SENATE ROCKED — 2 GOP SENATORS JUST SAVED ANTHONY FAUCI FROM JAIL
Rand Paul Wants to Send Fauci Straight to DOJ—Now Two Republican Senators Are Warning the Shortcut Could Backfire on the GOP
Rand Paul finally got the contempt vote he wanted against Anthony Fauci.
Then two Republicans raised a different question.
Not whether Fauci should be investigated.
Not whether his Fifth Amendment claims were persuasive.
But whether Paul is about to create a precedent Republicans may regret the next time Democrats control Washington.
That is now the real fight.
On Thursday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8–5 to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after the former NIAID director repeatedly refused to answer questions during a subpoenaed hearing.
Paul says Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times.
The Kentucky Republican argues that Fauci had no valid reason to remain silent because former President Joe Biden issued him a broad federal pardon covering conduct connected to his government service from January 2014 through January 19, 2025.
Republicans including Josh Hawley have gone even further.
Hawley says his staff is preparing a legal memorandum urging the Justice Department to prosecute Fauci.
But now Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Mike Rounds of South Dakota are openly questioning whether Paul’s strategy is legally and institutionally sound.
And their objection matters because Paul is not proposing the normal route.
Traditionally, when a Senate committee recommends criminal contempt, the matter goes to the full Senate.
The chamber then decides whether to approve the referral.
Paul wants to bypass that step.
His plan is to send the committee’s recommendation directly to the Justice Department, potentially with Vice President JD Vance, acting as president of the Senate, certifying the referral.
That could save Republicans from an awkward floor fight.
It could also trigger an entirely new one.
Lankford’s warning is essentially about precedent.
He said the contempt matter “has got to actually go through the full Senate.”
More importantly, he warned Republicans to think beyond Fauci.
If Vance helps establish a new process in which a committee can effectively send a witness toward criminal prosecution without a full Senate vote, a future Democratic Senate could try to use the same mechanism against Republican officials.
That is the part of this story that changes the stakes.
Paul sees a shortcut.
Lankford sees a weapon that may eventually change hands.
And the law is not as clear as either side would probably like.
The federal contempt statute, 2 U.S.C. §194, says that when a witness refuses to answer a pertinent question before a congressional committee, the failure can be reported and filed with the president of the Senate or speaker of the House, who then certifies the matter to the appropriate U.S. attorney.
The text does not explicitly say that the full chamber must always vote first.
That gives Paul something to argue.
But congressional practice has generally gone the other way.
The Congressional Research Service notes that the House and Senate have traditionally required full-chamber approval before making a criminal contempt referral.
At least one court has also treated a full-chamber vote as necessary.
That leaves Paul in legally disputed territory.
His argument is not obviously impossible.
It is also not clearly settled.
And that uncertainty may be exactly why Lankford is uncomfortable.
Changing congressional procedure in the middle of a politically explosive investigation can feel attractive when your party controls the chamber.
It can feel much less attractive once the other party inherits the same precedent.
Rounds is raising a separate problem.
He is not primarily focused on Senate procedure.
He is questioning the contempt case itself.
“The first thing you have to do is identify what it is that you would be holding him in contempt for,” Rounds said.
His concern goes directly to the Fifth Amendment.
Fauci did appear in response to the subpoena.
He sat before the committee.
He then repeatedly asserted a constitutional privilege against self-incrimination.
The legal question is whether that privilege was valid.
Paul says it was not.
His reasoning is simple.
Biden pardoned Fauci.
If Fauci cannot be federally prosecuted for the conduct being discussed, Paul argues, then truthful answers cannot incriminate him for that conduct.
Hawley makes the same point even more bluntly.
In his view, Fauci cannot have both the protection of a pardon and the protection of the Fifth Amendment for the same underlying conduct.
But that argument is not the end of the analysis.
A pardon can eliminate federal criminal liability for covered conduct.
It does not automatically eliminate every conceivable legal risk.
A witness may still worry about state prosecution, conduct outside the pardon’s scope, or legal exposure arising from new statements made after the pardon.
A pardon also does not protect someone from committing perjury during later testimony.
That is why Fauci’s attorneys argue that the Fifth Amendment issue cannot simply be dismissed because Biden signed a pardon.
