Politics
The Many Ways Trump Is Trying to Tip the Scales for the Midterms
President Trump is trying to use the levers of the federal government, along with personal influence over state and local lawmakers, to reshape the rules governing the 2026 midterms and future elections in extraordinary ways.
Many of these efforts have been blocked by courts, stymied by the Constitution or stopped in Congress. But the relentless assault by the president on the electoral process — both administratively and rhetorically — is likely to sow doubt and lay groundwork for extensive challenges to election results.
Agencies and officials across the federal government have, at the direction of Mr. Trump, undertaken dozens of actions grounded in novel strategies and aimed at insulating Republicans from potential losses in November. Those actions fall into six major categories (and some fall into more than one).
Taking steps to nationalize elections
The United States Constitution puts control over elections in the hands of the states and grants Congress the ability to pass federal election legislation. It gives no explicit authority to the executive branch.
But in early February, Mr. Trump said he wanted the Republican-led federal government to “nationalize” or “take over” the running of elections. “A state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” he said.
Mr. Trump had already, in March 2025, signed an executive order seeking broad authority over elections. The order required documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and mandated the return of mail ballots by Election Day. Those were almost universally blocked by courts, which found that the order clearly violated the separation of powers and exceeded the president’s authority.
But another provision, which instructed the U.S. attorney general to hunt for and prosecute election crimes, has been used to justify sprawling efforts by the Justice Department related to elections.
The Justice Department began demanding the complete voter files — state databases of registered voters that include sensitive personal identifying information — from every state as it worked to compile the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected.
More than half the states — many under Democratic control but some run by Republicans, too — have resisted this effort. In response, the Justice Department has sued at least 30 states and territories, seeking to force them to turn over their unredacted voter rolls. At least 16 states have provided or indicated an intention to turn over their lists, according to tracking from the Brennan Center for Justice.
In January, Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, requested that Minnesota turn over its voter rolls to “bring back law and order” amid protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Minnesota officials dismissed the request as “outrageous.”
Though the Justice Department has yet to win a single lawsuit — it has lost at least 10 so far, as well as one federal appeal — election officials and Democrats fear the battle over voting records may be used in a post-election effort to challenge, discredit or spread disinformation about midterm results.
Acting on the same executive order, the Department of Homeland Security has been combing voter rolls for noncitizens who have voted. It has not found evidence of widespread fraud, and a federal judge barred the administration from letting states use a federal citizenship data tool to screen their voter rolls.
In March 2026, Mr. Trump signed a second executive order regarding voting policy, this time seeking to create state-by-state lists of citizens that would be used to determine voting eligibility and restrict the use of mail ballots. It was immediately challenged by nearly half the states and multiple voting rights groups. A federal judge sided with the states’ argument, blocking key provisions of the executive order.
Before that court decision, the United States Postal Service proposed a rule that would allow the agency to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that didn’t turn over voter rolls to the federal government. The postmaster general has said the service will abide by any court order.
Separate from the executive orders, senior Justice Department officials last year began exploring whether they could bring criminal charges against state or local election officials if the administration determined they had not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems.
Democrats fear that the president could weaponize federal agencies on or after Election Day. Mr. Trump told The New York Times last year that he regretted not seizing voting machines after the 2020 election.
Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman for the White House, defended the president’s actions and policies regarding elections.
“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered noncitizen voters,” she said in a statement. Ms. Jackson also pointed to a few specific examples of noncitizens who were charged with illegal voting and noted other ongoing investigations. She reiterated the president’s desire to pass federal voting legislation that would enshrine many of his voting objectives into law.
“Noncitizens voting is a crime,” Ms. Jackson said. “Anyone breaking the law will be held accountable.”
Trying to tighten voting restrictions
While Mr. Trump’s attempts to use executive orders to change elections have been largely blocked by courts, the president and his allies have found other avenues to add new restrictions to voting that are designed to help them win at the ballot box.
Soon after Mr. Trump took office, the Justice Department dropped or halted all of its open voting rights lawsuits that preceded Mr. Trump’s inauguration, easing the path for partisan gerrymanders and voting laws to withstand legal scrutiny. That included dropping a lawsuit against a voting law in Georgia.
