OAN Staff Blake Wolf
10:34 AM – Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul is urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) to bring charges against former senior national health advisor Anthony Fauci, accusing him of lying to Congress in an attempt to test whether former President Joe Biden’s blanket pardons will hold up in court.
Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk that he believes Fauci “committed a felony by lying to Congress.”
“You have to charge him with a felony; take him to court, and then the court will decide whether or not the pardon is upheld,” Paul stated.
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“You can argue until you’re blue in the face that you can’t do autopens and that maybe the president wasn’t aware of it. But the only way to actually do this is you have to charge someone who has been pardoned,” he continued. “I think Anthony Fauci is most likely to be chargeable. There are other people – Hunter Biden could be charged as well — but someone has to be charged.”
Paul cited Fauci’s testimony during a Senate hearing on May 11, 2021, in which he stated that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Fauci reiterated his statement in multiple subsequent hearings, including on July 20, 2021, and June 3, 2024.
Despite Fauci’s claim, contradictory evidence and numerous other officials have since admitted that the NIH did in fact fund gain-of-function research.
“Faci testified before Congress in a very vigorous and heated and animated way that the National Institutes of Health never funded gain-of-function virus research in Wuhan,” Paul added. This is directly contradicted by the actual people who were involved in the funding.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump directed the DOJ to investigate the Biden administration’s usage of the autopen to sign documents to determine if the signatures were authorized without Biden’s knowledge, amidst his probable cognitive decline and overbearing administration aides.
Fauci’s preemptive pardon was signed using the autopen just before Biden’s last day in office, which reportedly received final approval from then-White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients.
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