Top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci could be held in contempt of Congress

The US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will vote next week on whether to hold Anthony Fauci, one of the world’s leading infectious disease experts, in contempt for his refusal to answer questions at a hearing on 29 July. He attended under a subpoena issued last month by the committee’s Republican chairman Rand Paul.

The 85-year-old Fauci, who helped guide the US response to the Covid‑19 pandemic, is being accused of manipulating intelligence on the origins of the pandemic and lying to Congress to cover up alleged wrongdoing by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) related to funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci, who directed the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years under seven different administrations and retired in December 2022, denies all these charges.