Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Wednesday that his office is opening an investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci, following the former federal health official's repeated use of the Fifth Amendment during a contentious Senate hearing on the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Fauci’s lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable,” Uthmeier wrote on the social platform X. “My office is launching an investigation into Dr. Fauci. It’s past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID.”
The move comes a day after Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years and became the public face of the U.S. pandemic response, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times while testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In his opening statement, Fauci accused committee chairman Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) of having an “obvious obsession” with his “prosecution,” which he said compelled him to plead the Fifth.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words ‘behind bars,’” Fauci remarked during the hearing.
Throughout the three-hour session, Fauci declined to answer every question posed by GOP senators, who lambasted his handling of the pandemic. Democrats on the panel defended Fauci, framing the Republican attacks as a partisan vendetta. The hearing featured heated exchanges, including Senator Gary Peters accusing Paul of a partisan vendetta.
Florida Senator Ashley Moody (R), a committee member, expressed frustration with Fauci’s refusal to answer questions. “Everything we did to keep Washington out of our lives in Florida, which made Florida the free state, that was really on trial today, and he couldn’t answer a question because he took the fifth every time. Very frustrating,” Moody told Fox News’s “America Reports.”
Following the hearing, Paul said he will push for a committee vote next week to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. Paul argued that Fauci’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment was unnecessary because former President Joe Biden pardoned him last year for any potential federal offenses committed between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025. “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.
The clash between Fauci’s pardon and his Fifth Amendment stance has set the stage for a contempt vote. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), a longtime critic of Fauci, noted Wednesday that the pardon only covers federal crimes, leaving the door open for state or local prosecution. “It would require either a state AG or local state attorney to bring a case, which would need to establish violations of state law as well as personal jurisdiction over the defendant,” DeSantis, a former federal prosecutor, wrote on X.
The investigation by Uthmeier, a Republican, adds a new legal dimension to the ongoing political battle over Fauci’s role in the pandemic. Critics argue his testimony raised more questions than answers, while supporters view the probe as a politically motivated escalation. The outcome could hinge on whether Florida can establish a violation of state law and jurisdiction over Fauci, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area.
