Fauci Flops in Front of the Senate & The SAVE Act Drama Continues | 7.30.26

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Georgia Howe** (0:31)
Dr. Tony Fauci pleads the 5th more than 100 times during his Senate testimony.

**Josh Hawley** (0:36)
You were supposed to be the nation's doctor and you're playing one on TV, but this is what you were doing with your time. Isn't that true?

**Anthony Fauci** (0:44)
On the advice of council, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Yeah.
Yeah, I can see why.

**John Bickley** (0:52)
We talked to Senator Josh Hawley about what comes next for Fauci.

**Georgia Howe** (0:56)
I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, July 30th, and this is Morning Wire.

**John Bickley** (1:10)
The SAVE Act continues to stall in the Senate, driving a wedge between House and Senate Republicans.

**Andy Ogles** (1:16)
Eighty-three percent of Americans, Republicans, Democrats, independents, everybody understands and agrees that they want the elections to be secure and passage of the SAVE America Act.

**Georgia Howe** (1:26)
And AI jitters are rattling investors.

**Ed Butowsky** (1:29)
At some point, that bubble is going to burst. And apparently, it already started to burst over in South Korea.

**John Bickley** (1:36)
Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned with the news you need to know.

**Georgia Howe** (1:42)
A Senate committee chaired by Rand Paul is now planning a vote next week on whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress. It comes after the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease testified before the committee Wednesday and repeatedly pled the fifth.

**John Bickley** (1:58)
Joining us now is one of the Republican senators who questioned Fauci yesterday, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. Senator, thank you so much for joining us. So you were in the room for this very contentious hearing. You asked a lot of questions, did not get a lot of answers.
First, what was your impression of how Dr. Fauci handled his testimony?

**Josh Hawley** (2:18)
Oh, I thought it was absolutely outrageous. He claimed the Fifth Amendment. Let me just tell you as a lawyer, innocent people, honest people, they don't take the fifth.
If you want to conceal something, that's when you take the Fifth Amendment. This guy had no right to it because he's been pardoned already by Joe Biden. The real reason he wasn't answering questions is he doesn't want to be held to account for the fact that he made a million dollars and more in cash prizes during COVID using federal resources, federal staff, federal instrumentalities, all against the law. He got rich while people were dying. He didn't want to talk about that.

**John Bickley** (2:51)
Now, as you mentioned, he was preemptively pardoned by Biden, but that only covered through last year. Is that part of the fear from him that he could actually be charged for perjury here?

**Josh Hawley** (3:01)
No, there's no reasonable fear on his part of anything. He just wants to avoid having to answer questions. And listen, the Supreme Court's been really clear on this. For over 100 years in our law, if you have been granted immunity, you don't have a Fifth Amendment privilege. He knows that, his lawyers know it. He just didn't want to answer questions because the guy is a crook. He made a million dollars in cash prizes using federal instrumentalities, federal resources, federal employees. He didn't want to talk about any of that.

**Georgia Howe** (3:30)
Now, when you say he can't plead the Fifth, does that mean that technically he's in contempt for doing so? And if so, what happens now?

**Josh Hawley** (3:37)
Well, hopefully, we'll take a vote to hold him in contempt. I look forward to voting yes. And I'll tell you what else I'm going to do.
I'm going to introduce legislation immediately that will make it a crime for federal employees to take cash awards while they are in office. It's already against the law to use your staff to go out and solicit them, which Fauci did. But we ought to make it a crime and illegal to receive them. Fauci got rich while people were dying. That's the bottom line here.

**John Bickley** (4:01)
Now, his diary was released just a few days before this hearing. What were your takeaways from what has been revealed in that?