Florida AG launching investigation into Fauci after Senate hearing

State Watch Florida AG launching investigation into Fauci after Senate hearing Comments: by Max Rego - 07/29/26 8:09 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Max Rego - 07/29/26 8:09 PM ET Comments: Link copied

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Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Wednesday he is launching a probe into Dr. Anthony Fauci after the longtime health official invoked the Fifth Amendment 100-plus times during a Senate hearing on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Fauci’s lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable,” Uthmeier wrote on 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.”

Fauci, the face of the country’s pandemic response and director of National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times during his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

In his opening statement, Fauci said committee Chair Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) “obvious obsession” with his “prosecution” 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.

Throughout the three-hour hearing, Fauci declined to answer every question GOP senators lobbed at him. Republicans on the panel spent the morning lambasting the infectious disease specialist for his handling of the pandemic, while Democrats defended him against GOP attacks.

Florida Sen. Ashley Moody (R), a member of the committee, said Fauci’s refusal to answer questions was “incredibly frustrating” and “tragic” for the country.

“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 host Bill Melugin on Fox News’s “America Reports.”

After the hearing, Paul said he will push for a vote in committee on holding Fauci in contempt of Congress next week. He also argued Fauci did not need to plead the fifth, given former President Biden pardoned him last year for any potential federal offenses committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 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.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a longtime critic of Fauci, noted Wednesday the longtime federal health official could face prosecution at the state or local level, as his pardon only applies to potential federal crimes.

“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.

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