2026-07-30T22:09:18.553Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
安东尼·福奇博士周三出席一场高风险的参议院听证会时，怀揣着一个朴实且唯一的目标：全身而退。据福奇身边人士向CNN透露，这位前政府首席科学家认为自己达成了目标。
福奇援引第五修正案拒绝自证其罪超过100次，给参议院共和党人提供了可在X平台上传播的大量素材，但剥夺了他们兑现誓言、以伪证罪起诉他的任何新机会。他拒绝重陷新冠疫情及其起源的长期争议。
而他的盟友则认为，福奇的沉默反而将公众的审视目光转回了多年来一直追查他的议员身上，这些议员试图找到他在新冠危机中处理失当的确凿证据。事实上，部分盟友表示，保罗几天前公布的福奇未删减的新冠疫情时期日记——其中包含他对私人谈话和同事们不加掩饰、偶尔还不乏贬义的记录——可能比这场听证会本身更有损福奇的公众形象，带来更大负面影响。
“他们用力过猛了，”一位福奇身边的人士说道。“我认为大多数美国人都看清了他们的真面目。”
这场马拉松式听证会似乎加剧了福奇与共和党参议员兰德·保罗之间长达六年的矛盾，这位肯塔基州参议员承诺下周将发起投票，以福奇拒绝作证为由将其定为藐视国会。但据福奇身边人士透露，福奇的顾问在他出席国会听证会前就已得出结论，他别无选择，只能多次援引第五修正案，因为特朗普政府已表现出热衷于打击政治对手的倾向，哪怕依据有时站不住脚的证据。
保罗和其他共和党人——包括美国卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪——曾公开暗示，此次听证会的主要目的是搜集新的伪证指控证据，而这些指控不在福奇2025年时任总统乔·拜登给予的提前赦免范围内。
福奇的团队担心，如果他选择作证，共和党人会抓住任何与他过往言论不一致的地方作为指控依据，无论差异多么微小。
“别无选择，”另一位福奇身边的人士说道。“兰德·保罗手握他职业生涯50年里的数百万份文件。（福奇）面前却一无所有。”
福奇的发言人拒绝置评。保罗的办公室也未回应置评请求。
但一位知情人士透露，福奇的团队早已预料到共和党人会质疑他援引第五修正案的权利，因此对这位科学家的开场陈述进行了多次修改，确保他不会以任何可能无意间削弱其拒绝自证其罪主张的方式，提及新冠疫情时期的行动。
福奇反而仅在开场陈述中谴责了这场听证会本身，指责保罗有着“精神失常般的执念”，想要将他送进监狱。这位科学家的团队还故意没有提前透露他们将援引第五修正案的计划，该人士表示，这迫使共和党人对所有情况都做好应对准备。
援引这项宪法权利的决定——以及共和党人不寻常地将听证会延长数小时，并将其作为再次攻击福奇的平台——使这位前最高卫生官员三年来首次重新回到公众视野。
尽管福奇在2023年卸任政府职务，当时他已是极具争议的政府早期新冠疫情应对代言人，但他退休后的大部分时间都在与律师和亲密顾问磋商，以抵御共和党人的调查。
与此同时，他身边的一些人也受到了波及。福奇的妻子克里斯汀·格雷迪是与他有关联的几名高级卫生官员之一，在肯尼迪监督下的美国国立卫生研究院裁员中被解雇或调岗。
另一位福奇的前助手戴维·莫伦斯于4月被指控隐瞒联邦记录。莫伦斯是一名无犯罪记录的职业公务员，被身着战术装备的武装联邦特工逮捕。
这一事件进一步加剧了福奇部分盟友对其被起诉动向的担忧，一位福奇身边的人士表示。他们认为，即便无法定罪，新的指控也可能让保罗和其他共和党人获得政治胜利：福奇戴手铐被捕的画面。
然而，保罗的藐视国会策略是否会进一步加剧福奇面临的潜在风险尚不明朗。如果委员会投票通过，保罗通常需要在参议院全院获得60票的多数票，参议院才能最终向司法部提出刑事指控建议——这几乎不可能实现，因为这需要民主党人的支持。
保罗坚称，他可以绕过该投票，直接将藐视国会的指控提交给司法部，但尚不清楚这一操作是否符合规定。
即便如此，是否以藐视国会罪起诉福奇仍将由联邦检察官决定。尽管唐纳德·特朗普总统经常热衷于利用法律体系打击政治对手，但他对此事一直态度暧昧。
福奇的盟友和一些法律学者此前已辩称，无论赦免与否，福奇都有权援引第五修正案，因为他仍可能因新冠疫情时期的行为面临州或地方起诉，或因新发表的声明面临联邦指控。
这一理由似乎在寻求审查福奇的共和党人中也引发了分歧。尽管保罗坚持认为福奇不应受第五修正案保护，但他也多次表示，任何证词都可能被视为“新的谎言”，并承认福奇的相关保护是“一个可能需要法院裁决的法律问题”。
与此同时，俄克拉荷马州共和党参议员詹姆斯·兰克福德在听证会期间曾表示，福奇有权不回答任何问题，尽管他后来质疑这位科学家在发表开场陈述后是否仍保留这些权利。
但在福奇的盟友和顾问看来，共和党人持续发起的指控行动恰恰证明了他们最初决定不出席这场听证会是正确的——这场听证会的唯一目的就是不择手段地将他拖入更深的法律困境。
“这场听证会纯粹是为了诋毁他，无论他如何回答这些问题，都不可能有任何建设性结果，”费城儿童医院疫苗教育中心主任、福奇的长期熟人保罗·奥菲特博士说道。
“当然，他在疫情期间也做过一些错事，说过一些错话，因为我们所有人在这场大流行期间都或多或少有过言行失当的时候，”奥菲特说。“但福奇博士并不是病毒的源头，他也没有做任何见不得人的事。他只是在尽力把事情做对。”
‘There was no other option’: Inside Fauci’s intensely planned hearing strategy
2026-07-30T22:09:18.553Z / CNN
Dr. Anthony Fauci arrived at a high-stakes Senate hearing on Wednesday with a single, modest goal: Survive. The former top government scientist felt he accomplished that mission, people close to Fauci told CNN.
