WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate committee is set to vote Thursday on whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress and refer him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution over his refusal to answer questions at a hearing last week focused on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Sen. Rand Paul, the committee chairman, has said that constitutional protection did not apply since Fauci last year received a pardon from Democratic President Joe Biden and thus did not have to worry about the threat of prosecution.

“Dr. Fauci faced no risk of federal prosecution," Paul. R-Ky., said at the outset of a hearing. "All he had to do was tell the truth.”

Paul noted that Thursday's vote has nothing to do with Fauci's policies, opinions or anything he has said in previous congressional appearances.

Instead, the senator said, “We are voting on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a sweeping pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence.”

Fauci, in a statement explaining his decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, said he had good reason to fear the possibility of criminal charges given what he said was Paul's determination “to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote."

Democrats said Fauci had a sensible basis to fear self-incrimination given publicly stated Republican desires to see him prosecuted.

“The goal was to wait for Dr. Fauci make any kind of misstatement and then have a weaponized Department of Justice to file criminal charges for that new statement that would nor have been covered by the pardon, leaving Dr. Fauci little choice but to invoke his constitutional right to not walk directly into a trap,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.

The pardon from Biden covered acts from 2014 through the January 2025 day it was issued. It does not shield Fauci from state-level prosecutions or from investigations into any testimony that he did give that lawmakers thought was false.

The committee is voting on whether to refer Fauci to the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, which would make a decision on whether or not to investigate or potentially attempt to prosecute the doctor for contempt.

Paul, who has previously sent referrals on Fauci on his own, acknowledged on Wednesday that contempt resolutions have often gone through the full Senate but said he did not “want to waste time” moving the matter to a vote of the full Senate, where it would be unlikely to muster the required 60 votes needed to advance.

“We still might come to the floor,” he said, “but at this point, the first thing we will do is we will send it over as a recommendation from our committee, if it passes.”

No matter what happens, the episode raises fresh and complicated questions about lawmakers' ability to compel testimony from previously pardoned witnesses — and the outcome could resonate beyond Fauci given the possibility that Trump may also grant clemency to his own aides before leaving the White House.

Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat, said a vote to hold Fauci in contempt would set a dangerous precedent given long-standing congressional respect for witnesses' Fifth Amendment rights.

“If this committee now seeks to punish a witness for asserting their constitutionally protected Fifth Amendment rights, future witnesses will argue that appearing before Congress exposes them to punishment regardless of whether they comply with a subpoena and invoke a constitutional protection,” he said,

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AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.