Fauci’s Fifth Amendment pleas not valid under presidential pardon, Hawley says

Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination at a Senate committee hearing Wednesday, but Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, said it doesn’t legally apply under a presidential pardon.

“When you have an immunity, you can’t use the Fifth Amendment because the Fifth Amendment protects you from prosecution,” Hawley told Heartlander News in an interview Thursday. “When you’ve got immunity, you already have the protection.”

Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for a hearing on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic after released journal entries from 2019 revealed Fauci’s knowledge of its presumed artificial beginnings. Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the pandemic and served on the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force.

“So, what Fauci is trying to do is have it both ways,” Hawley explained. “Of course, characteristically, I mean, he’s coming in and saying, ‘Well, Biden pardoned me, so therefore I can’t be prosecuted. But I’m not going to answer your questions either because I don’t want to.’ And the reason he doesn’t want to is he didn’t want to be exposed as the crook that he is.”

Hawley confronted Fauci on his double play at the Senate hearing Wednesday. The senator asked him basic questions, unrelated to COVID-19 – the topic of the hearing – such as “What color is your tie?” and “What color is the carpet in front of you?”

“Let’s just get one thing straight: you don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned, as you very well know,” Hawley told Fauci.

He cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Brown v. Walker: “when he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege.”

“You know that your lawyers sitting behind you now, shifting nervously in their chairs, they know it,” Hawley said. “This isn’t about the Constitution. This isn’t about the law. This is about contempt, contempt for this body and contempt for the American people.”