Anthony Fauci’s Fifth Amendment Strategy May Not End the Investigation

Watching the reactions to Wednesday’s “I Take The Fifth” Senate hearing starring Dr. Anthony Fauci was a good bit more illuminating than was the actual hearing.

I’m going to assume that’s an uncontroversial take — after all, with Fauci invoking the Fifth Amendment some 111 times, even to questions like “what day of the week is it,” “what color is your tie,” and “what color is the carpet in front of you,” the informational value of the hearing itself was close to zero.

And this, after Fauci opened the hearing with a statement whining about Sen. Rand Paul, who chaired the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs at whose hearing the cat got Fauci’s tongue, and his “obsession” with prosecuting the architect of our collective COVID nightmare.

But that alone has some value, and a lot of the people, particularly on the Right, who are grousing that dragging Fauci in front of Senate hearings to berate him about subjects he refuses to engage on doesn’t do any good may not quite see it. So accept this column as an attempt at illumination.

The most obvious consequence of the 111 instances of Fauci’s taking the Fifth is a contempt-of-Congress charge, and Paul made prodigious mention of that possibility.

Also, as Florida senator Ashley Moody, who had been the state’s Attorney General, noted that it’s possible he could be in legal jeopardy from state prosecutions.