Anthony Fauci's lawyers have set up a legal defense fund for the 85-year-old former government scientist as state and federal investigations into his COVID-19 pandemic conduct multiply, a sign that even a presidential pardon has not shielded him from accountability.
David Schertler, counsel to Fauci, told Reuters that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases faces mounting legal costs from a growing number of investigations at both the state and federal level. Three state attorneys general have opened their own probes, and Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who has long pressed for answers on pandemic origins, asked the Department of Justice to prosecute Fauci after the retired official refused to answer questions at a recent congressional hearing.
Fauci's lawyers framed the investigations as political. Schertler said the fund was necessary because the probes could lead to "lengthy and costly legal proceedings", even though President Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Fauci in January 2025, before leaving office.
That pardon is the backdrop to everything happening now. Biden's grant of clemency shielded Fauci from federal prosecution, but a presidential pardon does not reach state-level investigations. Three attorneys general, unnamed in public reporting so far, have launched their own probes in the wake of Sen. Paul's push at the DOJ. The scope and specific allegations driving those state inquiries remain undisclosed.
The distinction matters. If the state probes concern Fauci's conduct during the pandemic, his role in funding decisions, his public statements, or allegations that he concealed information about the virus's origins, a federal pardon offers no protection.
Fauci led NIAID for nearly 40 years and advised seven presidents. He retired in 2022. During the pandemic, he was the government's most visible advocate for lockdown measures, mask requirements, and vaccine development. Republican lawmakers have accused him of seeking to cover up information about the pandemic's origins, including the possibility that laboratory experiments in China played a role. Those accusations, the source article notes, "have not been independently substantiated."
But the legal pressure is no longer limited to congressional hearings and cable-news confrontations. It has moved into courtrooms and prosecutors' offices.
At a congressional hearing last month, Fauci declined to answer questions about the pandemic. Sen. Paul, who had clashed with Fauci repeatedly during prior Senate hearings, responded by formally requesting that the Department of Justice pursue prosecution. Fauci's prior invocations of the Fifth Amendment, more than 100 times in an earlier appearance, had already drawn sharp criticism from Republican senators who argued that Biden's pardon would not insulate Fauci from all consequences.
The DOJ has not publicly disclosed whether it has acted on Paul's request. That silence leaves open a significant question: whether the Justice Department under the current administration views Fauci's conduct as prosecutable despite the pardon's federal shield.
A Senate committee previously voted 8-5 to hold Fauci in contempt after his repeated refusals to testify. That vote signaled bipartisan frustration, or at least a willingness among committee members to use institutional tools to compel answers Fauci has so far refused to give.
Fauci's legal team chose combative language in announcing the fund. Schertler said in his statement to Reuters:
"Dr. Fauci is facing an unprecedented legal barrage for a retired civil servant, and he deserves a robust defense against these unfounded and frivolous actions."
He added:
"Dr. Fauci has not done anything wrong, and we are prepared to fight back against this shameful harassment of an honorable man who dedicated his career to saving lives."
The framing is telling. Schertler describes the investigations as "harassment" and the legal actions as "frivolous." Yet the decision to set up a formal defense fund, a step that signals anticipated long-term legal costs, contradicts the suggestion that these probes will simply go away. You do not build a fundraising apparatus to fight something frivolous.
Legal defense funds for public figures are not unprecedented. In 2009, supporters of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attempted to set up an unofficial defense fund, only for her family spokesman to clarify that no authorized fund existed and that the governor could not accept money from unauthorized entities. An official fund with strict donation guidelines launched later that month. The Fauci fund, by contrast, appears to have been established directly by his own legal counsel.
The structure, administrator, and donation rules for Fauci's fund have not been disclosed publicly. Those details will matter, particularly whether the fund accepts contributions from pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, or political organizations with a stake in how pandemic accountability plays out.
Fauci's defenders have consistently argued that he was a dedicated public servant targeted for political reasons. His critics point to a different record: a senior official who wielded enormous influence over pandemic policy, resisted congressional oversight, and benefited from a last-minute presidential pardon designed to pre-empt the very investigations now underway.
The guilty plea of David Morens, a former senior adviser to Fauci, on charges of conspiracy for hiding COVID-19 records has only deepened questions about what NIAID leadership knew and when. Morens's case demonstrated that the impulse to conceal pandemic-related records was not hypothetical, it resulted in a criminal conviction.
Meanwhile, the broader scientific debate has shifted. Biden's own former COVID czar has acknowledged that a laboratory leak is the more likely origin of the pandemic, a position Fauci publicly dismissed for years. That concession from within Biden's own team undercuts the narrative that questions about pandemic origins were baseless conspiracy theories unworthy of investigation.
Three state attorneys general evidently agree that the questions are worth pursuing. So does at least one sitting U.S. senator who has asked federal prosecutors to act. And Fauci's own lawyers, by launching a defense fund, have made clear they expect the legal fight to be neither short nor cheap.
When a man who insists he did nothing wrong needs a public fundraising campaign to pay his lawyers, the rest of us are entitled to ask what, exactly, all those investigators keep finding.
