Fauci’s Contempt Vote Is Today. Three States Are Already Ahead of Congress.

Anthony Fauci faces today a vote that he has never encountered in more than four decades of government service: a formal vote deciding if he committed contempt against Congress.

Watch the video above for more details of what is happening today.

Rand Paul chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate and votes at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time today on a resolution holding Fauci responsible for contempt because he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during a hearing last week. Paul laid his reasoning out clearly. “Dr. Fauci appeared under subpoena and invoked the Fifth Amendment to refuse answering questions. During the hearing, I ruled that the Fifth Amendment did not apply because of the pardon, and that Fauci had waived any remaining privilege by giving opening testimony. I ordered him to answer and warned him about contempt, yet he still refused. That is obstruction of a congressional investigation.”

Paul’s argument centers on a detail that’s hard to get around. President Biden granted Fauci a broad pardon covering offenses from 2014 to 2025. “Despite having a pardon from President Biden spanning more than a decade, Fauci refused to answer a single question, even though he knew he couldn’t be charged for crimes during that period,” Paul said. If the committee approves the resolution today, it goes to the Department of Justice with a recommendation to prosecute.

Three States Aren’t Waiting on Washington

While Washington debates the contempt vote, Fauci is already dealing with serious criminal investigations at the state level in Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana. None of these probes are covered by his pardon.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill joined this effort this weekend, and her reasoning ties directly back to the diary entries Paul’s committee released. “Fauci lied. Louisiana and Missouri deposed Dr. Fauci. At the time, he claimed to not recall many key details of his own actions and now we are discovering contemporaneous records he kept,” Murrill said. “Louisiana will join Alabama & Florida in investigating Fauci and whether he committed any other offenses that could be pursued in our State courts.”

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who personally deposed Fauci years earlier while serving as the state’s attorney general, welcomed the move quickly. “As someone who was Attorney General alongside Eric Schmitt, and deposed Dr. Fauci, I am happy to have Louisiana join Alabama and Florida!”

Florida acted first, with Attorney General James Uthmeier announcing his investigation the same day Fauci’s contempt situation began unfolding. “Fauci’s lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable,” Uthmeier wrote. “My office is launching an investigation into Dr. Fauci. It’s past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID.” Around the same time, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall opened his own investigation, and Senator Tommy Tuberville, currently running for governor in Alabama, has gone even further, promising to keep pushing accountability efforts if elected. “When I’m governor of Alabama, I will look into ways we can hold Fauci accountable for all of the Alabamians who died under his watch.”

A Pardon That Only Covers Half the Battlefield

What makes this moment genuinely different from years of prior Fauci controversy is the dual track now closing in on him together. Biden’s pardon shields Fauci from prosecution at the federal level. But nothing in it addresses state courts, and three attorneys general are now actively building separate cases that operate entirely beyond its reach.

Legal experts warn that these state investigations face real obstacles, from jurisdictional questions to the practical difficulty of proving perjury based on claims that details were simply forgotten years later. But the number of fronts now open against Fauci, today’s contempt vote from Congress, three separate ongoing state investigations, and a diary release that keeps generating new leads for all of them, represents a level of coordinated scrutiny he hasn’t faced before.

Paul has said his committee is prepared to share its full body of evidence with any state investigator who wants it. As of this morning, three states have already taken him up on it, and Congress is now deciding whether Fauci’s own silence adds a fourth front to the list.