The number of lawyers working in the voting-rights arm of the Justice Department, one of the government’s critical bulwarks against civil rights abuses in voting and elections, has dwindled from about 30 at the end of the Biden administration to the single digits after resignations, cuts and reassignments.
Last year, the Trump administration joined a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee against Mississippi that said the state’s policy of accepting mail and absentee ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but arrived in a short period afterward violated federal election law. (Far more Democrats than Republicans vote by mail.)
On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld Mississippi’s grace period.
The president has also sought to force Congress to pass voting legislation that would codify many parts of his executive orders into federal law. The legislation, called the SAVE America Act, would, among other things, require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote as well as photo identification to vote. It would also require states to submit their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security.
Republicans lack the votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster and pass the legislation, but the president has continued to pressure Republicans to force a vote, threatening not to sign any nonbudgetary bills until it is passed.
Pushing for mid-decade redistricting
Perhaps no strategy embraced by Mr. Trump was more explicitly designed to prevent a midterm loss than the mid-decade redistricting wars of the past year.
Last summer, Mr. Trump and his allies at the White House began encouraging Texas Republicans to take the rare step of redrawing their congressional maps to try to save the party’s endangered majority.
By November, forcing Republican-led states to redraw their maps was at the center of Mr. Trump’s strategy to win the midterms and prevent Democratic control of the House of Representatives.
Texas, North Carolina and Missouri quickly redrew their congressional maps, netting seven new Republican-leaning districts. Ohio redrew its map as required by state law, adding as many as two new Republican-leaning districts.
Democrats responded by introducing aggressive gerrymanders in California and Virginia, which appeared to bring the redistricting wars to a draw — until the Supreme Court weakened a key component of the Voting Rights Act in April. After the ruling, Tennessee redrew its maps to eliminate the lone Democratic-held seat in the state, and Louisiana and Alabama quickly followed with new maps that would each eliminate another Democratic-controlled district.
At the same time, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the Democratic gerrymander in the state, effectively eliminating four new Democratic-leaning districts and handing Republicans a multi-seat structural advantage heading into the midterms.
Cutting election security
The Trump administration has gutted key elements of the nation’s election security infrastructure. Experts warn that the changes could reduce visibility into nationwide cyberattacks and foreign influence campaigns while making it more difficult for state and local election officials to coordinate defensive operations.
Early in his second term, Mr. Trump signed two directives that administration officials have used to justify the dismantling of these programs.
The administration has weakened the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, terminated an F.B.I. task force aimed at combatting foreign influence in U.S. elections and ended a program responsible for sharing threat intelligence with state and local officials.
The actions are rooted in longstanding grievances from Mr. Trump and his allies, who have argued that, under the guise of fighting misinformation and disinformation, the Biden administration infringed on free speech.
In his first budget request to Congress, Mr. Trump proposed eliminating CISA’s disinformation offices, accusing them of “conspiring against the First Amendment rights of President Trump and his supporters.”
Mr. Trump’s attacks on CISA also reflect his animosity toward Christopher Krebs, the agency’s former director who oversaw efforts to secure the 2020 election and infuriated Mr. Trump by publicly debunking his lies about that election.
Undermining faith in the electoral system by questioning previous results
Mr. Trump refuses to concede that he lost the 2020 election and has used the White House to both legitimize and seek evidence supporting his debunked conspiracy theories.
On his first day back in office, he granted clemency to the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Later, he introduced a page on the White House website falsely accusing Democrats of promoting a “gaslighting narrative” in their efforts to certify the “stolen election.”
Mr. Trump also ordered Tulsi Gabbard, then the director of national intelligence, to help manage an F.B.I. investigation of his baseless claims of voting irregularities in Fulton County, Ga. The move came after a team led by Ms. Gabbard seized voting machines from Puerto Rico to examine them for vulnerabilities.
The administration has also issued subpoenas for 2020 election records in Maricopa County, Ariz.; requested access to voting equipment used in Missouri; and, based on disproven allegations about the 2020 election, demanded 2024 election records from Wayne County, Mich. Last month, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles broke with decades of precedent in predicting election fraud charges related to California’s primary races while votes were still being counted.
