Business Meeting to Consider Directing Senate Legal Counsel to Seek Immunity

Committee will come to order. Pursuant to the notice issued on September twenty second, twenty twenty six, the committee will proceed to consideration of the resolution directing the Senate legal counsel to apply for a court order immunizing from use in prosecution the testimony provided by the witness at proceedings before or ancillary to the committee as circulated to members on September eighteenth. Today we are considering a resolution authorizing Senate legal counsel to see community for a fact witness in this committee's investigation into the origins of COVID-nineteen and risky life sciences research. The investigation did not begin with this witness. On July twenty ninth, Doctor Fauci sat in this room under subpoena, holding a full and unconditional presidential pardon, covering any offense connected to his government service between twenty fourteen and twenty twenty five. All he had to do was tell the American people the truth. Instead, he refused to answer this committee's questions more than a hundred times. This committee later voted to hold Doctor Fauci in contempt and has asked the Vice President to act. Since then, the committee has continued the investigation and sought testimony from others with relevant first-hand knowledge, including the witness we are discussing today. The witness served as Doctor Fauci's special assistant from two thousand and seven to the day he left niid in twenty twenty two. Her position placed her in the flow of communications directly relevant to our investigation. On the evening of january thirty first, twenty twenty, doctor Fauci wrote to jeremy farrar about a concern christian andersen had raised about the virus's spike protein. He wrote, that if other experts agreed, the concern should be reported to the authorities, naming the fbi and mi five. He wrote that he would alert his US government colleagues. He blind copied his longtime assistant, who we're trying to get testimony from. Earlier that evening, she had written to Farrar on his behalf to set up the call. We want to know why she was on that email, what she knew, and what happened next. We asked her to cooperate voluntarily. When that failed, we subpoenaed her. Last week she appeared, took the oath, and refused to answer every question we asked. citing her fifth amendment right to not to incriminate herself. She may have that right, but her silence does not end this investigation. This resolution allows us to ask a federal court to grant her immunity. Congress created this process more than fifty years ago for exactly this situation. We are here today to remove the obstacles she raised so she can answer the committee questions without any fear of of of of uh in in of conviction. Under an immunity order, her testimony and anything derived from it cannot be used against her in a criminal case. The fifth amendment protects her from incriminating herself. Immunity gives her that same protection. The only thing she cannot do is lie. We first tried to secure that immunity through a committee poll. As our rules allowed, our democrat colleagues declined to support it. The vote today is not a vote on guilt. It is not a vote on Anthony Fauci. is a vote on whether a fact witness who has already claimed a privilege should receive the legal protection that allows her to answer. The only thing immunity changes is whether the American people hear what she knows. Ask yourself why anyone would oppose that. Voting no does not protect her, immunity does that. A no vote, a vote not to give her immunity today, actually encourages the DOJ to seek to compel her testimony with an indictment. The best thing for this witness is to take the immunity deal and hopefully avoid a criminal prosecution. There's no principle reason to vote against giving her immunity. The only reason is that you do not want her to answer and that you do not wanna know the truth. The law requires two thirds of this committee to give immunity, ten votes. All eight Republicans on this committee want to hear her story, so all we need is today two Democrats to join us in seeking the truth. I urge my colleagues to remove this obstacle and let this witness tell the American people what she knows.

Mister Chair.

Sure, absolutely.

Uh, look, this committee functions best when we work in a bipartisan manner to accomplish things for the American people. There is a real need for serious bipartisan examination into what went well and what went wrong during our country's response to the pandemic. And for our committee to work together, to address threats to our homeland security and improve how our government operates. But today the members of this committee are being asked to rush to utilize an incredibly serious authority. Uh, many of us just learned of this meeting and this motion yesterday. Compelling someone to testify after they have invoked their fifth amendment right, is something none of us should take lightly. Before we take an extraordinary step like this, we should first more seriously pursue a good faith bipartisan approach to obtain this information and pursue the work of this committee. Because of that, I'm voting against this resolution today, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same.

