A Senate subcommittee has obtained a copy of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s COVID-era cellphone, potentially shedding new light on his response to the viral outbreak that killed millions around the world, the panel’s chairman revealed Wednesday evening.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), head of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, confirmed on X that the panel “has obtained a copy of Dr. Fauci’s phone from [the Department of Health and Human Services].
“Hopefully, this device will address many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing,” added Johnson.
The Wall Street Journal initially reported that the device had been handed over to Congress. A Johnson spokeswoman told the outlet that Fauci used the phone while director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Fauci retired from government at the end of 2022, after 38 years as the head of NIAID.
Johnson’s announcement came ahead of a Thursday morning vote by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to hold Fauci, 85, in contempt after he declined to answer questions last week about the pandemic, opting instead to plead the Fifth Amendment 111 times.
“Given Senator [Rand] Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, 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 in his opening statement.
The doctor received a sweeping pardon from then-President Joe Biden shortly before he left office in January 2025, which Republicans on the committee claimed gave Fauci no reason or legal standing to plead the Fifth.
“The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so,” warned Paul (R-Ky.). “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress.”
If the panel votes to hold Fauci in contempt Thursday morning, Paul indicated Wednesday that he plans to refer the doctor directly to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, insisting he does not need a full Senate vote to do so.
Ahead of last week’s hearing, Paul released hundreds of pages from Fauci’s official diary, revealing that the public health official obsessively tracked his media appearances as the virus spread.
The journals also revealed that Fauci had privately ruled out a wet market in Wuhan, China, as the source of the pandemic as early as January 2020, despite saying the opposite in interviews throughout 2020 and 2021 — and even as late as June 2024.
