In contrast to Anthony Fauci, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has repeatedly attacked efforts to lessen the spread of COVID and spread factually incorrect information about the virus.     

In August 2021, Paul stated in a video that “most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work” and that “cloth masks don’t work” to prevent infection.

YouTube suspended Paul for seven days following these remarks, stating the content violated their COVID-19 medical misinformation policies. 

in November, 2021, Paul claimed that: “Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection. Trying to shape human behavior isn’t the same as following the actual science, which tells us that cloth masks don’t work.”

This contradicted the results of a scientific study from Denmark, which showed that mask usage helped to mitigate the spread of the virus.

On December 17, Paul said on Fox Business Thursday: “There’s no science to keeping schools closed, and there’s actually no good science to keeping restaurants closed, in fact there’s no good science that anything we’ve done has changed the trajectory” of the pandemic.

“Every one of the mandates—and you look in country after country, state after state—you look at when the mask mandates went in—the incidents went up exponentially after the mandates. Restaurants, nobody can eat in a restaurant, there’s no science behind any of that,” Paul told Breitbart News at the Turning Point USA convention. 

Anti-lockdown demonstration at the Ohio Statehouse 

Becker1999 from Grove City, OH, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Paul claimed that high school graduation ceremonies and possibly wedding anniversaries even a decade later would be banned by the government if “we’re not careful” to protect our individual freedoms.

Mocking masks as “face diapers,” Paul said: “It’s like wearing your underwear. You might as well cut your underwear up and wear your underwear as protection. It doesn’t work. 

“None of it really makes any sense, and there’s no epidemiological evidence. You know, it’s like, ‘Wash your hands, stand six feet apart.’ There’s no evidence that that slowed down the [spread]. The trajectory of the virus hasn’t been altered at all by any of these things.”

N95 mask

Republicans contend that because President Joe Biden gave Fauci a pardon, he cannot claim fear of prosecution for questions about the time the pardon covers.

But Fauci could theoretically face state or local prosecution, as well as federal prosecution for making any false statements to the panel. And Fauci said he was convinced Paul’s goal was to trip him up and trigger a perjury allegation.

Fauci said in his opening remarks that he welcomed congressional oversight, pointing to the more than 200 times he appeared before Congress over his more than five-decade career with the federal government.

But he stated his belief that this hearing was being held in bad faith:

“Given Senator 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.’

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.

“Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

Anthony Fauci and President George W. Bush

In the days before the hearing, Paul had released more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s personal diary entries and work records. These had been made available to him by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—a notorious foe of vaccines.  

Among the diary entries, released by Paul in an attempt to damage Fauci, were those showing Fauci’s growing disillusionment with President Donald Trump in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These described Trump as “rambling”, “crazy”, “desperate”, “bumbling”, “incompetent”, “an idiot”, “a true embarrassment”, “totally nuts” and “truly an obnoxious adolescent.”

Trump’s lies about the dangers of COVID and his fake cures for it—such as drinking bleach and shining UV light up a patient’s anus—ultimately resulted in tens of thousands of American deaths.

Fauci’s disillusionment with Trump clearly rested on a firm foundation. But Paul obviously believed that Fauci’s disgust with Trump reflected badly on him, not the President. 

Fauci blasted the move by Paul as an attempt at “embarrassing and intimidating” him.

As a result, Fauci did not answer a single question from any lawmakers during the entire three-hour hearing, invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

“The only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat.”      

—Ronald Reagan, speaking about the leaders of the Soviet Union

On July 29, Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. 

He did so under subpoena issued on the orders of Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), a longtime foe of Fauci.

The hearing was allegedly intended to probe the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and whether Fauci misled Congress and the public.

Witnesses before Senate committees are always asked: “Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give before this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

But Senators are never asked to do the same.

Had Senator Rand Paul been required to answer that question—and had he done so honestly—he would have admitted: “The reason for this hearing is to prove that Fauci covered up COVID’s origins. I believe it emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, that had received American research funding.

“I also believe—and intend to prove—that he needlessly closed schools and churches. And I will be looking for any statement I can interpret as perjury so he can be prosecuted and sent to prison—as I have long said he should be.” 

Rand Paul

Fauci had helped lead the White House response for Presidents Donald Trump and Joseph Biden and is now retired from government service. He is 85.

At the opening of the hearing, Fauci read from a prepared statement: “I have appeared multiple times for hearings in the Senate and the House, usually under oath, and sat for several days—long transcribed sworn interviews answering questions about the very issues that are now the subject of this hearing.

“Although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.” 

Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. He then repeatedly refused to answer questions from the Committee—especially from its Republican members.

The reason: President Biden gave him a pardon for all of his official conduct from 2014 to 2025. Fauci hadn’t committed any crimes. Biden intended to protect him from any future malicious prosecution by incoming President Donald Trump, whose hostility toward Fauci was well-known.

The pardon prevents Fauci from being federally prosecuted for any of his actions as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. That includes many of the pandemic-related decisions and actions Paul sought to grill him about.

Anthony Fauci

But Fauci could face state or local prosecution, as well as federal prosecution for making any false statements to the panel. And Fauci said he was convinced Paul’s goal was to trip him up and trigger a perjury allegation.

Paul has, in fact, called for Fauci’s imprisonment.

On December 2, 2021, he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network: “Fauci should go to prison for five years for lying to Congress. They’ve prosecuted other people, they’ve selectively gone after Republicans, but in no way will they do anything about him lying.” 

Paul and Bartiromo both claimed that Fauci lied to Congress when he said that the National Institutes of Health did not fund “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Gain of function research is a common scientific practice in which researchers trigger mutations and study how they affect a specific subject. In recent years, scientists have become increasingly less willing to conduct the research in some circumstances due to associated risks.

“He should be prosecuted for lying, but at the very least he should be taken out of his position because I think he cost people’s lives through misinformation,” Paul told Bartiromo. 

On the contrary, Paul himself has repeatedly attacked efforts to lessen the spread of COVID and spread factually incorrect information about the virus. 

COVID-19 virus

On May 5, 2020, the NBC News website reported: “Rand Paul, the only senator known to have contracted COVID-19, defended his decision not to wear a mask on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, citing his ‘immunity’ to a disease that top scientists are still trying to understand.

“I have immunity. I’ve already had the virus, so I can’t get it again and I can’t give it to anybody,” Paul told reporters, referring to his March diagnosis. ‘I can’t get it again, nor can I transmit. So of all the people you’ll meet here, I’m about the only safe person in Washington.'”

According to Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and global health policy expert and NBC News contributor, Paul’s claim “flies in the face of expert guidance from organizations like the WHO [World Health Organization] and CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], who both very clearly said we don’t know, It’s the pinnacle of misinformation. It’s not true. We have no evidence.”