Um

The argument against granting her immunity is that we would be compelling her, no one would be compelling her. She can be granted immunity and still, I assume, plead the fifth. We're offering her a deal. She isn't uh of interest. She's someone who's taking orders. This is the way it works. in a courtroom or in an investigation, what you're interested in is who was making the decisions. We believe that she was subservient to Anthony Fauci, that he made these decisions to destroy records. We will not be able to learn uh the reason or the extent of Anthony Fauci's destruction of records without offering her immunity. If she doesn't get immunity, I think there is a chance that she could be indicted by the Department of Justice. So this isn't us going after her in any way. This is offering her an out. But it still would be voluntary. No one's going to compel her testimony.

Right, eh, and I, I appreciate that, Mister Chair. What I will just say is this, in my experience, this kind of, uh, measure that you are asking us to vote on today is taken after significant negotiation with the witness and their attorney, a narrowing of the scope of the questions we have. There's just a lot that I've, I am unaware, that has been done or how to get there i'm not saying that we might never not ever do this but i do think it is rushed today and i that's why i'm gonna oppose it thank you

senator johnson

mr chairman again i appreciate uh uh senator Hassan's uh concern about you know trying to trying to work through this uh in uh maybe give it a little more time i i don't have a problem with that um certainly i i do not want to see anthony fauchee's assistant go to jail uh i want the truth i think the american people want the truth i think it's pretty obvious now today we we only have one democrat here so we're not gonna get we're not gonna get the two democrat votes uh i have no problem proceeding with the vote but i guess what i would ask uh senator Hassan uh maybe next week uh you know again we we the american people deserve answers they should have got them from anthony fauci uh they didn't get them uh his assistant i think definitely has information the american people Need to know and they may be, Anthony Fauci is probably the only one that can answer some of these questions. Uh, so I guess I would hope that maybe you'd be willing to reconsider. Give him more time, give him more maybe bipartisan uh negotiations with this witness. Uh, but we need the truth. So I I hope this is not the the the final story here in terms of granting her immunity, because I'm happy to give her immunity. I I don't wanna see Anthony Fauci's assistant go to jail. I want the truth and hopefully folks on your side of the aisle will help us get the truth without without again harming that particular witness.

Well. Well, let's continue a discussion so we can understand um scope and purpose here. I don't know what the answer will be ultimately, but I just feel like we need to have further conversation and a further understanding. And uh that's what's informing my vote today.

And and for the record uh the uh ranking member and staff were invited and included and his staff i did did come to the deposition they're fully aware of the questions the questions aren't really that extensive they're mostly over destruction of records how many records were destroyed who told you to destroy the records over how many years was this done um the also the bottom line over this and i i don't understand why we wouldn't wanna know this most of the records destruction is long enough ago that it wouldn't be um wouldn't be under the statute of limitations now the thing is is her refusal the assistant's refusal to help in the investigation or to tell the truth means that we will have to now look at her emails for the last three years which are within the statute of limitations to see if her pattern of destroying records over a twenty year period has continued i wouldn't be probably interested in that if she were willing to give her testimony as to what what happened with the destruction of records previously but now we're gonna i mean everything about not accepting this makes it worse it makes it that's there will be a referral from us to the department of of justice but there also will have to be a further examination of of her recent records to see if her pattern of destructions of records has has gone so there's no real reason not to have some testimony here

that's exactly the kind of discussion we should be having with her attorney um with that maybe we should move on to the vote

any other members wish to make a comment Senator Moreno.

