{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/2026/08/06/icymi-sen-johnson-votes-to-hold-dr-anthony-fauci-in-contempt-of-congress-in-todays-homeland-security-and-governmental-affairs-committee-business-meeting/", "ICYMI:\u00a0Sen.\u00a0Johnson\u00a0Votes to\u00a0Hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in Contempt of Congress in Today\u2019s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Business Meeting", "2026-08-06", "2026", "2026-08", "Republican", "Senate", "WI", "Ron Johnson", "J000293", "www.ronjohnson.senate.gov", "ronjohnson", "https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/category/press-releases/", "scraper", "\u201cIf these investigations are one-sided, it\u2019s because one side simply doesn\u2019t want to look at the truth.\u201d\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress during a business meeting of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The vote follows Dr. Fauci\u2019s refusal to comply with the committee\u2019s investigation in his role during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as his silence in last Wednesday\u2019s hearing.\n\nSen. Johnson\u2019s remarks:\n\n\u201cThank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I want to associate myself with and second your opening comments. And I also want to strongly rebut the comments from our Democratic colleagues here, you know, particularly when Ranking Member Peters says this has been \u2018one-sided\u2019 and \u2018rushed,\u2019 rushed?\n\n\u201cWhen I was chairman of this committee back in 2020, I started conducting oversight. I held hearings. There was no cooperation in those hearings. As a matter of fact, I remember one when we held a hearing with Dr. Pierre Kory, when he came in with all kinds of evidence on the effectiveness of ivermectin. The ranking member then denigrated him. Back then, Dr. Kory was a Democrat. He was shocked at the treatment he was given by the ranking member.\n\n\u201cHow many people died because they lacked early treatment with safe, effective generic drugs? Well, that hearing laid out the truth that this could be something that could help people, and we had a ranking member that did everything that he could to denigrate that truth.\n\n\u201cMy current experience is as the chairman of PSI; we\u2019ve been holding hearing after hearing. My ranking member, [Senator] Blumenthal, in those hearings, we had one called \u2018Voices of the Vaccine Injured.\u2019 We had parents come in and tell their heart-wrenching stories. We had parents coming in, telling the truth. And the ranking member, a few hours before that hearing, held a press conference and said, \u2018hope the press doesn\u2019t cover it, because there\u2019s nothing credible about this hearing.\u2019\n\n\u201cIf these investigations are one-sided, it\u2019s because one side simply doesn\u2019t want to look at the truth. They want to bury the truth. They want to memory-hole it. They don\u2019t want to look at the Fauci diaries and take a look at how contradictory what he wrote to himself \u2013how contradictory it was to what he actually told the public.\n\n\u201cI think one of the revelations of those diaries, I think probably the most significant one that\u2019s being overlooked, was early on in the pandemic, he wrote in his diaries he thought COVID would be maybe twice a bad flu season. Now, I\u2019m not downplaying a bad flu season. We have them oftentimes. They overwhelm hospitals, something to take seriously. But a pandemic that\u2019s going to be twice that \u2013 is that really worth destroying people\u2019s lives, shutting down businesses, destroying an economy? I argued back then that it wouldn\u2019t be.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s been six years since the pandemic began. We have not had a reckoning of what happened. Last Wednesday\u2019s hearing was an excellent hearing from the standpoint of legitimate questions being raised, legitimate questions the American people want answers to, legitimate questions that some of them, only Anthony Fauci, \u2018Saint Fauci,\u2019 \u2018Mr. Science\u2019 could answer.\n\n\u201cAnd even though we have quotes of him saying, \u2018I\u2019m not afraid of any oversight committee, I\u2019m happy to talk to any oversight committee, I have nothing to hide.\u2019 That\u2019s not the position he took last Wednesday. What he displayed last Wednesday was contempt for Congress, contempt for this committee, contempt for our investigation, the same contempt that \u2026 our ranking members have shown for the diligent oversight and the exposing of the truth that I\u2019ve been undertaking for six years.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing rushed. It\u2019s been one-sided, but not because we haven\u2019t reached out, not because we haven\u2019t involved the other side. The other side, like way too many Americans, have just closed their eyes, covered up their ears, and refused \u2013 refused to look at the truth.\n\n\u201cI am definitely going to vote yes on contempt of Congress, and my investigation has just begun.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve invited Dr. Fauci for a transcribed interview. Okay, he doesn\u2019t want to do it in front of the American public? Come in front of our committee. We\u2019ll go through detail [by] detail. You say you have nothing to hide. Good. We\u2019ll do it behind closed doors. We\u2019ll transcribe it. That\u2019s only one of the interviews we will be conducting \u2026 Last week\u2019s hearing just began the accountability. There\u2019s a lot more accountability that\u2019s required.\n\n\u201cThank you, Mr. Chairman.\u201d\n\nWatch the full remarks here.\n\n###", 1, "2026-08-07T06:11:19Z", "2026-08-07T06:12:42Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/2026/08/06/icymi-sen-johnson-votes-to-hold-dr-anthony-fauci-in-contempt-of-congress-in-todays-homeland-security-and-governmental-affairs-committee-business-meeting/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.772722065448761, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}