Senate panel obtains Fauci’s COVID-era iPhone records as contempt vote approaches - report

The Department of Health and Human Services transferred the material to the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

A spokeswoman for Johnson said Fauci used the phone while serving as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It was not immediately clear what records the copied material contained or when investigators would begin reviewing them.

Paul and Johnson have also received millions of additional pages of Fauci-related material from government servers, according to people familiar with the matter, and are seeking further records. At least four Republican-led states have launched separate investigations involving Fauci.

The latest transfer coincides with a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Thursday in Washington, during which senators are expected to vote on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. Paul, who chairs the committee, released the contempt resolution on Tuesday.

He accused Paul of having an “unhinged obsession” with him and said the senator was attempting to elicit statements that could support Paul’s previous calls for him to be imprisoned.

Fauci also told the committee that he had testified before or briefed Congress more than 200 times during nearly four decades as the country’s leading infectious disease official.

Paul has argued that Fauci should not be permitted to invoke the Fifth Amendment because former US president Joe Biden granted him a broad pardon shortly before leaving office in January 2025.

Biden said at the time that the pardon was intended to protect Fauci from “unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.” It covered potential federal offenses committed between 2014 and January 19, 2025, but did not apply to conduct occurring after it was issued.

Fauci’s attorneys have argued that the pardon does not eliminate every form of possible legal exposure. It does not prevent state prosecutions or protect Fauci from potential allegations involving testimony delivered after the pardon.

The dispute could test unsettled questions about whether Congress may compel testimony from someone who has received a presidential pardon. Paul has said the committee intends to send its contempt recommendation directly to the US Attorney’s Office in Washington if the resolution passes, although contempt referrals have traditionally gone before the full Senate.

A Justice Department investigation or prosecution would not be automatic. Prosecutors would still have to establish that Fauci willfully refused to answer questions he was legally required to address and overcome his claim that responding could expose him to criminal liability.

Paul and Fauci have repeatedly clashed over whether research supported by the National Institutes of Health and conducted through the US-based EcoHealth Alliance at the Wuhan Institute of Virology amounted to gain-of-function research.

Gain-of-function is a broad term that can refer to experiments that alter organisms to study how their characteristics or behavior may change. The controversy has focused particularly on research that could make pathogens more transmissible or harmful.

Paul has accused Fauci of misleading Congress by denying that NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan and has alleged that US-supported studies may have played a role in the pandemic.

The precise origin of COVID-19 remains unresolved. A declassified US intelligence assessment concluded that both natural transmission from an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident were plausible explanations.

Four US intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council assessed with low confidence that natural exposure was the most likely cause. Another intelligence agency favored a laboratory-associated incident with moderate confidence, while several agencies did not reach a conclusion.

The assessment also concluded that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon and that most intelligence analysts believed it was probably not genetically engineered. It said additional information about the earliest cases in China would be required to reach a more definitive conclusion.

Paul released 1,141 pages of Fauci’s journals shortly before the July hearing, arguing that they undermined the account given by federal health officials during the pandemic.

A representative for Fauci said the entries were consistent with his public statements at the time. Fauci has said he remained open to both a laboratory accident and natural transmission as possible explanations and had raised concerns early in the pandemic about China’s transparency.

Fauci served as NIAID director for 38 years under Republican and Democratic administrations and became one of the most prominent figures in the US response to COVID-19.

During Trump’s first administration, Fauci at times publicly contradicted the president and called for greater caution as the virus spread. His support for masks, social distancing, vaccines, and other public-health measures made him a target of Trump supporters and conservative critics.

Supporters have argued that Fauci and other health officials issued recommendations based on limited and rapidly changing evidence about a new virus. Critics have blamed pandemic authorities for prolonged restrictions, school closures, vaccine mandates, and inconsistent public messaging.

Fauci remained in government during the first years of the Biden administration before retiring in 2022.

HHS is now led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longstanding Fauci critic who published a book in 2021 accusing him of close ties to pharmaceutical companies and of disregarding civil liberties.