In May, the Justice Department announced it was setting up a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed to be victims of government “weaponization,” which would most likely include people who stormed the Capitol in 2021. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said on June 2 that the fund would not move forward, but Mr. Trump later said he still loved the idea.
Mr. Trump has stocked his second administration with people who are sympathetic to his denial of the 2020 election results. These officials have been put into positions where they could play a role in undermining this year’s and future elections.
Where Trump has installed election deniers in government
Punishing those who have worked against election denialism
While Mr. Trump has long used grievance as a political tool, retribution against his perceived enemies has become a centerpiece of his second administration. Much of that retribution has targeted anyone who has investigated the Jan. 6 attack or pushed back on his 2020 election denial.
Within hours of retaking office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order asserting that the Biden administration had engaged “in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents” and directing federal agencies to seek evidence that it did so.
The administration has purged F.B.I. agents and government attorneys who worked on investigations of Mr. Trump or his allies, revoked security clearances from dozens of people as punishment for alleged misconduct and opened investigations into Mr. Trump’s supposed “enemies.”
It has also sought to target ordinary citizens. In April, the Justice Department issued a federal grand jury subpoena demanding the identities of every person who worked on the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga. The county’s motion to block the subpoena characterized it as intended “to target, harass and punish the president’s perceived political opponents.” The effort remains tied up in the courts.
As the only president in United States history to seek to overturn an election result, Mr. Trump has spent years using social media and campaign rallies to sow doubt about the integrity of U.S. elections. He continues to do so, but now he also wields the authority to direct his cabinet secretaries and other political appointees to implement his agenda. All of Mr. Trump’s directives underlying the above agency actions are based on several debunked election-related conspiracy theories, including:
His claim that undocumented immigrants vote illegally in large numbers.
“They want illegal immigrants to come in, criminals, doesn’t matter because they want to get their votes.”
— Republican fundraiser, March 25, 2026
His spreading of debunked claims of widespread fraud related to mail-in ballots …
“Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots.”
— White House remarks, Aug. 18, 2025
… and voting machines.
“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”
— Truth Social post, Aug. 18, 2025
Broader unsubstantiated claims he has made of widespread voting fraud that include people voting multiple times or assuming dead people’s identities to vote.
“Every day you read in the papers about more and more fraud that’s discovered.”
— White House remarks, April 9, 2025
And finally, his belief in a “deep state” embedded in the government that has worked against him and other Republicans.
“We’re going to find the deep-state actors who have buried into government, fire them and escort them from federal buildings.”
— Campaign rally, Jan. 28, 2023
While many of Mr. Trump’s directives have been blocked or delayed by the courts, election experts say that their potential harm remains significant, and that some of the efforts have already eroded faith in the process.
“The point of so much of this campaign is not actually to change policy because they know they don’t actually have the authority to change policy,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “It’s to inject distrust and confusion into our elections, both to discourage people from participating and to lay the groundwork for calling elections into question after the fact.”
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The DOJ’s expanded anti-fraud task force made its first sweeping bust of Medicaid scofflaws in Pennsylvania this month, drawing comparisons to the massive fraud scandals that rocked Minnesota — but with one major difference.
Republicans and Democrats in the state united in outrage after nearly two dozen people were charged in Philadelphia and elsewhere. The DOJ noted Pennsylvania spends $8 billion on Medicaid home-care services, more than almost any other state, and those services were the target of the busts.
“The allegations are really disturbing just as they are in Minnesota and other places where we’ve seen this,” House Ways & Means Committee member Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
PENNSYLVANIA AG EXPLAINS WHY STATE LEADS NATION IN MEDICAID FRAUD CONVICTIONS WHILE OTHERS BATTLE MASS SCHEMES
Rep. Lloyd K. Smucker, R-Pa., addresses a hearing on Capitol Hill. (Bill Clark/Getty Images)
“It’s criminal activity that is taking money from individuals who really need it. And this is this is Medicaid — It’s not Medicare, which is more for seniors. But this is for people who truly need help, who are disabled — these are individuals who are relying on Medicaid to help them get through every day. And these are criminals who are taking that money and lining their pockets with it,” said Smucker, whose Lancaster-area district has an older population and has anywhere from two in 10 to four in 10 constituents enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid or both, according to reports.
