Fauci Backed Out, So Rand Paul Subpoenaed Him. That’s the Whole Story

Six months of negotiating. A voluntary agreement to testify, finally locked in. Then, one week before he was supposed to show up, Anthony Fauci simply changed his mind.

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July 29th — that's when Rand Paul brings Fauci in for questioning.

Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, laid it out plainly. Last week, Anthony Fauci notified us he will not voluntarily testify, Paul wrote, even though he had previously agreed to do so.

Last week, Anthony Fauci notified us he will NOT voluntarily testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, even though he had previously agreed to do so, said Paul.

That’s not spin. That’s the sequence of events, confirmed by Paul’s own office and reported across multiple outlets. Fauci said yes. Then Fauci said no. Then Paul made yes mandatory.

Why would a man with nothing to hide need six months of negotiation just to agree to a hearing, only to bail at the last minute anyway?

Paul didn’t mince words describing the runup to this moment. We’ve been negotiating with him for material and for testimony, Paul said in a CNBC interview. This has gone on for some time. He slow-walked us and slow-walked us. Finally agreed to come in voluntarily, then last week he says he’s not coming in.

Slow-walked. That’s the word doing the heavy lifting here, and it tracks with a pattern stretching back years. This is the same man who told Congress in 2021 that the NIH had never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a statement directly contradicted by an email later made public in which Fauci himself acknowledged that Wuhan researchers were working on exactly that kind of experiment, tied to bat viruses adapting to infect humans, weeks before the pandemic was even declared a national emergency.

Paul’s subpoena didn’t come out of nowhere either. It landed just days after outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a batch of documents she said exposed Fauci’s role in steering the intelligence community away from the lab leak theory and toward the natural origin explanation, even as internal analysts pushed back. Gabbard didn’t hedge her language. She accused Fauci of manipulating intelligence and lying to Congress, adding that the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability after years of cover ups.

Isn’t it worth asking why the timing lines up the way it does? Gabbard drops the documents. Days later, Fauci suddenly decides the hearing he’d already agreed to attend isn’t something he wants to do after all.

Paul has also pointed to testimony from a CIA official alleging that an internal scientific commission inside the agency voted six to one in favor of the lab origin theory, a conclusion Paul says later shifted under pressure he hasn’t yet fully detailed. Whether that specific claim holds up under scrutiny is exactly the kind of question a public hearing is supposed to answer. That’s the entire point of compelling testimony instead of accepting a written statement crafted by lawyers.

Fauci does have one escape hatch left. He can challenge the subpoena in court, dragging the fight out further and adding yet another chapter to a standoff that’s already stretched across half a year of stalling. Paul’s message on that front has been blunt. With this subpoena power, we will bring him in, unless he fights this in court.

Biden’s blanket pardon complicates the legal stakes but doesn’t erase the political ones. That pardon covered potential offenses going back a decade, but Paul has already signaled he considers it constitutionally shaky, vague enough to challenge, and irrelevant to the basic question a congressional committee is entitled to ask. A pardon protects against prosecution. It doesn’t protect against having to answer questions under oath in a public hearing room, on the record, on camera.

July 29 is the date now circled on the calendar. Fauci is set to appear before Paul’s committee, under compulsion this time rather than by choice, to face questions about Wuhan funding, gain-of-function research, and whether his 2024 testimony to Congress squares with what the declassified documents actually show.

The man spent the better part of the pandemic telling Americans to trust the science and trust the experts. When it finally came time to sit across from the people asking the questions, he tried to walk away instead. It took a subpoena to change his mind.