U.S. Sen. Rand Paul is pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci for alleged perjury, challenging the constitutionality of the autopen-signed pardon that shielded him from prosecution.
In a letter dated July 14, 2025, Paul renewed a prior criminal referral targeting Fauci, citing newly released emails, federal reports, and what he described as a “questionable” clemency order issued by former President Joe Biden hours before leaving office.
Paul alleged that Fauci may have misled Congress about the National Institutes of Health’s role in funding controversial gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Paul subsequently called on the Department of Justice to determine whether Fauci had violated 18 U.S.C. § 1001, the federal statute that criminalizes making materially false statements to Congress.
Paul’s letter pointed to a February 2020 email, released in 2023 by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, in which Fauci acknowledged “scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments,” apparently contradicting his Senate testimony on May 11, 2021, in which he claimed that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Fauci has repeatedly denied lying to Congress, stating in a subsequent hearing, “I have never lied before the Congress… [and] do not retract that statement.”
Paul argued that Fauci’s comments were inconsistent with findings from the Government Accountability Office. A 2023 United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report stated that the NIH funded research at the Wuhan lab that “combined naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in hybridized coronavirus strains.”
Paul’s letter also raised questions about the legitimacy of the pardon Biden granted Fauci in January 2025. According to a July 13 report by The New York Times, also cited in multiple outlets, including Fox News, the White House used an autopen to execute a batch of last-minute pardons. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, reportedly sent an email at 10:31 p.m. on Biden’s last day in office approving the use of the autopen for a list of recipients, including Fauci and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.
Biden has defended the process, telling The New York Times, “I made every single one of those [pardon decisions],” adding that he used the autopen only for expediency. However, Paul and other Republicans argue that delegating the signature process raises constitutional and legal concerns, particularly in light of concerns about Biden’s cognitive state during his final year in office.
President Donald Trump, who succeeded Biden in January and has made the pardon controversy a political rallying point, called the autopen usage “one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50 to 100 years,” alleging that Biden “knew nothing about what he was signing.”
Paul and other Republicans argue that Biden’s autopen use—combined with staff involvement and a lack of direct documentation—could indicate executive overreach or even fraud.
Unanswered questions remain about whether the autopen was used to produce these acts of clemency for Fauci and others without the then-President’s consent.
Paul’s letter emphasized that “new information has revealed that these pardons were executed via autopen, with no documented confirmation that the President personally reviewed or approved each individual grant of clemency.”
While no federal court has ever invalidated a presidential pardon due to its method of execution, Republican-led investigations in the House and Senate are now probing the matter, including subpoenas to members of Biden’s former staff.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, has signaled his committee will examine both Biden’s mental fitness and the legality of his aides’ involvement in the pardon process, per Fox News.
The DOJ has not commented on whether it intends to act on Paul’s renewed referral.
Biden has tried to re-characterize the current scrutiny of his administration as politically motivated. “They have lied so consistently about almost everything they are doing. The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else,” he reportedly said.