If DOJ accepts Paul’s referral and attempts to prosecute, a court may eventually have to decide whether Fauci’s fear of prosecution was legally reasonable.
Sen. Ashley Moody appears comfortable with exactly that possibility.
She supports Paul’s effort and says the dispute may need to be clarified by a judge.
That position effectively acknowledges something important:
Republicans themselves do not have a single agreed answer.
Some believe Fauci plainly violated congressional authority.
Others believe the Fifth Amendment question is complicated enough that prosecution is risky.
And still others may agree with the investigation while rejecting Paul’s procedural shortcut.
That is a much more interesting Republican split than the usual partisan framing.
Because the dispute is no longer simply:
Republicans versus Fauci.
It is Republicans arguing over how far Congress should go when a witness invokes constitutional rights.
There is also the question of the 60-vote threshold.
Paul has suggested a full Senate route could run into procedural barriers because moving a contempt resolution across the floor may require overcoming a filibuster.
Republicans do not have 60 seats.
That creates an obvious incentive to find another path.
But avoiding a difficult vote does not automatically make the alternative legally stronger.
It may simply move the fight from the Senate floor to the Justice Department—and eventually to court.
That is where Josh Hawley’s memo becomes important.
If DOJ is going to pursue the case, prosecutors will need more than political pressure.
They will need a legal theory capable of surviving motions to dismiss.
They will need to show that Fauci’s refusal to answer was not protected by the Fifth Amendment.
They may also have to defend the validity of a referral that never received full Senate approval.
And even then, criminal contempt of Congress is not self-executing.
Congress cannot convict Fauci.
The Justice Department would have to decide whether to prosecute.
A grand jury could become involved.
A federal judge would oversee the case.
And Fauci’s lawyers would have multiple opportunities to challenge the prosecution.
That is why Thursday’s committee vote was politically dramatic but legally incomplete.
Paul won 8–5.
He did not win a criminal conviction.
He did not even win agreement from every Republican senator that his next step is wise.
Lankford’s concern may be the one GOP leaders think about longest.
Imagine a future Democratic Senate investigating a Republican official.
Imagine that official invokes executive privilege or the Fifth Amendment.
Imagine a Democratic committee approving contempt without obtaining enough support to win on the Senate floor.
If Republicans now bless a committee-only path to DOJ, Democrats could cite that precedent later.
That is why congressional procedure often survives for decades even when it frustrates the majority party.
Rules that slow you down also slow down your opponents when power changes hands.
Paul’s response is that Congress cannot perform meaningful oversight if witnesses can simply refuse to answer and face no consequences.
That concern is real too.
Congressional subpoenas mean little if enforcement takes years or depends on political calculations at DOJ.
Previous contempt fights involving officials from both parties have shown how difficult congressional enforcement can become when the executive branch does not want to prosecute.
So Paul is trying to force a test.
Can a Senate committee directly trigger the criminal contempt process?
Does a broad presidential pardon eliminate Fauci’s Fifth Amendment protection for questions about pardoned conduct?
And if the Justice Department says yes, will a federal court agree?
Those questions are now bigger than the original hearing.
The COVID investigation may have created the dispute.
But the precedent could affect congressional investigations long after Fauci and Paul are gone.
That is why Lankford and Rounds matter.
Neither senator is defending Fauci’s pandemic record.
Neither is telling Paul to abandon oversight.
They are warning that accountability pursued through a questionable process can create consequences far beyond the target sitting in front of the committee.
For Paul, the goal is simple.
He believes Fauci avoided answers Congress had a right to demand.
He wants DOJ to prosecute.
For Hawley, the pardon may be the legal key that unlocks the case.
For Moody, a courtroom may be the right place to settle it.
For Rounds, the constitutional privilege itself creates doubt.
And for Lankford, the procedure could become a loaded gun left on the table for the next majority.
Fauci is no longer the only person under pressure.
JD Vance may have to decide whether to certify a controversial referral.
The Justice Department must decide whether the case is prosecutable.
Republican senators must decide whether they want a precedent that could survive a change in power.
And Paul must decide whether moving faster is worth making the legal fight harder.
The committee has already delivered its verdict.
The next question is much bigger.
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Republicans have spent years trying to hold Fauci accountable.
Now they have to decide how much congressional power they are willing to reshape to do it.
