Sen. Johnson Requests Transcribed Interviews With Fauci, Former FDA Officials on COVID-19 Vaccines

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) sent letters Wednesday to former FDA officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, requesting transcribed interviews about their roles in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Johnson said he wanted to give Fauci “another opportunity” to testify about COVID-19 vaccine safety, a day after the former NIAID director invoked his Fifth Amendment right rather than answer questions from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

In the letters, published on July 29, Johnson said he wants Fauci to provide “much-needed transparency about the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s response to it, including early treatments and the development, deployment, safety monitoring, and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.” 

Johnson also called upon former FDA officials Dr. Peter Marks, Dr. Narayan Nair, Dr. Steven Anderson, and Dr. Manette Niu. 

“The American people deserve answers to the many outstanding questions that only you can address, including your awareness of the deluge of adverse events being reported to safety surveillance systems and whether you knew that U.S. health officials intentionally used a data mining algorithm to conduct vaccine safety analyses that hid safety signals for COVID-19 vaccines, a revelation that my Subcommittee only recently uncovered,” he said in his letters.

Fauci, on July 29, declined to answer any questions from senators following the release of a diary he compiled while working in government.

“Although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the Legislative Branch for government, and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci, 85, who led the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, said in his opening statement during a hearing in Washington.

Fauci repeated more than 100 times in response to questions that he would not answer them, pursuant to the Fifth Amendment.

The Fifth Amendment says no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” Fauci received a preemptive pardon in 2025.

Federal law makes it a crime for a person who is subpoenaed by Congress to “refuse to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry” and to, in certain situations, withhold information from Congress. Fauci, who was appearing pursuant to a subpoena issued by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, could face misdemeanor or felony charges.

Johnson noted that he had released an interim report on April 29, in which he claimed that senior officials at the FDA “turned a blind eye toward warnings that their vaccine safety monitoring system was hiding safety signals for the COVID-19 vaccines.”

Johnson previously told The Epoch Times in an interview that the obtained records showed that top officials knew the methods they were using were inferior but would not adopt the newer approach.

“I think this is a bombshell,” Johnson said at the time. “I think this is a huge scandal.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chairman of the July 29 committee hearing, told reporters after the hearing that they would vote next week on whether to recommend charges against Fauci for contempt of Congress.

“We believe that 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,” Paul said.

The Epoch Times has contacted Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, as well as Dr. Peter Marks, Dr. Narayan Nair, Dr. Steven Anderson, and Dr. Manette Niu, for comment.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.