Anthony Fauci came to Capitol Hill with a small army of lawyers and a plan to invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Then one of those lawyers tried to jump into the questioning—and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul had seen enough.
Paul ordered security to remove attorney David Schertler from the hearing room after Schertler repeatedly interrupted the proceedings and attempted to speak without being recognized.
“You’re disrupting the proceedings,” Paul told him. “Security, please remove him from the room.”
HOLY CRAP! A furious Sen. Rand Paul just had security REMOVE Dr. Anthony Fauci’s disruptive attorney
This whole thing is a shtshow!
“You’re DISRUPTING the proceedings! THIS is the way Fauci wants to be remembered…security, please remove him from the room!” pic.twitter.com/3jqZpeEH1i
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 29, 2026
“Let the record state that Dr. Fauci will still have the advice of the other half-a-dozen attorneys he brought along today,” Paul said after Schertler was escorted out.
Schertler later defended what he had been trying to do. He told reporters that Fauci had a valid Fifth Amendment privilege and a right to assert it.
The spectacle came during Fauci’s subpoenaed appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee identifies Fauci as the only witness on the panel. The subpoenaed hearing began at 8:30 a.m. in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
The committee’s complete webcast shows Fauci seated beside Schertler for questioning about the federal COVID response, government-funded virus research and the origins of the pandemic. It also preserves the confrontation that ended with security escorting Schertler out.
But Fauci made clear in his opening statement that he did not intend to answer the committee’s questions.
He accused Paul of pursuing a politically motivated effort to expose him to criminal prosecution and said he was following his attorneys’ advice by invoking the Fifth Amendment.
According to The Associated Press, Fauci said Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution” led him to conclude the hearing was an attempt to get him to say something that could later be used against him. He called the proceeding politically motivated.
Paul responded by warning that there could be consequences for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena. He said the committee could pursue a contempt of Congress citation and refer the matter to the Justice Department.
The report noted that HHS Secretary Kennedy supplied Fauci’s pandemic-era diary entries to the committee.
Paul released more than 1,100 pages before the hearing and argued they showed gaps between Fauci’s private discussions and public statements.
Fauci’s defenders rejected those accusations. More than 150 infectious-disease experts and other scientists signed a public letter saying no credible evidence had been produced to support charges against him or the alleged COVID-origin cover-up.
The dispute remained unresolved when the hearing adjourned.
The chairman then began asking questions anyway.
Fauci invoked the Fifth when asked about research funding, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his previous testimony to Congress.
At one point, Paul asked whether a folder was sitting in front of Fauci. Fauci refused to answer that too.
“Let the record reflect that the witness has refused to answer whether there’s a folder in front of him based on his Fifth Amendment right,” Paul said.
Axios reported that Paul questioned Fauci about research the senator says was funded in China, along with gain-of-function work Paul said took place at Fort Detrick. Fauci has disputed Paul’s allegations for years.
Paul told Fauci there would be repercussions for refusing to testify. Fauci answered that Paul was trying to obtain a statement—“anything,” in Fauci’s telling—that could support the senator’s repeated calls for him to face prosecution.
Democrats on the committee pushed back on Paul’s premise. Senator Richard Blumenthal called the proceeding part of a “campaign against science” that he said had made the country less safe.
Fauci’s refusal to answer was especially striking because he has appeared before Congress hundreds of times during his long career in government. Wednesday was the first time he invoked the Fifth Amendment in congressional testimony.
The underlying disputes remain fiercely contested. Paul says federal money reached risky coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab through EcoHealth Alliance.
Fauci has maintained that the National Institutes of Health did not fund research that created the virus responsible for COVID-19.
U.S. intelligence agencies have also reached differing conclusions about whether the pandemic began through natural transmission or a lab-related incident.
What was not disputed Wednesday was the extraordinary image Americans saw: Fauci refusing to answer, his attorney interrupting from the witness table, and the committee chairman ordering security to clear the lawyer from the room.
The hearing that was supposed to produce answers instead produced one of the most explosive confrontations Congress has seen in years.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
