Legal Expert Warns Fauci Hearing Could Deepen Contempt Risk

A Yale-trained legal scholar said Wednesday that Anthony Fauci may have complicated his own legal position during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, telling CNN that the former National Institutes of Health official’s testimony could backfire. Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor, made the assessment during an appearance with anchor Erin Burnett ahead of a key vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to testify. Goodman pushed back on the notion that Fauci was protected simply because he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned about allegations that he misled Congress and the public over the origins of COVID-19. “I think it makes it worse,” Goodman said, adding that the approach raised questions about the legal strategy behind it: “It’s even a curious way in which you wonder what his legal advice was, why they decided to do that.”

Goodman, who previously served as special counsel to the Defense Department, noted that any alleged offenses arising during the hearing itself would not necessarily fall under Joe Biden’s broad pardon of Fauci, including a possible contempt charge. “There could be — theoretically, at least — a Justice Department that goes after him for not answering when he is not really facing that criminal charge,” Goodman said. Burnett suggested Fauci may have been trying to steer clear of what critics often call “perjury traps” set by Republicans on the committee, but added that to many viewers, the optics were difficult. “To the layperson, it’s saying, well, ‘Why wouldn’t you just say the truth?’” she said. “So… it doesn’t sound good,” she acknowledged.

Biden’s pardon covers potential federal offenses committed between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025, and was granted to Fauci in early 2025 on the then-president’s final day in office. Senator Rand Paul, who chairs the committee, has accused Fauci of misleading Congress and approving funding for overseas experiments that Paul argues may have contributed to the spread of the virus. Fauci has consistently denied those claims, maintaining that the NIH did not fund such research in China. During the hearing, the 85-year-old former official said Paul’s motive was political and personal: “The sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

The origin of COVID-19, which first emerged in late 2019, remains fiercely disputed. The two leading explanations are a laboratory-related incident and natural zoonotic transmission, in which the virus moved from animals to humans. Diary entries written by Fauci from early 2020 through his retirement in 2022, released before the hearing, showed that he expressed uncertainty at various points about whether the virus may have been engineered or leaked from a lab. Paul has argued that, under Fauci’s leadership, the NIH funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has accused the retired health official of misleading lawmakers about whether that work amounted to gain-of-function research.

More than six years after the pandemic began, no definitive conclusion has been reached on how COVID-19 originated. Speaking to reporters Wednesday about the committee’s planned vote next week on holding Fauci in contempt of Congress, Paul echoed parts of Goodman’s analysis. “We believe with his liability, 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 said. Goodman described Fauci’s continued ability to invoke the Fifth Amendment as “a legal question,” while noting that the next steps remain uncertain. “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 it up,” he said.