Updated

Updated · Fox News · Jul 31

Fauci Walks Away After 111 Fifth Amendment Invocations as Rand Paul Pushes Contempt Vote

Updated

Updated · Fox News · Jul 31

Fauci Walks Away After 111 Fifth Amendment Invocations as Rand Paul Pushes Contempt Vote

Q: Does a preemptive pardon from a former president legally eliminate a witness's right to invoke the Fifth Amendment before Congress?

No. A preemptive presidential pardon does not automatically erase a witness’s Fifth Amendment privilege before Congress. The key legal test is whether truthful answers could still create a “real and appreciable” risk of self-incrimination. A pardon can remove that risk for the specific federal offenses it covers, and Supreme Court precedent generally suggests a witness cannot claim the Fifth as to fully pardoned conduct because the danger of prosecution for that conduct is gone. But that does not end the analysis. A presidential pardon covers only federal offenses, not possible state crimes. It also does not protect a witness from new crimes committed after the pardon, including perjury or false statements made during congressional testimony. That is why legal experts quoted in the reporting say a broad pardon may narrow the privilege but does not necessarily eliminate it in every context. That makes this a fact-specific question, not a settled blanket rule. If a question touches only conduct fully covered by the pardon and presents no realistic exposure to state prosecution or new federal liability, the Fifth claim is weaker. If an answer could reasonably expose the witness to state charges, post-pardon offenses, or provide a link in a chain toward such prosecution, the privilege may still be valid. So Sen. Rand Paul’s argument is not clearly established law. Courts, not Congress alone, would likely have to decide whether the privilege was valid question by question.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Jul 31

Anthony Fauci declined to answer questions outside his home Thursday, walking away when asked whether he regretted invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times at a Senate hearing or would change his COVID-19 decisions.
One day earlier, Fauci told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee he was invoking his constitutional right on his lawyers’ advice despite his long record of cooperating with Congress.
Rand Paul, who chairs the committee, said Fauci’s Fifth Amendment claim was invalid because Biden had already pardoned him and said the panel will vote next week on holding him in contempt of Congress.
More than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s pandemic-era diary entries released by Paul before the hearing are central to the dispute, with Republicans citing notes on virus-origin discussions and school shutdown influence as conflicting with Fauci’s public statements.