Invoking his Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate more than 100 times, Fauci gave Senate Republicans a myriad of clips to share on X, but deprived them of any new opportunity to fulfill their vows to prosecute him for perjury. He refused to be drawn back into long-running battles over Covid-19 and its origins.
And instead, his allies argued, Fauci’s silence turned public scrutiny back on the lawmakers who have pursued him for years, attempting to find clear evidence that he’d mishandled the Covid crisis. In fact, some of those allies said Fauci’s unredacted Covid-era diary that Paul released days earlier — which included his unvarnished and occasionally unflattering notes on his private conversations and colleagues — may have proved more embarrassing and damaging to Fauci’s public standing than the hearing itself.
“They overplayed their hand,” said one of the people close to Fauci. “And I think the majority of the country saw it for what it was.”
The marathon hearing only seemed to intensify the six-year battle between Fauci and GOP Sen. Rand Paul, and the Kentucky senator pledged a vote next week on holding the 85-year-old scientist in contempt over his refusal to testify. But Fauci’s advisers had concluded in the lead-up to his congressional appearance that he had no other choice but to repeatedly invoke the Fifth Amendment, the people close to Fauci said, as the Trump administration has shown an eagerness to target political foes, even based on at-times flimsy evidence.
Paul and other Republicans — including US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — had openly suggested that the hearing’s primary goal was to generate evidence for new perjury charges that wouldn’t be covered by the preemptive pardon Fauci received from then-President Joe Biden in 2025.
Fauci’s team feared that if he opted to testify, Republicans would seize on any inconsistency with his past statements as justification for those claims, no matter how small the difference.
“There was no other option,” one of the people close to Fauci said. “Rand Paul has millions of documents that he could bring up over a 50-year career. (Fauci) has nothing in front of him.”
A spokesperson for Fauci declined to comment. Paul’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
But in a sign that Fauci’s team anticipated Republicans would seek to challenge his Fifth Amendment rights, the scientists’ opening statement underwent multiple revisions to ensure he did not address his Covid-era actions in a way that would inadvertently undermine his claim against self-incrimination, one of the people familiar said.
Fauci instead used his opening statement solely to decry the hearing itself, accusing Paul of having an “unhinged obsession” with imprisoning him. And the scientist’s team purposely did not telegraph their plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment ahead of time, that person said, forcing Republicans to plan for all scenarios.
The decision to invoke his constitutional right — and Republicans’ unusual decision to continue the hearing for hours and use it as a platform to renew attacks on Fauci — has since catapulted the former top health official back into public view for the first time in three years.
Though Fauci left the government in 2023 after becoming the highly polarizing face of the government’s early Covid-19 response, he has spent much of his retirement consulting with lawyers and close advisers in an effort to fend off Republican investigations.
In the meantime, some of those around him have also faced repercussions. Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, was among several senior health officials with links to him who were fired or reassigned as part of cuts at the National Institutes of Health overseen by Kennedy.
Another former Fauci associate, David Morens, was charged in April with concealing federal records. Morens, a career civil servant with no criminal record, was arrested by armed federal agents outfitted in tactical gear.
That episode has further fueled concerns among some Fauci allies about the push for his prosecution, said one of the people close to Fauci. They suggested that, even short of a conviction, new charges could allow Paul and other Republicans to secure a political victory: Images of Fauci in handcuffs and under arrest.
Yet it’s unclear whether Paul’s contempt gambit will further escalate potential peril for Fauci. Should the committee vote succeed, Paul would typically need to overcome a 60-vote threshold in the full Senate before the chamber could ultimately recommend criminal charges to the Department of Justice — a longshot since it would require Democratic support.
Paul has insisted that he can instead bypass that vote and send the contempt referral directly to the Justice Department, though it remains unclear whether that maneuver would pass muster.
Even then, it would be up to the federal prosecutors to decide whether to charge Fauci with contempt. President Donald Trump has been noncommittal on the subject, despite his frequent enthusiasm for using the legal system to target political foes.
Fauci allies and some legal scholars have already argued that Fauci has the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment regardless of his pardon, since he could still face state or local prosecution for his Covid-era actions or be federally charged based on any new statements he makes.
That reasoning seemed to prompt conflicting views even among the Republicans who have sought to scrutinize Fauci. While Paul maintained that he shouldn’t be shielded by the Fifth Amendment, he also said repeatedly that any testimony could be considered a “new lie” — and admitted Fauci’s protections were a “legal question that the courts may have to decide on.”
Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford, meanwhile, said at one point during the hearing that it was Fauci’s “right” not to answer any questions, even as he later questioned whether the scientist retained those rights after opting to make an opening statement.
Yet among Fauci’s allies and advisers, Republicans’ continued pursuit of charges only served to justify the initial decision to sit out a hearing aimed only at plunging him deeper into legal jeopardy by any means necessary.
The hearing “was designed solely to vilify him, and there’s no way he could have answered those questions in any way that would have been productive,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a longtime acquaintance of Fauci.
“Of course, he did some things and said some things that were wrong because all of us at some point did or said some things that were wrong during this pandemic,” Offit said. “But Dr. Fauci was not the father of this virus, and he didn’t do anything nefariously. He was trying to get it right.”