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Live Coverage of Senate Hearings with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired July 29, 2026 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:30:00]

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Telling him that he could not invoke -- telling Dr. Fauci that he could not invoke his Fifth Amendment right here.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I mean, you saw Chairman Paul saying to the attorney, you are not even supposed to be sitting next to him at the table. And as the attorney tried to say some more things, he had him removed.

Speaking of which, as he was removed, we have reporters outside. Lauren Fox is outside. We are going to go to her in a second.

But Dr. Fauci is speaking again. Let's listen.

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Senator Hassan.

SEN. MARGARET HASSAN (D-NH): Thank you.

Dr. Fauci, I want to start by thanking you for more than 50 years of service to this country at the National Institutes of Health. And it is unfortunate that you have been put in the position that you are in today. And it must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you. It must be very frustrating for your attorneys to hear the chairs mischaracterization of the legal issues and posture that impact your decisions at the witness table today.

Meanwhile, I was going to ask you a series of questions about things that are relevant right now to the people of the United States about the state of public health in this country.

Since President Trump took office in 2025, more than 4,500 cases of measles have been reported. That is more cases in the year and a half since Donald Trump has been president than were reported from 2000 to 2024 combined. Children are dying because there has been increased vaccine hesitancy, fueled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, and, frankly, his entire administration.

Thousands of people in the United States of America have been sickened by a food borne parasite. And the outbreak is nowhere near under control as staffing at the FDA and other critical public health entities has been slashed by Russell Vought and Elon Musk. Last year, the National Institutes of Health awarded 200 -- I think

it's 201 fewer grants compared to the previous years. Two hundred and seven, I am corrected, compared to previous years. As those grants were either canceled or delayed, especially at the beginning of the Trump administration, I can tell you, I can tell my colleagues what the impact was on people in New Hampshire, on scientists in New Hampshire, on clinical trials in New Hampshire, where people's cancer treatment was interrupted because Elon Musk and Russell Vought know better, they say, than the people at NIH about what to fund. And because they did some sort of word search, it seems, to some of the grants. And boy, oh boy, if you were studying rural health in New Hampshire and trying to understand how to better engage people who need health care in rural America, that was off the table.

America is losing researchers and scientists to other countries because researchers and scientists, highly trained, highly qualified, invested in often by the American taxpayer, are finding the hostility from this administration so strong that it interferes with their science. And they want to pursue science wherever that science takes them.

I also sit on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. We have had a number of hearings with nominees recently to fill critical spots. One of those nominees is Dr. Erica Schwartz, a brilliant woman, medical degree, biomedical engineering degree. I think she also told us she has a law degree and a masters in public health. She was a two- star admiral in the United States Navy. An experienced doctor. And yet, when I asked her if she would push back at Secretary Kennedy if he instructed her to suspend the promotion of the flu vaccine, as he did some point in the last few months, there's an email to prove it, she couldn't answer that question.

[09:35:10]

She either could not, would not, or had been bullied into evading a question about whether she, as the director of CDC, would stand up to Secretary Kennedy, the most unqualified secretary of Health and Human Services this country has ever seen. And more than unqualified, somebody who pursues conspiracy theories, degrades people with disabilities and continues to promote disproved science. That's the state of health care and public health in this country right now. Not to mention the trillion dollars or so of cuts to the Medicaid program that is decimating health care in my state and decimating it around the country. Not to mention the refusal of my colleagues and this administration to extend critical tax cuts for people who are trying to afford insurance on the Affordable Care Act.

I just was at one of my community health clinics, and they are reporting fewer and fewer people coming in for care, disrupting care because they can no longer afford health insurance. And that is impacting, of course, the revenue stream to the community health clinic, their ability to hire and pay people, their ability to take care of their community. That's what I wish we were having hearings about in this committee and in the health committee. That's what I wish we were trying to address in a bipartisan way. But instead, we are here, in an attempt to entrap you, because you had a distinguished career trying to put Americans public health first.

With that, I yield.

PAUL: Senator Lankford.

SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Dr. Fauci, thanks for coming today. I know you're invoking your Fifth Amendment right, which you have the right to be able to do constitutionally. But thanks for coming to be a part of this.

There are a lot of issues and a lot of questions that have come up. And hopefully, in some day in the future, we'll be able to get all this clarity to be able to pull together.

There were over a million Americans that died from Covid. You know that well. You were tracking the numbers literally every single day, those affected and those that died, from the earliest days. There were a lot of lessons that we've got to learn from this that we should put into history to be able to determine what happens in the future, how do we respond in the future, how do we deal with something like this again. It was uncharted territory for everyone.

