CDC chief accuses Anthony Fauci of abusing power during pandemic

The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accused Anthony Fauci of abusing his authority during the COVID-19 pandemic, putting a fresh political spotlight on who gets to define the federal response years after the crisis began. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Trump administration health official, told CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman that Fauci had “abused the place of power that he had been given both by the media and by powerful politicians.”

Bhattacharya’s attack landed on the same day Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., where he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who has pressed him for years over COVID-19 origins. Fauci’s presence before the panel reflected the continuing reach of the pandemic into congressional oversight, with Republicans again trying to extract answers about decisions that were made inside the federal government while the virus spread.

The clash also underscored Fauci’s unusual place in the federal chain of command. As the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and later a chief White House medical adviser during COVID-19, Fauci sat at the intersection of NIH science, White House policymaking and the public guidance that shaped the CDC’s role. Bhattacharya now leads the CDC, giving his criticism added weight inside the same public-health system that Fauci once helped steer.

The hearing followed Paul’s release of more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s journal entries on July 28, a move that set the stage for a contentious session the next day. Republican critics have repeatedly accused Fauci of lying to Congress and abusing government authority during pandemic-era debates over vaccines and mandates, while his defenders have cast him as a central figure in the national response. The latest confrontation shows that the argument is no longer only about Fauci’s record. It is about whether future health leaders will be judged by scientific judgment, political pressure or the courts of partisan memory when the next emergency hits.