The DOJ’s anti-fraud chief echoed those sentiments while describing some of the most egregious cases among the 19 Pennsylvania defendants charged as of last week.
One suspect billed Medicaid for services that supposedly occurred while police had pulled him over for a moving violation and charged him on suspicion of marijuana possession, according to the DOJ.
Another suspect billed Medicaid for services during a period when he was in court watching a family member get sentenced for Medicaid fraud-related offenses, according to Colin McDonald.
I’M OHIO’S STATE AUDITOR — MEDICAID FRAUD IS NOT JUST A WASHINGTON PROBLEM
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during a re-election campaign kickoff event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. (Rachel Wisniewski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Another suspect billed Medicaid for home-care services that McDonald said were supposedly provided while the suspect was driving for a rideshare company. Another billed for services while in prison, according to McDonald.
Smucker said Pennsylvania welcomes fellow Keystone Stater and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz and his investigators, adding that he is grateful state officials in Harrisburg are also taking note.
That cooperation sets the Pennsylvania busts apart from those in Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Walz has faced accusations of inaction over what has become a multibillion-dollar scandal.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signaled cooperation and collaboration with Republicans in going after Medicaid fraudsters in remarks his office made to Fox News Digital.
TIM WALZ BECOMES GOP PUNCHLINE IN SWEEPING NEW WAR ON WELFARE FRAUD
Shapiro, a Democrat and the commonwealth’s former attorney general, prosecuted public assistance-related crimes and now governs the state with the nation’s highest number of criminal convictions for Medicaid fraud.
The governor — who was considered a runner-up to Walz in then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ search for a running mate — said the commonwealth is a “national leader in stopping fraud.”
“Here in Pennsylvania, we combat fraud wherever we find it. In 2024, we charged 119 cases of Medicaid fraud — recovering more than $11 million for taxpayers,” Shapiro said in a recent statement.
“Governor Shapiro has made fighting public assistance fraud a cornerstone of his career in public service, rooting out waste, fraud and abuse as Attorney General where he cracked down on fraud and public assistance benefit theft, charging dozens of people who stole millions in taxpayer dollars,” Shapiro spokeswoman Rosie Lapowsky told Fox News Digital.
READ: DR. OZ PUTS ALL 50 GOVERNORS ON NOTICE OVER BILLIONS LOST TO MEDICAID FRAUD
Lapowsky said the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) brought one of the cases referenced by McDonald to the Justice Department for further investigation during Shapiro’s tenure.
“[That is] clearly showing our system works,” she said, adding that Pennsylvania’s high number of home-care service providers is not by itself an indicator of fraud. Conservative critics in Minnesota and Washington state have pointed to similar provider numbers to raise suspicions about fraudulent activity.
Pennsylvania — the fifth-most populous state, behind California, Texas, Florida and New York — has seen a 20% increase since 2018 in the number of adults in home-care programs, according to DHS.
DHS said it employs “ongoing monitoring,” including an electronic visit-verification system, to ensure proper billing and curtail fraud. The department refers potential fraud cases to Republican Pennsylvania Attorney General David Sunday’s office.
WATCH: DR. OZ SAYS NEWSOM, OTHER BLUE STATES HAVE TURNED MEDICAID FRAUD INTO A ‘FEATURE’
“This criminal conduct is much more than someone ‘working the system’ — the impact is deep and wide-ranging, as every dollar diverted deprives someone in need of care,” Sunday said in a statement.
“In collaboration with our partners, my office last year convicted more than 100 defendants, and clawed back more than $40 million that was intended for Pennsylvanians in need.”
In 2025, Sunday’s office handled 744 referrals from DHS alone, according to Harrisburg sources.
Smucker said all stakeholders must continue being vigilant for both Medicaid and Medicare-related fraud.
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“People like the four seasons here,” he said, referring to the high number of retirees who call Amish Country home.
