Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped lead the U.S. response during the COVID-19 pandemic, invoked the Fifth Amendment amid plans to testify before the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) on Wednesday and will refrain from answering questions.

The committee is chaired by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has long accused Fauci of deceiving Americans about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paul was expected to focus on Fauci’s private journal entries between December 2019 and December 2022.

“It pains me to do so because of the respect that I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions,” Fauci said during his opening statement.

Fauci said he testified before or briefed congressional committees over 200 times in his 38 years as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.

One of Fauci’s attorneys, David Schertler, who was sitting next to the doctor, attempted to speak several times after Paul’s questioning was over, but the senator shut him down, saying the attorney wasn’t recognized.

“You were told not to sit at the table, you insist on sitting at the table, and we told you you would not be recognized,” Paul said to the attorney. “You are not invited here for testimony, sir. You are being disrupted. Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can’t do that today, but I can have you escorted from the premises.”

After about another minute, Paul called for security and Capitol Police had Schertler escorted from the room.

Other Republican senators, including James Lankford of Oklahoma, asked Fauci about the theory that the COVID-19 virus originated in a laboratory, but the doctor declined to answer questions.

During their questioning, Democratic senators thanked Fauci for his years in public service and dismissed the questions posed by their Republican colleagues.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., referred to the pandemic as some of the “darkest days or times on our history” and said Republicans were attempting to “rebrand” Fauci as a “villain.”

“Dr. Fauci is just one part of this larger campaign against science and facts — a campaign that has made Americans less safe,” Blumenthal said. “It is shameful that in a dedicated public service like Dr. Fauci has experienced persistent threats to his life since the pandemic because of the lies that are told about him.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.