Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared visibly frustrated after a tense day on Capitol Hill, where he was overheard venting to his wife, Christine Grady, about someone “shouting” at him.
Fauci and Grady, who have been married for 41 years, were seen taking a brisk walk Wednesday evening near their $2.4 million residence in Washington, DC’s upscale Wesley Heights neighborhood.
The outing came just hours after Fauci declined to answer questions about the COVID-19 pandemic during a dramatic Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, invoking his Fifth Amendment right more than 100 times.
Wearing a Georgetown University “IronMed 5K” T-shirt and handling his phone as he walked, Fauci complained that someone “was shouting at me” and used an expletive while discussing the heated exchanges he faced from Republican senators earlier in the day.
The Brooklyn-born physician had been compelled to appear after being subpoenaed by Sen. Rand Paul, who has accused Fauci of misleading the public about COVID-19 and helping obscure questions surrounding the virus’s origins.
Following the four-hour hearing, Paul (R-Ky.) said his committee would move to begin contempt of Congress proceedings against Fauci, citing his refusal to respond to even basic questions posed by Republican lawmakers.
Fauci, 85, led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years before stepping down from government service in December 2022.
At the time of his retirement, Fauci was the highest-paid federal employee in the country, earning $481,000 in his final year, with a reported combined net worth of more than $11 million with his wife.
In 2023, Fauci joined the faculty of Georgetown University as a distinguished professor at the Infectious Diseases Division in its School of Medicine.
His wife, who served as the chief bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was reportedly fired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., shortly after the start of President Trump’s second term.
In March, Grady joined her husband at Georgetown University, where she serves as the senior advisor on bioethics and neuroethics and a professor of neuroscience.