At a highly anticipated Senate hearing, Anthony Fauci on Wednesday invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions about the Covid-19 pandemic and its origins, saying he was doing so on the advice of his attorneys.

The former U.S. health official, who achieved rock star status for a time due to his central role in charting the U.S. response to the pandemic, had been subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, a panel headed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had made no secret of his desire to see Fauci behind bars. Among other allegations, Paul has accused Fauci of covering up the origins of the virus that causes Covid — which the senator believes was caused by a lab leak in China — and lying to Congress.

Before stating that he would not answer questions, Fauci noted that in his nearly four decades as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases he had testified before or briefed House and Senate committees more than 200 times — a track record, he said, that demonstrated his belief in and respect for “legitimate congressional oversight.”

Fauci said that it pained him to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, but said he was doing it because it seemed clear “that the sole reason [Paul] is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he said.

Fauci, who stepped down as NIAID director on Dec. 31, 2022, was given a pre-emptive pardon by Joe Biden during the former president’s final hours in office. Biden gave a number of individuals, including several members of his family, such pardons to protect them from what he viewed as the threat of harassment from the incoming Trump administration.

But the pardon pertains to acts from 2014 through the end of the Biden administration. Testifying before Congress raises the specter that Fauci could be accused anew of lying — potentially opening the door to efforts by his foes to prosecute him.

“He could perjure himself now,” health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this week on Fox News. “If he lies again, he could be subject to perjury prosecution.”

Fauci and his lawyers clearly recognized his peril.

In his opening statement, Paul painted Fauci as the strongman behind key pandemic decisions, using his influence to justify them.

“The Covid lockdown, however, could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime,” Paul said. He also outright accused Fauci of attempting to cover up the possibility that the virus was engineered and leaked from a lab funded by the National Institutes of Health, pointing to passages in the diaries obtained by the senator.

“You did not tell the American people the full story,” Paul said.

Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the committee, opened the hearing by calling the legitimacy of Paul’s efforts into question, saying the oversight efforts were not bipartisan as usual. He said the pandemic response was only being relitigated to support “a pre-determined conclusion that was reached years ago.”

“I fear the intent of this hearing is only meant to fuel a purely partisan agenda and will not … make Americans safer,” Peters said.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.