Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) on Wednesday night said that he had obtained a copy of Anthony S. Fauci’s phone from the Trump administration ahead of a planned vote on whether to hold the retired government scientist in contempt of Congress for declining to answer Republicans’ questions last week.
“Hopefully, this device will address many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing,” Johnson, the chairman of the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, wrote on social media.
Fauci, who helped lead the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, was subpoenaed to testify in front of the Senate’s government oversight committee last week. Fauci at the hearing repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify and accused the committee’s chairman, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), of trying to wrongly entrap him.
Paul has scheduled a Thursday morning committee vote on whether to hold Fauci in contempt.
Both Paul and Johnson have spent years criticizing Fauci’s guidance during the coronavirus pandemic, such as his encouragement of vaccine mandates and social distancing. Johnson had been seeking to obtain the retired government scientist’s phone for months, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.
The Department of Health and Human Services — which is now led by fellow Fauci critics including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — turned over Fauci’s phone, Johnson wrote on social media. HHS also turned over years of Fauci’s personal diary entries that were collected from government servers, Kennedy and Paul have previously said.
A spokesperson for Fauci did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday evening about Johnson obtaining his phone. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Johnson had obtained Fauci’s phone.
Paul has said that if his committee votes Thursday to hold Fauci in contempt, he will refer the matter directly to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. The Justice Department, which is not obligated to prosecute Fauci, told The Washington Post last week that it “seriously reviews all congressional referrals.”
Paul subpoenaed Fauci earlier this year, saying that the longtime National Institutes of Health official had not been forthcoming about the possible laboratory origins of covid-19, along with other pandemic matters. Fauci has denied Paul’s allegations and has said he already sat for extensive interviews, including 21 hours of testimony in 2024 with a House subcommittee investigating the government’s pandemic response.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said last week, before announcing his plan to invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Democrats have opposed Thursday’s planned contempt vote and called it a disgraceful way to approach a career NIH scientist who spent more than five decades in public service. Fauci left government at the end of 2022, and President Joe Biden issued him a preemptive pardon before leaving office.
“These attacks upon Dr. Fauci, it’s not just about him,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey) said in last week’s hearing, warning that the session was “sending signals” that other researchers, scientists and health care workers could face attacks if they “don’t get in line” with political priorities.
Democrats have also said that Republicans wrongly handled their investigation of Fauci leading up to last week’s hearing.
Sen. Gary Peters (Michigan), the top Democrat on the committee, has accused Paul of not permitting Democrats to take part in a planned transcribed interview with Fauci earlier this year. Paul also has repeatedly said he believes that Fauci belongs in prison.
“Rather than attempting to work together to pursue areas of shared concern, you have directed your investigative efforts at Dr. Fauci in a manner that appears to be pursing an outcome you have prejudged,” Peters wrote to Paul in a June 9 public letter.
Peters has contrasted Paul’s approach to Fauci with a bipartisan investigation of biosafety and potential laboratory leaks that the two senators launched in 2024, when Peters was committee chairman.
Democrats and Republicans have also disagreed over the purpose of last week’s hearing, when Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times. Paul and other GOP lawmakers have said that it was a necessary step for accountability around the government’s pandemic response and that Fauci’s response demonstrated he was evading questions.
Fauci’s allies — Democratic lawmakers and others, including some Republicans who served with him across past administrations — asked whether it was appropriate for GOP lawmakers to spend several hours peppering Fauci with controversial questions he had already said he would not answer.
One former GOP aide pointed to a 2011 ethics opinion issued by the District of Columbia Bar, an organization that guides lawyers on professional conduct. According to the D.C. Bar, congressional staff lawyers should not force a witness to testify if they will only invoke the Fifth Amendment, because that creates a situation where a witness can be wrongly harassed and embarrassed.
Senate Republicans last week publicly discussed whether Fauci could be held in contempt for refusing to answer questions after making an opening statement.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) noted a 2013 episode in the House in which an IRS official made an opening statement and then invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions about whether her agency had wrongly targeted conservative groups. The GOP-led House concluded that the official had waived her Fifth Amendment rights by making an opening statement, and she was ultimately found in contempt.
Kimberly Hamm, who served as general counsel to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and is a partner at Morrison Foerster, questioned whether Fauci’s opening statement was sufficient grounds to bring a contempt charge.
“It’s hard for me to see that he substantively waived his Fifth Amendment rights,” she said, noting the brevity of his comments.
Hamm also said Senate committees conducting investigations had additional tools, such as providing immunity to witnesses, that could have helped Paul get answers from Fauci.
“An immunity order would allow you to get that information, and it would give the witness some comfort,” Hamm said.
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.