House Oversight Chairman James Comer put Dr. Anthony Fauci on notice ahead of his Senate testimony this week, warning that the presidential pardon he received from Joe Biden does not cover any dishonesty under oath going forward.
Comer, a Kentucky Republican, told Fox News Digital that Fauci still faces real accountability despite the sweeping pardon Biden granted him during the final hours of the Democratic administration. The pardon covers any offenses from January 1, 2014, through its issue date, or anything related to Fauci's service as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, his role on the White House Coronavirus Task Force and COVID-19 Response Team, or his tenure as chief medical advisor to the president.
It does not, Comer argued, shield Fauci from consequences if he misleads Congress again.
The warning lands days after Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and longtime Fauci critic who chairs the Senate panel set to question Fauci, made public hundreds of pages of Fauci's COVID-era diary entries. Those entries show Fauci reflecting on his pandemic-era fame and raising questions about the disease's origins. Some entries appear to show Fauci taking credit for influencing policies that closed schools during the pandemic, a direct tension with his January 2024 testimony before the House Oversight Committee, where he told lawmakers under oath, "I did not close the schools."
Comer seized on that contradiction.
"We now know why President Biden gave a blanket pardon to Dr. Fauci. While obsessing about his own fame, Dr. Fauci wasn't truthful with the American people about the origins of COVID and advised schools to be closed."
He followed with a sharper point about what comes next:
"Americans are still reaping the consequences of Dr. Fauci's actions. Biden's pardon doesn't cover Dr. Fauci's testimony this week and if he continues to lie, he must be held accountable."
Comer is not alone. Two physician-lawmakers who co-chair the House GOP Doctors' Caucus, Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina and Rep. John Joyce of Pennsylvania, also issued statements to Fox News Digital condemning Fauci's conduct and calling for accountability beyond what the Senate hearing alone can deliver.
Murphy, a practicing physician before entering Congress, framed the damage in generational terms:
"Dr. Fauci, enamored with his own fame and vanity, put politics above science during the pandemic. He is primarily responsible for the resulting multi-generational erosion of trust in American medicine."
He called Fauci's trajectory "a perfect example of ego destroying whatever achievements he had prior to the pandemic." That is a striking assessment from a fellow doctor, not a political operative, but a colleague in the medical profession who concluded that Fauci's pursuit of influence did lasting harm to the institutions both men served.
Joyce went further, tying the diary entries directly to what he described as a pattern of dishonesty:
"The release of Dr. Fauci's diary entries validates what many Americans suspected all along: he was not honest about the origins of COVID-19."
Joyce added that Fauci's "fixation on preserving his own image and maintaining a position of power eroded public trust, undermined the integrity of our public health institutions, and failed the American people." He said Fauci "must be held accountable" by the House as well as the Senate.
The legal question hanging over Fauci's upcoming testimony is whether Biden's pardon extends to protect him from liability stemming from what he says on the witness stand this week. The pardon's text covers conduct tied to his government service roles, but Comer's position, and the position of the House Republicans backing him, is that new testimony creates new exposure. A pardon for past acts does not function as a license to mislead Congress in the future.
Fauci has long denied any wrongdoing. He has argued that he has been made a political target by people on the right who are critical of how governments handled COVID-19. But that defense grows harder to sustain when his own diary entries, in his own words, appear to contradict what he told lawmakers under oath in January 2024.
Biden issued the pardon alongside several other preemptive pardons during the final hours of his administration. At the time, the move raised immediate questions about why a president would grant a blanket pardon to a public health official who insisted he had done nothing wrong. Comer's statement suggests Republicans believe the diary entries now answer that question.
Fauci is set to appear before the GOP-led Senate panel chaired by Paul, who has clashed with Fauci publicly for years over COVID-19's origins and the federal government's pandemic response. Paul made the diary entries public, and the hearing gives him a direct opportunity to press Fauci on the discrepancies between those private writings and his prior sworn statements.
The House Republicans' coordinated statements ahead of the hearing signal that the pressure on Fauci is not limited to one chamber. Joyce's explicit call for House accountability, paired with Comer's warning about the pardon's limits, suggests that Senate testimony could trigger further congressional action if Fauci's answers do not hold up.
Fauci walked into his last congressional appearance in January 2024 and told the Oversight Committee he did not close the schools. His own diary entries now appear to tell a different story. Biden handed him a pardon to cover the past. Nobody can hand him one to cover what he says next.