Sure. This is um, I think the fourth or fifth time that we've had hearings, whether it's about fraud, finding out what happened uh under COVID, I think Democrats, Republicans, independents, why would we not wanna know what happened during the most important crisis of the last six years in this country in which civil rights were literally stripped from the American people? Why has this become a partisan exercise? I I'm absolutely blown away that every single republican is sitting here at this table to have a conversation. I think, I think the American people deserve to have these conversations out in the open. I think the idea that the Senate should operate behind closed doors and not in front of the American people is not what our founders had in mind when they created this institution and we keep deteriorating this place over and over again. Whether it's a fraud hearing, nobody wants to be here on the Democrat side, whether it's this, whether it's the Fauci hearings, I, I, I think we're perilously close to absolutely destroy the traditions of this institution. You can say, hey, we wanna have, and I say this with all due respect to my colleague from New Hampshire, we can say, well, well, we need to have more time, we need to have more conversation, here we are. Let's have a conversation, let's do it out in the open, so that people can hear both sides of these arguments. But to show, not show up, to ju- I, I, I come from the private sector, to not show up at a meeting and say, I just won't, I refuse to do my job. is something that only happens in politics that is outrageous that eight of us are sitting here going let's talk and the democrats are saying like a middle school kids i'm just not even gonna show up this is outrageous and you mister chairman you you you go way above be and beyond the call of duty to engage democrats first it was like oh we didn't have access to the website yes you did all these excuses that are made it's i i we we can agree on one thing the american people want a government that actually works not a government that acts like a bunch of middle school petulant children

with regard to the accusation made by the minority ranking minority leader that they didn't have access to the information on the website we went back to our records these were over a year old when we delivered the information on how you could access the website we actually had each office sign in so we actually have signatures of every democrat office having received the letter with how to access the information. But then I'm chastised and told that I'm a rotten person for hiding the information, when we actually had them signed to say they had received it. No other person has ever created a web portal to put documents on for an investigation. We went above board to have the most transparent investigation. And like I say, this isn't partisan. This is about destroying records. This and and I really don't want the person who did it at the behest of someone else, um you know if one of us told our employees to to destroy records it's on us it isn't the employee but the employee should come forward and give that information i think we could get that but it's only coming with an immunity thing and i'm i'm disappointed the outcome but do any other members wish to speak ok uh we will call the roll and this is on granting immunity uh to the fact witness

senator johnson

aye

senator Lankford

aye

center scott

aye

center Hawley

aye

center moreno

aye

center ernst center moody center peters

no by proxy

center hassan

no

center blumenthal

no by proxy

center Fetterman

no by proxy

center kim

no by proxy

center gallego

no by proxy

center slotkin

no by proxy

center paul

aye

Mister Chairman, on the vote of those present, the yeas are eight, the nays are one. On the vote by proxy, the yeas are zero, the nays are six. On this vote, the yeas are eight, the nays are seven. Having not met the two-thirds threshold, the motion is not agreed to.

For those watching, let me be clear that what just happened here. A majority of the committee voted to seek the truth. All Republicans voted to seek the truth. We voted to protect this witness and hear her story. All we needed was two Democrats who wanted to hear her story, but not a single one of them is interested in the investigation or the truth about destruction of federal records. This is disappointing. It doesn't end here. I will personally be sending a letter to the Department of Justice asking them to pursue this. Other members that wish to sign on to that letter are welcome too. We will also continue to look at this employee's recent actions to see if her twenty year history of destroying records for Anthony Fauci has continued under other folks at the NIH. And so this investigation is still beginning.

And to members of the public watching, I would dispute the characterization that the chair has just made of the motives and concerns that the Democrats have with that I look forward to continuing to work with you Mister Chair to see if we can resolve this in a constructive way.

Well, it is indisputable that the Democrats didn't show up for a hearing. That's not, that's a matter of total fact that they did not show up for a hearing. This is, this is the big deal. Evidently there's more important things to do in the United States Senate than to find out who destroyed public records is evidently there's more important things than to find out who's causing fraud i don't know i guess yeah when you get paid to be united states senator it's optional to show up to committee hearings

this isn't a hearing as you know

meeting committee is adjourned

i'll definitely sign that but