Senate Democrats have blocked an effort to uncover what really happened with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of records related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fox News’ Bill Melugin, in a post on X, reported that “Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee just blocked a Republican effort to offer immunity to a former Dr. Fauci assistant in exchange for her testimony.”

He further noted that the assistant “has been accused of destroying government documents on Fauci's behalf.”

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) was the only Democrat to show up for the meeting. The other six “voted no by proxy,” according to Melugin.

The resolution required a two-thirds vote to pass and it failed 8-7 along party lines. 

The unnamed former Fauci assistant previously pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the committee and refused to answer any questions, hence the GOP effort to offer her immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony. 

Republicans on the committee blasted their Democratic colleagues for not showing up, and for "having no interest in the truth."

Chairman @RandPaul (R-KY): "There's no principal reason to vote against giving her immunity, the only reason is that you don't want her to answer, and you do not want to know the truth."

Sen: @RonJohnsonWI (R-WI): "I do not want to see Anthony Fauci's assistant go to jail. I want the truth. I think it's pretty obvious today, we only have one Democrat here, we're not going to get it."

The assistant was identified as Patricia Conrad, Fauci’s longtime executive assistant at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), according to The Washington Examiner.

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Fauci referred to Conrad as his “right-hand woman,” and she appears in the email dumps the committee released this year and Fauci’s private notes. 

Conrad invoked the Fifth Amendment during a closed-door committee deposition last Friday and refused to answer questions, prompting Republicans to push for immunity. The senators sought to ask about the destruction of government records at NIAID.

This is part of a larger investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. Dr. Fauci sat for a hearing in July and also invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times. Republicans voted to hold him in contempt of Congress and referred the resolution to the Justice Department.

The committee has published emails in which Fauci instructed his colleagues to delete messages after reading them.

David M. Morens, another NIAID employee, was indicted in April for similar offenses.

As a senior advisor, Morens counseled Senior NIAID Official 1 and other senior-level NIAID staff on senior-level policies, developed recommendations and solutions for issues impacting the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and wrote and edited manuscripts.  Morens also provided guidance and expertise to senior staff members on epidemiological studies and issues related to infectious disease planning and management.

Additionally, Morens gathered information from grantees and others in the scientific community to establish facts about the nature of COVID-19. This enabled Morens to understand NIH and NIAID’s historical activities in coronavirus research, assist in formulating policy and procedures, and brief Senior NIAID Official 1 so he could then relay information to the President of the United States, Congress, and the public.

According to the indictment, Morens, Co-Conspirator 1, Co-Conspirator 2, and others conspired during the COVID-19 pandemic to defraud and commit several offenses against the United States after NIH terminated Co-Conspirator 1’s grant. NIH terminated the grant, Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, based on allegations that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China. NIAID awarded the grant to Company #1 and Co-Conspirator 1, who made a subaward to the WIV.

Following the termination, Morens and Co-Conspirator 2 pledged to help Co-Conspirator 1 restore the termination of the bat coronavirus grant and counter the narrative that COVID-19 leaked from a lab. In anticipation that their communications would be requested through a FOIA Request, Morens, Co-Conspirator 1, and Co-Conspirator 2 agreed in writing to intentionally hide their communications, from public view, by corresponding using Morens’s personal Gmail account, rather than his official NIH email account.

The indictment alleges that the conspirators used Morens’s personal Gmail account to exchange non-public NIH information; correspond about their efforts to influence NIH to fund Company #1; exchange edits to drafts of letters addressed to NIH leadership for Company #1 and Co-Conspirator 1; and “back-channel” information to Senior NIAID Official 1.  According to the indictment, each of these matters fell within Morens’s role as senior advisor and constituted federal records that needed to be created, maintained, and exchanged on government systems. 

Democrats have opposed any effort to investigate Fauci, claiming it is a partisan retribution campaign. During the July hearing they said Sen. Paul was only trying to bait Fauci into making a statement that would suggest crimes that fall outside of the pardon former President Joe Biden issued on his way out of office.