The U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee has decided to pursue a charge of congressional contempt against Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), following his silence during a recent hearing.

Led by the Republican party, the Senate Homeland Security Committee passed a resolution recognizing Fauci in contempt of Congress on the 6th, local time.

Democratic lawmakers opposed the measure.

If the resolution is adopted by the full Senate, it will be forwarded to the prosecutor's office, where a prosecutor will submit the case to a grand jury to determine whether to file charges.

However, passing the full Senate requires 60 votes, leading to a general consensus that it will be difficult with just the 53 seats held by Republicans.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who leads the committee's attacks against Fauci, opened the meeting for the vote by urging passage, stating, "We instructed Fauci to answer, but he refused."

Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the opposition party, criticized the resolution's passage as a "hurried investigation" conducted by Chairman Paul without Democratic participation.

Fauci was summoned to a hearing on July 29, but invoked his Fifth Amendment right guaranteeing protection against being compelled to give self-incriminating testimony in response to questions directed at him.

At the time, he drew attention by refusing to open his mouth even to questions such as "What day is today?" and "What color tie are you wearing?"

Fox News tallied that Fauci refused to answer 111 times.

The hearings were intended to examine conspiracy theories that the COVID-19 pandemic, which swept the globe from 2020 to 2021, originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, as well as controversies over whether the pandemic response at the time was appropriate.

Legal scholars are divided over whether Fauci's invocation of the Fifth Amendment at the hearing was legitimate and whether a contempt of Congress charge can be applied to it, according to The New York Times (NYT).

There is a precedent in which a resolution recognizing contempt of Congress was adopted against Lois Lerner, an Internal Revenue Service official who refused to answer after an opening statement at a House hearing in 2013, similar to Fauci.

However, prosecutors declined to indict her, viewing that it could not be seen as a waiver of Fifth Amendment rights.

There is also a perspective that refusing to answer was a legitimate exercise of the right to defense, given that Chairman Paul has openly stated he wants to send Fauci to "jail" and is attempting to prove him guilty of perjury.

Chairman Paul has claimed that Fauci lied to Congress despite funding research at the Wuhan lab in China that led to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauci has denied this.

Fauci is cited as one of the targets of political retaliation by President Donald Trump, as he has argued that vaccine skepticism, opposition to masks and quarantines, and theories of COVID-19 virus leaks—raised primarily by President Trump and his supporters—are groundless.

Attacks against him are expected to continue led by Republicans not only in the Senate but also in the House.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) warned after Fauci's hearing, "We will ask him if he still maintains the previous testimony he gave before our committee."

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)