A hard look at accountability after the pandemic: subpoenas, pardons, diaries, missing data, and the case for a formal, bipartisan review.

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.” That line echoed through a Senate hearing more than a hundred times when Dr. Anthony Fauci sat under subpoena and under oath. The Fifth Amendment allows a witness to refuse answers that could be used in criminal prosecution, and he used it repeatedly in that setting.

President Joe Biden issued a broad pardon that covers federal acts tied to Fauci’s government work back to 2014, effectively removing most federal criminal exposure. With federal prosecutions off the table, the only remaining legal risk is lying to Congress, and Fauci chose silence over answering under oath. That choice matters for accountability even if it is legally tidy.

We should expect the same standards we demand of cabinet officials and other public servants from people whose public guidance reshaped daily life and education. Public service does not grant a shield from explaining decisions that affected millions of children, workers, and families. When leaders make policy that closes schools and businesses, the public deserves clear answers about why.

About 1.2 million Americans died in the pandemic that followed those decisions, and two congressional panels produced reports that now live mainly as talking points for their respective parties. This country has not had a common, bipartisan accounting that both sides accept as the official record. Without that, lessons learned remain contested and incomplete.

Senator Rand Paul released Dr. Fauci’s pandemic diary, all 1,141 pages of it, and the entries are revealing in plain language. Many entries open with that day’s death count and close with a list of press appearances, and one entry reads: “The CDC/FEMA, etc in my mind have no idea what they are doing. There really is no plan.” That private skepticism sits against a public projection of command and certainty.

His diary records key phone calls and short notes that show influence on state and local decisions. On March 9 the entry is four words: “I tell him yes.” A later entry reads, “I spoke with Bill de Blasio … and convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools (he had already decided based on what I was saying on TV). I went on to tell him he should close the bars and restaurants in NYC.” Those handwritten lines complicate later denials.

Fauci later told the New York Times, “But show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did.” He did publicly push to reopen schools in the latter half of 2020, but that does not erase what his own notes suggest about his role in earlier shutdown decisions. The difference between influence and direct orders is real, and it matters.

A thirteen-year-old today was seven when schools closed, and test data show lasting damage. On the federal reading test for that age group, the 2025 score “was not significantly different from the score in 1971,” a stark indicator of stalled progress. No bipartisan body has yet done the thorough inquiry people directly affected deserve.

Fauci’s public estimates also shifted with his reading of public sentiment. “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.” He later said on CBS, “So it’s easy to criticize. But they’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.” Those statements show numbers shaped by both science and public relations.

Key public health officials have privately acknowledged serious errors, often only after leaving office. Biden’s CDC director admitted the agency was “responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes.” Former NIH director Francis Collins said public health attached “zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school.” Deborah Birx said Americans are still angry because the question has never been “answered adequately,” and that “all of us need to be quite honest with ourselves.” These are admissions that were not made under oath and not tested by cross-examination.

A formal, independent commission modeled on the post‑9/11 investigation — with subpoena power, members drawn from outside Congress, and an agreed final report — is what would create a shared record. After the 9/11 attacks, victims’ families forced Congress to act, and both parties accepted the commission’s findings. For COVID we have lacked that single, binding narrative.

Efforts to create a COVID commission once moved through the Senate but were stripped out of a larger bill before final passage, and subsequent attempts have stalled. Philip Zelikow, who ran the 9/11 investigation, explained why the drive for a commission lost momentum: “don’t want a commission … partly because when they take control of the House, they’ll just run their own investigation, thank you.” Partisan incentives have kept the pandemic an ongoing political cudgel rather than a finished accounting.

China’s early handling of the outbreak also left critical gaps in the global record. In January 2020 the Chinese government reprimanded Dr. Li Wenliang for “making false comments” that “severely disturbed the social order,” and ordered laboratories to hand over samples or “destroy them on the spot.” Those moves and later limits on reporting made it much harder to pin down the virus’s origins.

Beijing changed its death-counting rules and at times stopped publishing daily figures, later reporting a monthly total of 59,938 for one winter surge while outside researchers estimated far higher death tolls for that period. The WHO reported in June 2025 that “China has not shared this information,” and U.S. agencies vary in their public assessments about a possible lab incident. Six years on, a definitive path to origin remains unresolved.

The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense warned bluntly that “Inevitably, there will be some subsequent pandemics and other biological events that will be worse than COVID-19.” COVID killed roughly one percent of the Americans infected, SARS killed roughly one in ten, and recorded H5N1 cases have a far higher fatality ratio. Those comparisons make clear the stakes of being unprepared.

The federal law that coordinates the national response has been expired for years, and we still lack a single, bipartisan mechanism to investigate what happened and recommend durable fixes. A commission that can subpoena, include outside experts from both parties, and bind the country to its findings would finally give everyone a shared baseline as we prepare for the next crisis.

When Senator Paul’s committee moved to consider holding Fauci in contempt, a former federal prosecutor watching the hearing said, “Legally, he played it perfectly,” and media libertarians called Fauci’s silence “a shame for the country.” The legal niceties are separate from the public’s need for answers, and the absence of an agreed investigation has left too many questions unresolved about a crisis that cost a generation dearly.