Anthony S. Fauci, the former government official who helped lead the nation’s coronavirus response, is set to again face Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who has spent years accusing Fauci of playing a role in the virus’s creation.
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Paul, the chairman of the Senate’s government oversight committee, announced Thursday morning that Fauci will testify on Wednesday after being subpoenaed. Paul has been investigating the potential origins of the outbreak.
Fauci, who last testified in front of Congress in June 2024, has repeatedly denied accusations from Paul and other Republicans as “preposterous.” The 85-year-old former National Institutes of Health (NIH) official left government at the end of 2022.
President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci and other top officials before Biden left office, saying that they had not committed wrongdoing but that he feared they would be targeted by the incoming Trump administration.
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Infectious-disease experts have insisted to Paul and other Republicans that while NIH funded virus research in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus outbreak was first detected in 2019, the work could not have sparked the pandemic.
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