But he won’t—instead, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment in his opening statements. Fauci remarked that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul—who issued the subpoena and has repeatedly called for Fauci’s arrest—has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.” Paul posted hundreds of pages from Fauci’s pandemic-era diary to his website over the weekend, summarizing the unredacted collection through a conspiratorial slant and with a pink pen, which Fauci said was “aimed at embarrassing and intimidating” him. “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said, adding that he is following his attorney’s advice by pleading the Fifth.