2026年7月29日 / 美国东部时间晚上7:11 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
在安东尼·福奇博士在参议院听证会上援引第五修正案以拒绝回答所有问题数小时后，肯塔基州共和党参议员兰德·保罗对哥伦比亚广播公司新闻表示，他认为这位前传染病官员可能因拒绝回答问题而面临起诉。
此次听证会之前，保罗与福奇——两人均为医生——围绕新冠疫情应对措施以及新冠病毒起源问题爆发了多年激烈争执。福奇长期为自己在这两起事件中的处理方式辩护，而保罗则多次指责他撒谎。上周末，保罗的办公室公布了福奇撰写的大量日记内容。
在周三听证会的简短开场陈述中，福奇表示他计划援引第五修正案，称保罗“明显痴迷于要求起诉我”，并对他发表了“诽谤性言论”。随后，在保罗和其他共和党人批评他、民主党人为他辩护的数小时里，福奇全程援引第五修正案拒绝作证。
在周三晚些时候接受哥伦比亚广播公司新闻《与梅杰·加勒特共进外卖》节目采访时，保罗辩称，福奇拒绝回答问题可能会导致其因藐视国会或阻挠国会程序面临联邦刑事指控。
“我认为他确实有非常现实的可能性因此被起诉，”保罗说道。
美国宪法第五修正案赋予公民不自证其罪的权利，通常允许他们拒绝回答问题。
但保罗认为，前总统乔·拜登在卸任前数小时对福奇发出的预防性赦免，可能会阻止福奇援引第五修正案，因为福奇不会因议员们询问的任何问题面临起诉。
福奇的律师戴维·舍特勒在发给哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的电子邮件中反驳了这一说法。
“我们完全确信福奇博士在此案中享有合法的第五修正案特权，他援引该修正案的做法有充分的法律依据，”他说道。“兰德·保罗或许是一名医生，但他不是律师。”
保罗称这是一个尚未定论的法律问题。
“我认为这个问题从未得到过真正且全面的裁决，拥有赦免令却前往国会委员会拒绝作证的人并不多，”保罗对哥伦比亚广播公司新闻表示。“最终法院将不得不裁定：对于已经获得赦免的人，第五修正案是否仍然适用？”
一项常被用于藐视国会程序的联邦法律规定，证人在被传唤到国会作证时“故意”拒绝回答问题属于犯罪行为。另一项法律则禁止阻挠国会委员会的调查。
保罗表示，他担任主席的参议院国土安全委员会将于下周就是否建议认定福奇藐视国会进行投票。如果由共和党占多数的该委员会投票通过，此事将提交至全体参议院进行表决。通过该项措施最终需要简单多数票，但结束辩论可能需要60票，这将需要部分民主党议员投下赞成票。
在那之后，是否对福奇提起刑事指控将由司法部决定。该部门曾在少数案件中对国会移交的藐视国会案件提起公诉——最近一次是在拜登政府任期内，起诉了特朗普顾问史蒂夫·班农和彼得·纳瓦罗——但在其他一些案件中则拒绝提起诉讼。
参议员们在周三的听证会上提出了联邦政府新冠疫情应对措施中一些最具争议的内容，包括围绕口罩佩戴、社交距离以及学校和企业关停的相关建议。但其中一些最激烈的交锋涉及新冠病毒起源的辩论。
保罗支持新冠病毒源自中国武汉一处实验室的理论，而非通过该城市农贸市场的动物自然跨物种传播，他长期指责福奇和其他顶尖卫生官员淡化实验室泄漏的可能性。
这位参议员还关注病毒是否通过“功能获得”研究在实验室中被改造，这类研究通常被定义为修改或增强病毒以研究其进化方式。他指责福奇就美国政府资助的武汉实验室是否开展了此类研究向国会撒谎。保罗在哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的采访中辩称，新冠病毒可能“在实验室中被改造为具有极强传染性”。
福奇否认自己拒绝或淡化了实验室泄漏理论，坚称他始终对新冠病毒的起源持开放态度，尽管他也曾表示有证据表明自然跨物种传播的可能性更大。
他还否认在武汉的研究问题上撒谎，称保罗所提及的研究不符合联邦对功能获得研究的定义。
福奇还表示，作为该研究核心的蝙蝠病毒“从分子层面而言不可能”与导致新冠的病毒存在关联。
保罗上周末公布的福奇日记中的部分内容，反映了科学家们早期为了解病毒起源所做的努力。2020年1月，他写道“我们知道农贸市场不是病毒源头，它只是放大场所”，但他补充道“病毒在某个地点从动物跨物种传播给了人类”。大约一周后，他描述了与十几名传染病专家的电话会议，其中大多数专家认为病毒“有可能”是被人类插入了突变。
Sen. Paul says there’s a “very real chance” Fauci could be prosecuted after taking the 5th in Senate hearing
July 29, 2026 / 7:11 PM EDT / CBS News
Hours after Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to all questions during a Senate hearing, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told CBS News he believes the former infectious disease official could be prosecuted for not answering questions.
