Rand Paul Bypassed the Full Senate and Hand Delivered Fauci’s Case to Jeanine Pirro

Anthony Fauci refused to answer a single question 111 times last week.

A Senate committee responded Thursday by voting to hold him in contempt of Congress.

Then Rand Paul made a decision that skips the full Senate entirely.

Fauci Hid Behind the Fifth Amendment and Republicans Finally Had Enough

Fauci sat in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week and did something no American should ever watch a public health official do.

He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 separate times.

Not about classified secrets. Not about national security.

About COVID.

Chairman Rand Paul had subpoenaed Fauci to answer basic questions about the origins of the pandemic and the gain of function research his agency funded in Wuhan.

Fauci wouldn't answer any of it.

He accused Paul of running an "unhinged obsession" and claimed the hearing was rigged to trap him into perjury.

Thursday, the committee voted along party lines to hold him in contempt of Congress, 8-5 with two more Democrats opposed by proxy.

Not a single Democrat backed it.

Paul Skipped the Senate Floor and Went Straight for the Justice Department

Here's where it gets interesting.

Contempt referrals normally go to a full Senate vote before anything happens.

Paul isn't waiting.

He told the Washington Examiner his team would hand deliver the referral directly to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and to Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Paul said the point was to avoid sitting on the matter for a month while Congress debated whether to bring it to the Senate floor at all.

Democrats are furious.

Ranking member Gary Peters called the move "dangerous and wildly unprecedented."

He's not wrong that it's unprecedented.

He's just wrong about who forced the situation.

Fauci had a subpoena. He had a chairman asking direct questions. He had every opportunity to answer.

He chose silence instead.

Paul made clear this vote was never about Fauci's pandemic decisions from six years ago.

It was about whether a man protected by a sweeping Biden pardon can simply refuse to talk and walk away with no consequences.

The Fauci Phone Adds a New Layer Republicans Have Been Chasing for Years

Days before the contempt vote, the same subcommittee obtained something Fauci never wanted handed over.

A copy of his COVID-era iPhone.

The Gateway Pundit confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that HHS handed the device over to Senator Ron Johnson's investigative panel.

Johnson has spent years chasing the same theory Paul has pushed publicly.

That Fauci knew far more about the Wuhan lab's role in COVID than he ever admitted under oath.

The phone arrives alongside thousands of pages of Fauci's own pandemic-era journal entries, already released to Congress from federal servers.

Those journals reportedly revealed a man far more concerned with his own image than the country he was advising.

Republicans now have the diaries. They have a contempt vote. They have a copy of his phone.

And now they have a direct line to the Justice Department that doesn't require sixty votes and a filibuster fight Democrats would win.

This Is the Reckoning Fauci Spent Six Years Avoiding

Fauci's pardon covers conduct from 2014 through January 2025.

It does not cover anything he says under oath today.

That is the trap Fauci built for himself the moment he decided silence was safer than the truth.

A pardon protects you from your past. It does not protect you from lying about it right now.

Paul knows that. Pirro knows that. And Fauci, sitting behind a defense that only works if nobody looks too closely, knows it too.

The man who spent years lecturing America to trust the science just spent an entire hearing refusing to answer a single question about it.

Sources:

• Fox News, "Rand Paul says contempt vote against Fauci will pass, eyes DOJ referral," Fox News, August 6, 2026.
• Washington Examiner, "Fauci held in contempt by Rand Paul's committee," Washington Examiner, August 6, 2026.
• The Gateway Pundit, "JUST IN: Senator Ron Johnson Says He Obtained Fauci's COVID-Era iPhone from HHS Ahead of Contempt Vote," The Gateway Pundit, August 5, 2026.
• Townhall, "With That Development, We Know Why Anthony Fauci Hired THAT Kind of Lawyer," Townhall, August 5, 2026.