“But we have a lot of people who are relying on these programs… and we have seen fraud across the system in federal programs. This is probably hundreds of billions per year that is being siphoned-off from taxpayer dollars,” he said.
Pennsylvania officials say investigators continue to make progress fighting Medicaid fraud.
“We are coming for you,” said former Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady, whom President Donald Trump tapped to lead the White House’s nationwide anti-fraud task force
The DOJ’s “Northeast Strike Force” was originally organized in Brooklyn and Newark before expanding into Pennsylvania as part of the broader crackdown.
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“Our message is clear: if you are a medical provider who chooses greed over your professional responsibility, DEA will hold you accountable,” said Drug Enforcement Administration Philadelphia chief Timothy Flaherty, whose agency is one of several participating in the new task force.
Fox News Digital’s Hannah Brennan contributed to this report.
Things people don’t want to do this summer, as evidenced by poor ratings: Watch CBS news anchor Tony Doukopil. Tune in to Paramount+’s sci-fi teen drama “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.” Read President Trump’s Truth Social posts.
No matter how much Trump posts, and he has been posting a lot lately, traffic to the platform he uses as his megaphone for official White House statements and personal rants has fallen off significantly this summer. Last month, the overall number of monthly visitors to Truth Social was down about 36% from where it was in 2025, according to the online tracking firm Similarweb. The numbers were similarly dismal in June.
But Trump’s slumping media fortunes may soon get an infusion of cash, or bitcoin, or whatever it takes to line his coffers before the jig is up.
Never one to leave a source of income untapped, the president has come up with yet another way to add to the $2.2 billion he made in just the first year of his second term. His majority-owned Trump Media & Technology Group earlier this month announced that it was rolling out a new service aimed at cashing in on the president’s every word.
Truth API is a subscription service that offers early access to posts from Trump and other notable users of the platform, for a price. It’s charging fees of up to $100,000 a month.
But there’s a hiccup in the president’s latest grift. On Wednesday, media organizations Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept sued Trump, filing a complaint saying that providing quicker access to his posts to those who pay was “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.”
Their suit alleges that Truth API contradicts the 1st Amendment’s guarantee of equal public access to the president’s statements and violates the 5th Amendment by granting preferential access for “unreasonable sums.” The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asked the court to block Trump from publishing official government information exclusively on Truth Social.
So why is this particular moneymaking scheme garnering so much attention outside Trump’s many other grifts? Because a president’s words can, and often do, sway the stock market. In the frenetic world of Wall Street trading, early access to statements and news from the commander-in-chief gives subscribers an edge, and as NPR pointed out, that could mean a difference of millions of dollars.
Unlike any other sitting U.S. president, Trump in his second term has ignored traditional means of communication such as press briefings, live addresses or posting official announcements, executive actions, press releases and statements on the official White House website. He’s done so in favor of communicating through his own privately controlled platform, delivering wild posting sprees that often forgo the fact-based, informative briefings we the people still need from our elected officials. But even back when he was using Twitter (now X) during his first term, the White House said his tweets should be considered official statements.
That standard still holds for his frequent barrages of boasts, insults, threats, grouses and indecipherable dispatches via Truth Social. After the humiliating failure of his America 250 celebration, he fired off 67 posts on Truth Social in just two hours, posting almost every single minute between 11:12 a.m. and 1:14 p.m. His musings ranged from attacks on a federal judge to a photo of himself at a 1991 New York City tree-lighting ceremony with his “Home Alone 2” co-stars.
That spree is now among the thousands more posts from the president that have not been followed up by announcements from the White House outside of Truth Social. “In other words, President Trump’s posts are the only way to get official government news,” the lawsuit said.
Trump Media & Technology Group, or TMTG, is majority-owned by the president. It was launched following Trump’s account suspension across mainstream social platforms including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The platforms cited risks of inciting violence following the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. Trump responded by creating his own platform, and Truth Social debuted in 2022.
But the platform’s parent company, TMTG, has lost money ever since it went public in 2024. On Monday, Trump Media reported a $238-million loss for the second quarter, tied mostly to cryptocurrency assets. Executives told investors on a conference call that they are now going to focus their energy on Truth Social and soft-explained their latest scheme to profit off the presidency.
