A Senate committee voted Thursday to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress and send a criminal referral to the Justice Department, testing whether a witness's refusal to testify can be turned into a prosecution with consequences far beyond Covid-19.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved the resolution 8-7 along party lines, a week after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 100 times at a hearing on the US government's pandemic response. Chairman Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and longtime Fauci critic, said his office would hand-deliver the referral to the Attorney General and the US Attorney in Washington the same day.
