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A Senate subcommittee investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci has obtained a copy of his iPhone, a spokesperson for the panel’s chair, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, told CNN on Wednesday.
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The Department of Health and Human Services provided the phone to Johnson’s panel, the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ahead of a planned vote to hold the retired scientist in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at a hearing last week.
Johnson’s possession of a copy of the phone – which Fauci used during his time as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – could boost congressional Republicans’ efforts to probe and potentially attack Fauci and his actions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Hopefully, this device will address many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing,” Johnson wrote on social media Wednesday night.
CNN has reached out to a spokesperson for Fauci for comment.
Sen. Rand Paul – who chairs the full Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and has long clashed with Fauci – in June subpoenaed the 85-year-old former head of NIAID to appear before Congress.
Last week, Fauci invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination more than 100 times throughout the high-profile and often-contentious hearing that Republicans had hoped would open him up to claims of perjury – after a yearslong investigation aimed at validating Paul’s and other Republicans’ belief that Fauci orchestrated a cover-up of the origins of the coronavirus.
Frustrated Republicans have sought to cast Fauci’s noncooperation as fresh evidence of culpability, despite being unable to prove it. For Democrats, the hearing marked just the latest episode in a long-running GOP effort to downplay the seriousness of a pandemic that killed more than one million Americans – many of them on President Donald Trump’s watch.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on Johnson’s panel obtaining Fauci’s phone.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote Thursday morning on a resolution to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for invoking the Fifth Amendment throughout his testimony.
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When asked earlier this week whether the panel would have the votes, Paul said, “We’ll find out Thursday.”
Paul also said the committee would immediately send the results to the Department of Justice, insisting the panel does not need a full Senate vote to refer Fauci for contempt charges.
“We don’t do charging, the Department of Justice does. If we win the vote on Thursday my plan is to send it to the Department of Justice,” he said.
Prior to Fauci’s contentious appearance on the Hill, Paul’s committee released more than 1,100 pages of his personal diary from 2019 to 2022. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News that he had handed the files over to Paul and Johnson after finding them on government servers following an eight-month search.
The entries documented his frequent media appearances and growing fame, shining a light on his interactions with celebrities and dozens of members of the news media, including some CNN journalists.
The diary entries also narrate Fauci’s growing concerns about Covid-19, frustrations with the government response and conflicting relationships with both Trump and Biden administration officials.
Pressure from Paul and others led President Joe Biden to preemptively pardon Fauci during his last days in office, shielding Fauci from charges pertaining to any comments made in previous years.
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