On July 29, 2026, Anthony Fauci sat in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times.
Three days later, Georgia Congressman Rich McCormick revived a bill to make that a firing offense.
It's called the STOP the SWAMP Act. McCormick first introduced it in 2024 and brought it back on August 1, 2026. As the Center Square reported, it would bar people from working for the federal government if they refuse to answer certain questions from members of Congress, and it would let lawmakers refer witnesses to the Justice Department for prosecution whenever Congress decides they "unlawfully withheld information."
McCormick's pitch:
"If you can hide from Congress, you shouldn't be able to work for the federal government. Congress has a constitutional duty to conduct oversight, and federal employees have a duty to tell the truth. Full stop."
And, more bluntly:
"If you don't want to answer questions about what you did wrong, we should be able to fire you."
The Supreme Court decided this in 1968
There's a reason a bill like this hasn't already passed, and it isn't that nobody thought of it.
In Gardner v. Broderick, decided June 10, 1968, a New York police officer was called before a grand jury investigating police corruption. He was told to sign a waiver of his immunity or lose his job. He refused, and he was fired.
The Supreme Court ruled that firing unconstitutional. The privilege against self-incrimination, the Court held, does not tolerate an attempt to coerce a waiver of that privilege by threatening someone's job.
The companion case, Garrity v. New Jersey (1967), established the same principle from the other direction: a government employer can't threaten to fire you in order to make you give up a constitutional right.
There is real nuance here, and it's worth stating plainly. Those cases leave room for a public employer to require an employee to answer questions specifically about the performance of their official duties, so long as the employee isn't forced to waive immunity. Discipline for stonewalling on job-related questions isn't automatically off the table.
But that is not what McCormick described. He described a rule where invoking the Fifth in front of Congress — a criminal-exposure question, in a hearing the chairman was openly using to build a case for prosecution — costs you your career. Fauci himself said he feared Paul was using the hearing to support arresting him despite his 2024 presidential pardon.
That's the exact scenario the Fifth Amendment exists for. A law that punishes people for using it doesn't strengthen oversight. It converts a constitutional protection into a trap.
Federal law already covers the actual crime
Here's the part McCormick's press release leaves out: lying to Congress is already a federal crime. So is contempt of Congress. So is obstruction. Prosecutors have every tool they need for a witness who lies or unlawfully stonewalls, and Rand Paul is already pursuing contempt charges against Fauci through the existing process.
What McCormick's bill adds isn't a remedy for lying. It's a penalty for silence — and a new power for members of Congress to decide, on their own say-so, that a witness "unlawfully withheld information" and ship them to the Justice Department.
Think about who that power lands on. Not cabinet secretaries. Not political appointees, who leave with the administration anyway. It lands on career civil servants — the scientists, inspectors, auditors, and analysts whose entire job security is the thing this bill puts on the table. A congressman gets angry at your testimony, and your career is the leverage.
McCormick calls that accountability. It's closer to a loyalty test with a subpoena attached.
Nobody is above the law — including him
McCormick ended his statement with a line worth holding onto: "Public service is a privilege, and no one is above the law."
So let's talk about his own record on answering questions.
On February 20, 2025, McCormick held an in-person town hall in Roswell. His staff was caught off guard by hundreds of people who showed up to ask him about DOGE and Trump's cuts. The crowd chanted "shame!" and "we're pissed!" The video went national.
Two weeks later, House Republican leaders urged their members to stop holding in-person town halls — a retreat the Atlanta Journal-Constitution traced directly to what happened to McCormick.
McCormick took the advice. He didn't hold another major town hall until May 7, 2026, more than a year later, in an Alpharetta hotel ballroom — RSVP only, attendees routed through a back door, screened for weapons, ID-checked. One constituent put it this way:
"After a year and a half of disappearing and not giving his constituents the opportunity to talk to him and hold him accountable, he comes, and he gives us an hour of his time and he cherry-picks from the audience."
McCormick is not a private citizen facing criminal exposure. He is an elected official whose entire job is to answer to the people of Georgia's 7th District. He spent more than a year making sure they couldn't ask him anything, and then screened the room when he finally showed up.
There's no Fifth Amendment for that. There's just choosing not to show up.
Who this is really for
McCormick's bill is not going to become law, and he almost certainly knows it. A hearing happened, a viral moment happened, and a press release followed within 72 hours.
But the message it sends is real, and the people who hear it are federal workers in Georgia and everywhere else who already spent 2025 watching DOGE take a chainsaw to their agencies. The message is: if you get called in front of a committee and you're worried enough to want a lawyer, we can end your career for it.
That's not oversight. That's a warning. We deserve better.
Source
"After Fauci testimony, Ga. Rep. McCormick revives bill to fire uncooperative federal employees," The Center Square, August 1–2, 2026, with additional reporting from Fox News and The Washington Times.
