WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 -- The Senate committee that spent three years trying to make Anthony Fauci account for the government's pandemic response voted Thursday to hold him in contempt of Congress, an 8-to-5 party-line decision that sets the stage for the most consequential question in the investigation's history: whether the Justice Department will actually seek to prosecute a former public health official for invoking a constitutional right.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted Thursday morning after Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during last week's hearing, refusing to answer any of the committee's questions about the federal government's re...