“Our customers will get published and publicly available posts fractionally faster” than everyone else,” said Kevin McGurn, the company’s interim chief executive. He added that such early access is a “well-established business practice.”
Unless it’s a sitting U.S. president doing the selling. We’re in uncharted territory, once again. But another big question around this new subscription service is whether investors and traders can trust the intelligence they get from early access to Trump’s posts.
It was revealed this week that the president published deceptive information last month, putting the lives of dozens in danger. Before leaving a NATO meeting in Turkey, he posted that he’d be riding on the older Air Force One “for old time’s sake” instead of the newly retrofitted, Qatari-donated jet. His misdirection was part of an elaborate ruse to mask his transfer from Air Force One to a military fighter jet following intel that Iran may be targeting the president’s plane. The subterfuge involved him stowing away in an airport catering container to sneak onto the jet. Of course a president has to be protected, but Air Force One still had members of the press and his administration aboard when they sent it into the sky. Essentially, they were unwitting decoys.
Sometimes a president has to lie to stay safe. And oftentimes this president peddles misinformation as a means to other ends, like amassing more money for himself while holding on to his seat of power. Paying for early access to Trump’s posts is a great idea — for Trump.
Politics
Fauci refuses Senate appearance after invoking Fifth Amendment more than 100 times in COVID probe
Fauci held in contempt by Senate panel as states launch probes
A Senate panel has voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during a hearing on the origins of COVID-19. ‘Outnumbered’ details HHS handing over work iPhone records and state subpoenas issued by officials in Florida, Alabama and Louisiana following the vote led by Senator Rand Paul.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday declined a request to voluntarily appear before a second Senate panel, opening another front in Republicans’ investigations into the former public health official’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
An attorney for Fauci rejected the request from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, arguing that compelling Fauci to testify again after his contentious July 29 Senate hearing would “impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes.”
Johnson has been conducting a parallel investigation into Fauci and the federal government’s response to COVID-19, including the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
SEN RON JOHNSON TALKS FAUCI EMAILS, NEW SENATE FILIBUSTER STRATEGY ON ‘RUTHLESS’
FILE – Former NIH Director Anthony Fauci is sworn in before testifying to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on July 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The refusal comes after Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines last week to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during the July hearing.
Committee chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., has sought to send the contempt referral directly to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, bypassing a full Senate vote.
“It’s a good legal discussion, and we will make those legal points to DOJ in sending the referral over,” Paul told Fox News Digital ahead of last week’s contempt vote.
At issue is whether Fauci can invoke the Fifth Amendment after former President Joe Biden issued him a preemptive pardon before leaving office.
CAN FAUCI HIDE BEHIND THE FIFTH? GAME-CHANGING BIDEN PARDON MAY NOT PROVIDE COMPLETE COVER, EXPERTS SAY
FILE – Former NIH Director Anthony Fauci listens during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on July 29, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Fauci declined to answer questions, asserting his Fifth Amendment right. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Paul has argued that Biden’s pardon removed Fauci’s risk of federal prosecution and therefore undermined his basis for refusing to answer lawmakers’ questions. Fauci and his attorneys have disputed that position.
Paul has spent years investigating Fauci’s role in the government’s response to COVID-19 and has accused the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director of funding “risky” research that led to an alleged lab leak of the COVID-19 virus in China. Paul has repeatedly called for Fauci to be prosecuted.
Johnson’s subcommittee has separately obtained records related to Fauci and the government’s pandemic response. Fox News Digital previously confirmed that the Department of Health and Human Services sent the subcommittee a copy of Fauci’s pandemic-era cellphone.
The broader Homeland Security panel also received more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary before his July hearing.
FILE – Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., gestures while addressing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2026. It is unclear if Johnson’s office will subpoena Fauci following the refusal. (CSPAN)
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Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson’s office to ask whether he intends to subpoena Fauci following the refusal. Fox News Digital also sought reaction from Paul’s office and asked Fauci attorney David Schertler whether Fauci would comply with a subpoena compelling his testimony.
Fox News Digital’s Alex Miller and Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
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