Senator Trolls Fauci's Blanket Fifth Amendment Claims Exposing ‘Contempt for this Body'

Former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci’s refusal to answer questions from Congress extended to simple facts, including the day of the week and the color of the tie he was wearing.

Fauci, 85, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination about as many times as his years alive on Earth, despite Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asserting that he did not have that right given his current legal status.

Hawley cited a Supreme Court case from 1896, where President Benjamin Harrison’s appointee, Justice Henry Brown, ruled that a witness granted statutory immunity from prosecution could nonetheless be compelled to testify because his immunity displaced pleading the Fifth.

In that case, an auditor for a Pittsburgh railroad unsuccessfully challenged a contempt charge for refusing to answer grand jury questions.

Hawley turned to Fauci and tested his repeated Fifth Amendment invocations throughout the hearing, quipping, “Doc, let’s try something.”