But I would tell you, countless families, including my own, watched a loved one die behind glass or through a screen because we couldn't get access to him. Children couldn't get to school. People missed their prom or graduation ceremonies. There were lots of things that happened that dramatically changed the future of the country.

The mental health issues that we have continued to deal with from the isolation have been profound. Even something as simple as children that wore masks or were around adults wearing masks for all that time are slower in learning language now because they couldn't watch someone's lips moving, and so they're slower in that.

Amazingly enough, churches and places of worship were forced to be closed down. There were even churches that met where the pastor preached in the parking lot and the congregants all met in their cars with windows up and police came and scattered them and said, you can't be here. The simple act of social distancing became an issue as everyone guessed, what's the right distance to be away from someone else.

Literacy rates have declined. All these things are results, not to mention the loss of lives and the health experiences that have been out there for many Americans. So, there are legitimate questions.

I wanted to be able to raise some of those, to be able to walk through some of this, because it has been very, very challenging. As we've gone through some of your notes and your diary and other things that are out there, we're trying to be able to pull bits and pieces of things to be able to learn lessons.

On May the 6th, 2020, you wrote at that time, "I had a conversation with Robert Redfield," as you know well was then the director of CDC, "about the fact that greater than one million children worldwide have missed their measles vaccination because of the shutdown." You stated, "this is terrible and needs to be addressed, since on that basis alone there would be far, far more excess deaths from measles among children than coronavirus deaths among children.

[09:40:09]

I need to bring this up to the TF," the task force.

Did you ever have an opportunity to bring up the potential of measles deaths among children and an infection rate going around the world from measles based on the fact that so many children would not get their measles vaccine because of the shutdown?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, FORMER DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I'm sorry, Senator, but on the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

LANKFORD: That is your right to do.

One of the big issues is really coming up is on the lab issue. This was greatly discussed about whether this came from a lab or whether this came from nature. There are obvious issues and differences between the two, to be able to know this. You had a lot of conversation on this. Scientists around the world were in -- were in conversation on this.

There are different statements that you even made in your private notes and your public notes on it. On January the 26th of 2020, this is before we had our -- even our first tragic death of coronavirus in the United States you wrote, "it now appears, using epi (ph) data, that the genomic data, the first infection, was in early December and was not connected to the market," which was the big rumor that was out there, it was this wet market in China. "We know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier."

On January the 31st, you wrote about a phone call. You wrote, "the people on the phone felt the mutations around the furin cleavage site of the spike protein could not have occurred naturally since it would require an evolutionary jump that they found nowhere in bat isolates." They bring up the possibility this could have been deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or deliberately released by a crazy person in the lab, the former being the most likely.

February the 1st, same year, 2020, this is, again, still before our first death. "There was not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion. Ron said he was sure that this could occur naturally and we should not waste our time and divert our effort to pursue this." This is expected of him since he was the original gain of function person with Yoshi (ph). Also, "Christian was withdrawn. The rest felt deliberate insertion was possible. And given the fact that Dr. Jing Lin Xi (ph) at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in gain of function in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor. We could not let this go." That's a remarkable statement for February the 1st of 2020 when there

hadn't even been the first death here but we knew something was moving. You knew well that something was moving. You identified February the 1st, before any of us had ever heard of the Wuhan lab, not only the Wuhan lab in the conversation, but literally the scientists that you named in your own notes, the lead scientist that was there. It's interesting to me on that. And the questions I was going to ask you was just, your background and knowledge about the Wuhan lab and Dr. Shi and all the details, I'm aware of where you have been on trying to be able to plead your Fifth Amendment right, which is your right to be able to do. But I also want to be able to find out some facts to be able to help us for the future on this.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May of 2020 put out a classified document that has only been recently unclassified on this that had this statement, "we assess all the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory modified coronavirus, specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors, were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid to late 2019.

Now, the question that I have for you is, this is May the 27th of 2020. This is the report that most people will see is this. I have -- I have clearance, I serve on the Intelligence Committee. I've actually read this complete document unredacted. My concern is, were you given the ability to see this document unredacted based on your position? Were you able to see this and to be able to get this information? I could. I could see it. And I know what's here. Everybody else just has their conclusion at the beginning of it. Not this.

My question to you was going to be, did you have access, because it's important for the future that people in your position do have access to this kind of information and insight. Is there any way you could answer that question, were you able to give access to this data?

