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Fox News legal contributor Solomon Wisenberg said Thursday that the Senate would lose a legal battle over trying to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt.
“It’s really not going to be a close question, he is going to — the Senate, if they try to have the Department of Justice hold him in contempt — is going to lose in court,” Wisenberg said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he would press to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress in the wake of Fauci invoking his Fifth Amendment right at Wednesday’s Senate hearing.
“That’s a vote that will happen in committee next week. It will be in contempt of Congress,” Paul told reporters following the hearing.
“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,” he continued. “That’ll be a legal question, but the question on contempt will be voted on, and then there’s a question of whether or not the Department of Justice will take that up.”
Both houses of Congress can vote to hold a witness in contempt, but the action is simply a referral to the Justice Department, which considers whether to bring charges.
“So, legally, ultimately, the Senate will be able to harass him, but it’s a valid implication of the Fifth Amendment,” Wisenberg said in his Fox News interview. “You may not like it, but it’s a valid implication.”
Whether to hold someone in contempt is usually considered in the congressional committee first and then faces a vote before the full chamber, but Paul has said he might skip that step.
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