The testimony followed years of fiery disputes between Paul and Fauci — both medical doctors — over the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the origins of the virus that caused it. Fauci has long defended his handling of both issues, and Paul has repeatedly accused him of lying. Last weekend, Paul’s office released a trove of journal entries penned by Fauci.
In a brief opening statement in Wednesday’s hearing, Fauci said he planned to assert the Fifth Amendment, arguing that Paul has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution” and has made “slanderous comments” about him. He then invoked the Fifth Amendment for several hours as Paul and other Republicans criticized him and Democrats defended him.
In an interview later Wednesday on CBS News’ “The Takeout with Major Garrett,” Paul argued Fauci’s lack of answers could lead to federal criminal charges for contempt of Congress or obstructing a congressional proceeding.
“I think there is a very real chance that he could be prosecuted for that,” Paul said.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants people the right not to incriminate themselves, which generally allows them to decline to answer questions.
But in this case, Paul argues, a preemptive pardon that former President Joe Biden issued to Fauci just hours before leaving office could prevent Fauci from invoking the Fifth Amendment since he cannot be prosecuted for any of the issues that lawmakers asked about.
Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, pushed back in an email to CBS News.
“We are completely confident that Dr. Fauci has a valid Fifth Amendment privilege here and is on solid legal ground in asserting it,” he said. “Rand Paul may be a doctor, but he is not a lawyer.”
Paul called it an unsettled legal question.
“I don’t think this has ever been truly and fully adjudicated. There aren’t that many people with pardons who have come before a congressional committee and refuse to testify,” Paul told CBS News. “A court ultimately would have to determine: Does the Fifth Amendment apply to someone who already has a pardon?”
A federal law often cited in contempt-of-Congress proceedings makes it a crime for witnesses to “willfully” refuse to answer questions when called to testify before Congress. Another law bars obstructing an investigation by a congressional committee.
Paul has said the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which he chairs, will hold a vote next week on whether to recommend holding Fauci in contempt of Congress. If the majority-GOP committee votes in favor, the matter would head to the full Senate for a vote. Final adoption of that measure would require a simple majority, but ending debate might need 60 votes, which would require some Democrats to vote in favor.
After that, whether to pursue criminal charges against Fauci would be up to the Justice Department. The department has chosen to charge people referred by Congress for contempt in a handful of cases — most recently, under the Biden administration, Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro — but it has declined to bring charges in other cases.
Senators spent Wednesday’s hearing raising some of the most controversial elements of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including recommendations around mask-wearing, social distancing and closures of schools and businesses. But some of the most contentious moments involved the debate over the origins of the coronavirus.
Paul backs the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, rather than naturally jumping from animals to humans in a wet market in that city, and he has long accused Fauci and other top health officials of downplaying the possibility of a lab leak.
The senator has also focused on whether the virus was manipulated in the lab through “gain-of-function” research, typically defined as modifying or enhancing viruses to study how they evolve. He has accused Fauci of lying to Congress about whether such research took place in Wuhan with U.S. government-funded grants. Paul argued on CBS News that the coronavirus may have been “adapted in the lab to be very transmissible.”
Fauci has denied that he rejected or downplayed the lab leak theory, insisting that he always kept an open mind about the origins of the coronavirus, though he has asserted at times that the evidence suggests a natural spillover was more likely.
He has also denied lying about the research in Wuhan, arguing the studies Paul cited did not constitute gain-of-function research under federal definitions.
Fauci has also said it would be “molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses at the center of that research to be linked to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Some entries in Fauci’s diaries that were released by Paul last weekend reflect scientists’ early efforts to understand how the virus emerged. In January 2020, he wrote that “we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” though he added that “somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.” About a week later, he described a conference call with a dozen infectious disease experts, most of whom felt it was “possible” that mutations to the virus were inserted by humans.
发表回复