, he called the idea a conspiracy theory. The committee wanted explanations. It got the Fifth, 111 times.
The broader push to declassify COVID-origins records has steadily eroded the credibility of the official pandemic narrative that Fauci once controlled. Each new document release makes his silence louder.
A man who spent years lecturing Americans from behind a podium now refuses to answer a single question under oath. The pardon was supposed to protect him. Instead, it stripped away his last plausible reason not to talk, and he still won't.