Fauci is being called back by Aug. 14 by the HSG Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Ron Johnson.
Fauci is being called back by Aug. 14 by the HSG Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Ron Johnson.
And Aaron Siri’s thoughts (and mine) on Fauci’s pleading the 5th
The Investigations subcommittee members were all at today’s hearing. They will have a week or two to decide how they wish to proceed, and if Fauci tries the same 5th amendment ploy, he will be in greater danger when he goes before a federal judge for the next step in his prosecution.
Here is what Aaron Siri had to say about the 5th amendment gambit:
1. Once a witness opens the door to a topic, the witness cannot then plead the 5th with regard to that topic. And Fauci’s opening statement opened many doors widely, including when he claimed he had a “decades-long record of
Four mistakes Fauci made when pleading the 5th today:
1. Once a witness opens the door to a topic, the witness cannot then plead the 5th with regard to that topic. And Fauci’s opening statement opened many doors widely, including when he claimed he had a “decades-long record of cooperating with Congress” including “during and after the Covid pandemic” when he “appeared multiple times for hearings in the Senate and the House.” That puts the question of whether he properly cooperated when responding to questions, including prior questions from Senator Paul, in all of those hearings directly at issue. Here are a few of his statements through which he opened the door broadly:
•“I served at the NIH for over 54 years, 38 of those as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.”
•“Over that period, I proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight. In fact, I testified before and/or briefed Senate and House committees well over 200 times over those 38 years.”
•“During and after the Covid pandemic, I have appeared multiple times for hearings in the Senate and the House, usually under oath, and sat for several days-long, transcribed sworn interviews answering questions about the very issues that are now the subject of this hearing.”
•“However, Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently, his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary, aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something – anything – that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’ Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.”
•“Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th amendment of the constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”
2. The 5th amendment can only be used when answering a question which would present real and appreciable danger. Thus, his use of the 5th during the hearing for questions that clearly don’t meet this standard, including about the color of his tie and what day of the week it is, reflects on its improper use during the hearing overall.
3. Since invoking the 5th is question specific, announcing before even hearing the questions that he would “refrain from answering [the committee’s] questions” under the 5th was itself improper.
4. Finally, ignoring the broad presidential pardon he received, as if it doesn’t exist, including for questions that would clearly fall within the parameters of that incredibly broad pardon, was a misstep that may come back to bite him later.
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Why did Fauci try this approach to Congress? IMHO, I suspect he and his many attorneys did not feel there was any other way to prevent him from perjuring himself. Fauci is a fluent liar. He may not even know, in every case, what is truth and what is narrative. He is, after all, an 85 year old man. While he is very fit for age, his memory probably cannot always be trusted. And think of the difficulty of avoiding telling the truth about COVID while avoiding perury.
He has woven such a massive web of lies, probably he and his attorneys decided he could not be relied on to not incriminate himself, even by answering very simple questions—as if he told the truth, he could be contradicting his own diary and/or decades of past pronouncements. For instance, he could be asked if it was true that in the 1980s he had written in a textbook chapter that hydroxychloroquine was an effective drug for some viruses?
He could be asked what he had done with the approximately $700 million dollars NIAID had received in royalties for research done on the taxpayer’s dime between 2009 and 2022—for which there was no required reporting to Congress. These are questions he would not want to answer. I can think of a thousand more. How would he sidestep them without perjury or self-incrimination?
Here is the first page of the letter from Ron Johnson’s subcommittee to Fauci. H/T to Paul Thacker and homedetective:
