Tommy Tuberville claims former top US infectious disease expert ‘killed or had something to do with killing’ millions following contentious testimony where Fauci invoked Fifth Amendment.
US Senator Tommy Tuberville has accused former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci of being responsible for the deaths of nine million people during the COVID-19 pandemic, remarks made hours after a highly charged Senate hearing in which Fauci repeatedly declined to answer questions.
The Alabama Republican made the comments on Wednesday evening in television interviews following Fauci’s appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The hearing, chaired by long-time Fauci critic Senator Rand Paul, focused on the former official’s role in the US response to the pandemic and related research funding.
During the session, Fauci, 85, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times and declined to answer questions from Republican senators. Paul later indicated the committee would consider holding Fauci in contempt of Congress. Democrats on the panel praised Fauci’s decades of public service and criticised the hearing’s tone.
Tuberville Demands Action Against Fauci Over COVID Claims:
Appearing on Newsmax after the hearing, Tuberville said Fauci should be “locked up before he leaves this building today and put in prison, and then put on trial in front of the American people.” He accused the former official of lying to Congress and claimed Fauci had funded gain-of-function research linked to the origins of the virus.
Later on Fox Business, Tuberville escalated the claim, stating: “We’re going to go after him with everything we’ve got because the guy killed, or had something to do with killing, 9 million people.”
Host Liz MacDonald immediately challenged the assertion, asking: “Yeah, we can’t prove that, right?” Tuberville responded that the figure was “yet to be determined” but insisted it could be established because of Fauci’s involvement in funding research he linked to the pandemic.
Tuberville also said that if elected governor of Alabama he would pursue legal action against Fauci in state courts, arguing that a presidential pardon issued by Joe Biden at the end of his term would not protect him from state-level suits. He claimed Alabama had suffered the highest per-capita COVID death rate in the United States, though official data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not support that ranking.
Senator’s Fauci Claim Faces Scientific Scrutiny:
Fauci served as the public face of the US scientific response to COVID-19 under both the Trump and Biden administrations. He has been a frequent target of Republican criticism over lockdown measures, masking guidance, vaccine promotion and the origins of the virus. Official figures show more than 1.1 million people died of COVID-19 in the United States. Global excess deaths linked to the pandemic are estimated in the millions, though precise attribution remains complex and contested.
The specific claim that Fauci caused nine million deaths has no basis in established scientific or epidemiological evidence. The laboratory-origin theory of SARS-CoV-2 remains debated among scientists, with the majority view still favouring a natural zoonotic spillover, though investigations continue. Gain-of-function research involving bat coronaviruses received US funding in the years before the pandemic; Fauci has consistently maintained that the specific work supported by the National Institutes of Health did not meet the definition of gain-of-function that could have produced the virus that causes COVID-19.
The hearing and Tuberville’s subsequent comments reflect the deeply polarised atmosphere surrounding pandemic accountability in the United States more than five years after the virus first emerged. Republican senators have repeatedly sought to assign personal responsibility to Fauci for the scale of the crisis. Democratic lawmakers and public-health advocates have characterised such efforts as political scapegoating that distracts from systemic preparedness failures.
Fauci’s legal team has described the campaign against him as an attempt at retribution. No criminal charges have been filed against him related to his pandemic-era decisions or research funding. As of Thursday, there was no indication that federal or state authorities were preparing formal legal action based on Tuberville’s claims.