FAUCI: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

LANKFORD: You wrote on January the 26th of 2020, "we should be allowed to send our CDC epidemiologist to China to work with them" so you could -- so they could see the data firsthand.

[09:45:03]

You also wrote in February 12, 2020, that you had great concerns about the World Health Organization because they (ph) depends greatly on China. And as you stated, often bows to them.

This is a really important issue that we've got to resolve for the future. It's not just our cooperation with Chinese scientists, it's our acknowledgment that China covered up their data, wouldn't allow our scientists to be able to come in. They cleaned up the wet market. They cleaned up the other areas. They wouldn't allow you to get access to all the other scientists that are there, including their health records, what happened to them, or even all the sequencing that they had done in advance. For the future of our research and our cooperation with any scientists around the world, I think it's really important that we resolve, if we're going to fund research and cooperate with you, we've got to have certain things from you. If things go sideways, we've got to have access to all information in all places. You were noting not only that China was affecting the World Health Organization and that China was bending them to their will, and so the World Health Organization was putting out data that you saw, at least at that point, as being from a Chinese perspective covering up what was going on. But you also noted, we weren't able to get access to all this information.

We've got to be able to figure this out for the future, to be able to make sure that research that is done, we have access to all information if something goes sideways at some point, which clearly it did at the Wuhan institute of virology. And that being, as was noted by many people, the only lab in the world that was doing research like this that had a lower standard of -- actually their security standards there than many other labs around the world, yet they were doing this very dangerous research.

What can we gain and what advice could you give us to say, in a future setting, we've got to make sure that we actually get information from people, and we can be guaranteed that we're going to get that insight.

Yes, sir.

FAUCI: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

LANKFORD: I yield back.

PAUL: Senator Blumenthal.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to go back to the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the darkest days, or times in our history. Hospitals were overflowing. Navy medical ships were docked in the Hudson River. Emergency rooms were forced into unprecedented triaging during the worst week of the pandemic, which happens to have been the last week of President Trump's first term. More than 25,000 Americans died of Covid-19. Easy to forget those dark days.

But for the past 18 months, the Trump administration has been engaged in a campaign to rewrite this history. And today's proceeding, I fear, is part of that effort, one of the darkest days in our Senate's history.

The Trump administration has launched a baseless set of smears against vaccines that helped pull us out of that public health crisis. Vaccines that are undoubtedly President Trump's greatest accomplishment. It has slashed funding to local public health departments that were on the front lines of the pandemic. And those health care workers are heroes.

It has disparaged those heroes as woke or wasteful. And it has used a politicized Department of Justice to target the researchers who helped us track and understand the novel virus. Today's hearing is another page in that playbook, sadly, tragically.

Dr. Fauci, you've spent five decades in public service, including nearly four decades in leadership at the National Institutes of Health, helping to conquer Covid-19, but also HIV, swine flu, zika, Ebola and other epidemics with real life results saving human lives. Put aside all the flowery rhetoric that we hear in the United States Senate, Dr. Fauci has saved lives, as have public health officials in the United States and throughout the world. And today we are demeaning and degrading their life-saving service.

[09:50:04]

Republicans are eager to rebrand you as a villain in order to distract from their own failure to protect Americans from soaring health care costs, they've been rising astronomically in the last couple of years, and from unsafe food, which has caused cyclospora to spread, and resurgent measles, as a result of the anti-vaccine policy.

This hearing is the culmination of a year's long crusade, which started more than six years ago when Dr. Fauci dared to contradict President Trump. The campaign to vilify you, Dr. Fauci, is just one part of this larger campaign against science and facts, a campaign that has made Americans less safe. It is shameful that in a country like ours, a dedicated public servant like Dr. Fauci has experienced persistent threats to his life since the pandemic because of the lies that are told about him.

His attorney has been gagged. Thrown out of this hearing room. But he has written a letter to the chairman that is an explanation for the reasons why Dr. Fauci is, in fact, invoking his constitutional right. It is a right. And I would ask that this letter from David Schertler and Danny Onorato be made a part of the record if there's no objection.

PAUL: Without objection.

BLUMENTHAL: His attorney has also issued a statement within the last half hour, I believe, that sets forth again the reasons that he is here to help protect his client's rights. And I would ask that that statement be made part of the record as well, Mr. Chairman.

PAUL: Without objection.

