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On Thursday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee passed a resolution, along partisan lines, to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to testify at a hearing last week about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, citing his Fifth Amendment protections.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was a key figure during the coronavirus pandemic, often appearing next to President Donald Trump in daily press briefings. But as Fauci’s findings began to contradict Trump’s baseless claims about the virus, Trump began to distance himself from him, prompting right-wing voices to attack Fauci’s credibility by pushing unfounded conspiracy theories about him.

Fauci appeared last week before the committee but invoked his Fifth Amendment right to protect himself from self-incrimination, believing that Republicans on the committee were intending to trick him into accidentally lying under oath. Thursday’s vote featured all eight Republicans on the committee voting to find Fauci in contempt, with all five Democrats voting against the measure.

The committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), will forward a recommendation to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to consider charging Fauci with criminal contempt of Congress charges. Typically, a full Senate vote would need to be adopted for the resolution to have the full force of a “contempt of Congress” recommendation, but the DOJ could view the committee’s vote as sufficient to pursue charges.

Paul claims that Fauci’s presidential pardon, granted during the last days of the Biden administration,........

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