Legal expert tells CNN that Fauci's arrogant Covid hearings performance could see him CHARGED despite pardon from Biden

A Yale-educated legal scholar told CNN that Anthony Fauci's Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing performance could have actually worsened things for the former National Institutes of Health (NIH) official on Wednesday.

New York University law professor Ryan Goodman made the claim to anchor Erin Burnett ahead of an important vote on whether to hold Fauci in contempt for his refusal to testify next week.

Goodman dismissed the idea the doctor was in the clear after repeatedly using the Fifth Amendment to avoid questions about allegedly misleading Congress and the public about Covid-19's origins.

'I think it makes it worse,' said Goodman, before questioning the strategy.

'It's even a curious way in which you wonder what his legal advice was, why they decided to do that.'

The former special counsel to the Defense Department explained how any crimes that may have occurred during the hearing are not covered under Joe Biden’s blanket pardon for Fauci, including contempt.

'There could be - theoretically, at least - a Justice Department that goes after him for not answering when he is not really facing that criminal charge,' Goodman said.

Burnett acknowledged that while Fauci was likely trying to avoid 'perjury traps' from Republicans on the committee, 'to the layperson, it's saying, well, "Why wouldn't you just say the truth?"'

'So... it doesn't sound good,' she admitted.   

Biden's pardon covers any potential federal offenses that may have occurred between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025. It was awarded to Fauci in early 2025 on the then-president's final day of office. 

Senator Rand Paul, the committee's chairman, has alleged Fauci misled Congress and signed off on funding for experiments overseas that may have helped spread the virus.

Fauci has repeatedly insisted otherwise, saying his NIH did not fund such research in China.

Fauci, 85, said of Paul during the hearing: 'The sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, "behind bars."'    

The emergence of COVID-19 in late 2019 is the subject of two main theories – one being a laboratory-related incident, and the other natural zoonotic transmission, meaning it was transferred from animal to human. 

Personal diary entries penned by Fauci from early 2020 to his retirement in 2022 released ahead of the hearing show uncertainty from Fauci on whether the virus was engineered or leaked from a lab.

 Paul has argued the NIH funded research involving coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology under Fauci, and has accused the retired official of misleading Congress about whether that work constituted gain-of-function research.

More than six years later, there is still no definitive answer about how COVID-19 began.    

Paul addressed the approved vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress next week to reporters on Wednesday with comments similar to Goodman's.

'We believe with his liability, his immunity from criminal liability, that he didn't need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn't attach when you have a pardon in place,' he explained.

Goodman framed the doctor's ability to plead the Fifth again as 'a legal question.' 

'But the question on contempt will be voted on, and then there's a question of whether or not the Department of Justice will take it up,' he said.