BLUMENTHAL: Let's be very clear, the Fifth Amendment is a right of everyone appearing before an authority like this one. It should be respected. And the reason that Dr. Fauci has invoked it, in the words of his attorney, quote, "during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Fauci appeared at least a dozen times for congressional hearings in the Senate alone in answer to questions about the very issues on which you purport to seek information. He has been thoroughly transparent and consistent in providing factual information to Congress, and he is deeply familiar with the processes and protocols of sharing information with the legislative branch." And then referring to the chairman, "this year's long public crusade

against Dr. Fauci makes one thing clear, this is not a serious effort to seek information from Dr. Fauci in a transcribed interview for a valid legislative purpose. You are single-mindedly fixated on Dr. Fauci -- seeing Dr. Fauci prosecuted for imaginary crimes, and you are so invested in that outcome that you have created a personal brand around it." Those are the words of his attorney.

And he cites as well the statements of the chairman, which indicate a clear intent that the result of this proceeding be a prosecution. Quote, "the power of some of us must be used for good, like putting Fauci in jail." That's from December 23, 2025. "I want to give him a subpoena and a jail cell." Also from December of 2025. The first was 2024.

Those kinds of statements by the chairman of a committee in tweets certainly provide a well-founded fear that the proceeding underway is simply an effort to trap Dr. Fauci in some kind of criminal wrongdoing. That is not the purpose of a congressional hearing. Not the valid purpose of a congressional hearing.

During some of the dark days in this body, under Senator Joe McCarthy, it became standard operating procedure to seek that kind of prosecutorial objective.

[09:55:17]

We should not be part of a rerun of that kind of effort. This attempt to rebrand one of the most challenging times in our nation's history is a short-sighted act of desperation that will leave us less prepared for the next pandemic. It is an insult to the memory of more than one million Americans who died from Covid-19.

If there are valid, scientific questions about the origins of this pandemic, Covid-19, about the kinds of steps that were taken to counter it, about the need for more preparation, they should certainly be addressed, but not in a show trial. Not as part of a continuing vendetta against a single individual. And unfortunately, I fear that is what we are seeing today. America deserves better.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

PAUL: In no courtroom in America can you have your witness plead the Fifth Amendment and then your attorney gets to testify. That's what that letter is. The attorney's complaining and testifying, saying, he didn't do it. The prosecution's unfair. You don't get to do that. That's one thing you give up. When you take the Fifth Amendment you say, I'm not going to testify. I'm not going to give you any information. You don't then get to put your lawyer forward to justify it. He can do it in the press, but you can't come and testify. He was not invited to testify. And he was out of order. And it was appropriate to have him injected.

Senator Scott.

SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): Chairman Paul, thank you for doing this. I think -- I know in my state people have been asking questions about Dr. Fauci for years.

So, Dr. Fauci, your entry has made clear that you love being the hero. A celebrity. And here, having the eyes of the world upon you. You loved every newspaper profile, every photo shoot, every fancy dinner with the elites. To many Americans who lost family members, who lost trust in our federal government, you are not a hero. Unfortunately, you're a villain. You made yourself the story and abandoned the American people to serve your own ego.

To begin, I would like to talk about your relationship with David Maraniss. He was the senior advisor in the NIAID office of the director, your office, for 16 years. He was your friend. He was a frequent guest at your house. You reportedly coauthored over 50 scientific articles with him. You turned to him first right after Covid-19 first occurred.

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice charged him with conspiracy against the United States, in addition to other charges, as part of a conspiracy to conceal information and falsify records to suppress alternative theories about the origins of Covid-19.

Now, you've publicly kicked this man to the curb, saying, Dr. Maraniss was not an adviser to me on institute policy or other substantive issues. So, let's start with the use of personal Gmail accounts and Dave Maraniss' relationship with Peter Daszak. David Maraniss tells Peter Daszak, the president of Equal Alliance, and you've got this in front of you, it's exhibit one, and it's in -- it's already in the record as part of this. It says, quote, "p.s., I forgot to say that there is no worry about FOIA. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."

Dr. Fauci, did Dr. Maraniss' relationship with Peter Daszak concern you? Yes or no?

FAUCI: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

SCOTT: Did David Maraniss ever bring documents to your house?

FAUCI: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

SCOTT: Did you ever receive a text about your work at NIAID to your personal cell phone?

FAUCI: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

SCOTT: Did any texts about your work at NID that went to your personal cell phone ever become part of the federal records?

FAUCI: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

SCOTT: Did you maintain a personal email account while serving as director?

FAUCI: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

[10:00:00]

SCOTT: Did you ever receive work-related communications on that Gmail account from David Maraniss?

FAUCI: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights