Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from a Senate committee more than 100 times on July 29, 2026.

The Republican-led hearing – convened to scrutinize Fauci’s management of the pandemic and the origins of COVID-19 – was the latest chapter in a political story that began in 2020, when uncertainty, fear and frustration with the government became entangled with conspiracy theories.

In the past six years, some of these theories have emerged from the margins of the internet and made their way into Republican politics, the MAGA movement, anti-vaccine communities and even white-nationalist extremist networks.

Conspiracy theories do not simply explain events, they identify villains – and Fauci has become one of the most popular in this particular story.

In the years since the pandemic, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and others have accused Fauci of many things, but the central conspiracy accusation is that Fauci helped enable the COVID-19 pandemic through U.S.-funded research at a lab in Wuhan, China, and then participated in a coordinated government-scientific cover-up, misleading Congress to conceal that connection and suppress the laboratory-leak explanation. Paul, a Republican, has repeatedly called for Fauci’s prosecution.

In January 2025, President Joe Biden granted Fauci a preemptive pardon covering potential federal offenses related to his government service since 2014. Fauci had not been charged with a crime, but critics portrayed the pardon as evidence that he had something to hide. Fauci has denied claims of wrongdoing and has testified multiple times before Congress.

The Fauci conspiracy is much bigger than Rand Paul, though. Paul may be its most persistent congressional promoter, but it’s been amplified by a wider network of Republican lawmakers. Several Republican members of Congress, such as Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. James Comer and former Rep. Brad Wenstrup, among others, have advanced versions of the Fauci/COVID-origin narrative. House Republicans formally investigated these claims for two years, while members repeatedly accused Fauci of suppressing the lab-leak theory and misleading the public.

That investigation ultimately........

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