Art Jipson

DrAnthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from a Senate committee more than 100 times on July 29, 2026. The Republican-led hearing – convened to scrutinise Fauci’s management of the pandemic and the origins of COVID-19 – was the latest chapter in a political story that began in 2020, when uncertainty, fear and frustration with the government became entangled with conspiracy theories. In the past six years, some of these theories have emerged from the margins of the internet and made their way into Republican politics, the MAGA movement, anti-vaccine communities and even white-nationalist extremist networks. Conspiracy theories do not simply explain events; they identify villains – and Fauci has become one of the most popular in this particular story.

In the years since the pandemic, US Sen. Rand Paul and others have accused Fauci of many things, but the central conspiracy accusation is that Fauci helped enable the COVID-19 pandemic through US-funded research at a lab in Wuhan, China, and then participated in a coordinated government-scientific cover-up, misleading Congress to conceal that connection and suppress the laboratory-leak explanation. Paul, a Republican, has repeatedly called for Fauci’s prosecution.

In January 2025, President Joe Biden granted Fauci a preemptive pardon covering potential federal offences related to his government service since 2014. Fauci had not been charged with a crime, but critics portrayed the pardon as evidence that he had something to hide. Fauci has denied claims of wrongdoing and has testified multiple times before Congress.

The Fauci conspiracy is much bigger than Rand Paul, though. Paul may be its most persistent congressional promoter, but it’s been amplified by a wider network of Republican lawmakers. Several Republican members of Congress, such as Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. James Comer and former Rep. Brad Wenstrup, among others, have advanced versions of the Fauci/COVID-origin narrative. House Republicans formally investigated these claims for two years, while members repeatedly accused Fauci of suppressing the lab-leak theory and misleading the public. That investigation ultimately endorsed a central claim of the conspiracy narrative: the House GOP’s COVID-19 investigation concluded the virus most likely leaked from a Wuhan lab, that Fauci helped shape a scientific paper dismissing that theory, and that he privately testified the “six feet apart” guidance “sort of just appeared” – though these are the conclusions of a partisan committee, not an independent inquiry, and Fauci and Democratic members have disputed them.

I’m an associate professor of sociology and criminology, and my scholarship focuses on far-right networks and digital radicalisation – the exact ecosystem where these conspiracy theories have taken root and spread. My research on how these movements evolve online and intersect with political activists and extremist networks was directly relevant to tracing how COVID-origin claims moved from fringe communities into mainstream political discourse.

Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment, which he and his lawyer explained not only as a basic constitutional right but also as a strategy to avoid the possibility that Paul might try to prosecute him for lying to Congress based on anything he might say, may be politically explosive and provide his opponents with another talking point. But, in my assessment, the spectacle says more about what happens when conspiracy theories become embedded in political institutions than it does about the origins of COVID-19.

From uncertainty to conspiracy

COVID-19 created the conditions in which conspiracy theories flourish: enormous uncertainty, frightening consequences, rapidly changing information and distrust of institutions. People wanted explanations. Why did the virus appear in Wuhan? Why did recommendations about masks change? How were vaccines developed so quickly? These questions were legitimate. Problems emerged when those questions became connected to a predetermined conclusion: Powerful people either created the pandemic or concealed the connection to the lab in Wuhan.

(The writer is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Dayton, Ohio, United States)