Anthony Fauci To Face Rand Paul Again, Letter Indicates

Anthony Fauci will face off again with longtime rival Sen. Rand Paul later in June, a congressional letter indicates.

An unnoticed letter published Tuesday on the website of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) indicates that Paul, the committee’s chairman, plans to conduct a transcribed interview with Fauci. Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote the letter to Paul objecting to a lack of communication about these plans.

Paul’s office and Fauci did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Unlike public hearings, transcribed interview take place with members of Congress, congressional staff, witnesses and attorneys, but the public is often privy to transcriptions or videos of the interviews.

“You have failed to give the Committee minority notice and opportunity to participate in your planned transcribed interview of Dr. Anthony Fauci later this month and have worked instead to prevent any efforts to ensure a fair and legitimate oversight process,” Peters alleged, referring to the committee’s Democrats. Holding the majority of the Senate, Republicans hold the committee’s gavel and wield the authority to subpoena records and compel witnesses. But Peters wrote that he has shown willingness to engage on the broader issue of lab safety and high risk virology research in a bipartisan way.

Paul called on Fauci to testify before the committee on Sept. 12, 2025, citing emails in which Fauci appears to direct his staff to delete official emails in violation of federal records retention law.

“Please delete this e-mail after you read it,” Fauci wrote to National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins in the hours after a call with virologists to discuss a scientific paper dismissing the possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan. Private emails and chats unearthed by the Freedom of Information Act and congressional subpoena would later reveal the authors of the paper harbored private concerns that a lab accident had ignited the pandemic.

Fauci frequently tussled with Paul through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic over Fauci’s role in promoting gain-of-function research, research that enhances the transmissibility or pathogenicity of viruses.

Under questioning by Paul, Fauci denied under oath that his longtime institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), supported gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). NIAID supported a research project at the WIV that manipulated a coronavirus to generate up to 10,000 times the viral load of the original virus.

HSGAC heard testimony in May from CIA whistleblower James Erdman III, who alleged Fauci had influenced the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the origins of COVID by connecting spy agencies to favored scientists connected to the NIAID or the WIV.

Former President Joe Biden signed a pardon for Fauci for unspecified crimes on his penultimate day in office, Jan. 19, 2025, stretching back to Jan. 1, 2014.