Rand Paul claims DOJ ignoring Fauci prosecution referrals

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., claimed during a Tuesday appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that the U.S. Department of Justice has continued to ignore his repeated criminal referrals to investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly lying to the U.S. Congress, even under President Donald Trump.

Paul, who chairs the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, claimed on the podcast that Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who served from 1984 to 2022, lied to lawmakers and destroyed communications about U.S. funding for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, evidence of which he said he gave to the DOJ.

“Under the Biden administration, I sent criminal referrals for Anthony Fauci to [former Attorney General] Merrick Garland twice, and I sent them evidence that he had lied to Congress, which was a felony. They just ignored me,” Paul said.

Senator Rand Paul just revealed to Joe Rogan that the Trump DOJ won’t investigate Anthony Fauci.

“Under the Biden administration, I sent criminal referrals for Anthony Fauci to Merrick Garland twice, and I sent them evidence that he had lied to Congress, which is a felony.”… pic.twitter.com/7MBbYDI16F

— End Tribalism in Politics (@EndTribalism) January 13, 2026

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who penned an exhaustive book about Fauci and public health in 2021 titled The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, “has been working” with Paul to gather information about Fauci, the senator said. 

“We’ve looked at the communications, and in Anthony Fauci’s communications, we now have evidence that he was telling people like [former NIH Director] Francis Collins, ‘Read this and destroy it.’ Well, you can’t do that. The executive branch, when they communicate, they’re required to keep their communications, and they’re required to do it on government devices,” Paul said.

“So, we have this evidence, and I’ve summarized it again in a criminal referral to Trump’s attorney general, and I still haven’t gotten action,” said Paul, who added that Fauci should be prosecuted because “he shouldn’t get away with lying, he shouldn’t get away with destroying records.”

Paul raised doubts about whether former President Joe Biden’s blanket presidential pardon of Fauci is legitimate, noting that it appears to have been signed with an autopen and “should be challenged.”

“A retrospective pardon [that goes] back 10 years, that doesn’t mention a crime? Can you give people a pardon for everything they did in a 10-year period? I can’t imagine. And I think the court might narrow that, but it doesn’t happen unless the Trump Justice Department will do something. And I’ve been sending them referrals, and I can’t get them to do anything,” he said.

In October, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report finding that Biden’s aides concealed the seriousness of his cognitive decline and wielded presidential authority without his direct authorization, including “misusing the autopen and failing to properly document decision-making processes.”

Trump declared the pardons signed with Biden’s autopen to be “void, vacant, and of no further force or effect” in December, though some legal experts have argued that the U.S. Constitution does not require a president to sign a pardon with his own hand for it to have legal effect.

Paul went viral multiple times during the pandemic for clashing with Fauci during heated exchanges on Capitol Hill, perhaps most notably in May 2021, when Fauci erupted after Paul accused him of lying to Congress about NIH funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“You are implying what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals. I totally resent that, and if anyone is lying here, senator, it is you,” Fauci said at the time.

At the time, Paul pinpointed a $3.4 million grant that the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave to EcoHealth Alliance in 2014.

EcoHealth Alliance paid the Wuhan lab $598,500 over five years, according to PolitiFact, which also reported that “all parties involved in the grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology have denied that it involved gain-of-function research.”