Republicans are pretending to be upset that Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment during a GOP-led probe into the COVID-19 epidemic and the federal response to the crisis.
Now, there’s a few understandable reasons for Dr. Fauci’s lack of participation:
It is Dr. Fauci’s right to not say things that he knows may wrongly be used against him. The outright denial Republicans have exhibited about COVID-19’s very existence is well-documented – indeed, the American Spark is one of the news sources that documented their obvious denials at that time. When scores of U.S citizens and visitors were dropping dead from the disease – or becoming severely incapacitated after catching it – many in the GOP still refused to admit its symptoms and the full danger it posed to the public. At the height of the pandemic, they falsely treated the public health necessity of face mask use as a politicized personal choice.
Sen. Rand Paul – who has increasingly allied with Trump – has floated the idea that Dr. Fauci has surrendered any capacity to claim a Fifth Amendment protection. In 2025, the doctor accepted a pre-emptive pardon from Biden intended to block potential attempts to wrongly accuse him of crimes.
But Dr. Fauci, his attorneys and several outside legal experts agree that the pardon only covers acts the doctor performed before January 2025. Paul’s faulty analysis leaves out the possibility that actions the doctor performs after that time – like a 2026 testimony given to biased Congressional investigators, for instance – may be misused to wrongly convict him of crimes he did not commit.
So Dr. Fauci – and every other intelligent, reasonably-informed person around the world – already knows this is not a serious study into COVID-19. It is just another in a long line of political diversions about this disease, a mock “official investigation” in which the outcome has already been decided, and which only serves to tell the GOP’s deluded followers any lie they want to hear.
The Founding Fathers were quite familiar with such show investigations and mock trials. That’s why they created the Fifth Amendment.
“This amendment emerged from the experiences of the American colonists who faced arbitrary governance and unfair trials under British rule,” declares an informative article on the subject published by Schwartz Cohen Law, who serve as “top injury attorneys in Houston, Texas,” according to the firm’s website.
“The Fifth Amendment is a critical component of the Bill of Rights,” that “safeguards against government abuse and guarantees fairness in legal proceedings,” states a fine article from FindLaw.com.
“This clause protects the right to remain silent,” thus “safeguarding individuals against coercive interrogation practices,” continues the FindLaw analysis.
“The practice of compelling individuals to testify against themselves was common in England,” further explained the legal analysis, adding that “the abuses of the Star Chamber led to the inclusion of protections against self-incrimination in English law and later in American law.”
FindLaw describes the Star Chamber as “an old English court abolished in 1641 that exercised wide civil and criminal jurisdiction,” that followed “rules of procedure suited to the prerogatives of the king and … was marked by secrecy, the absence of juries, self-incrimination, and an inquisitorial as opposed to accusatorial system of justice.”
That last phrase is quite descriptive. Sometimes, FindLaw points out, certain government groups do not conduct investigations – they run inquisitions. That is exactly why the Bill of Rights exists.
In short, the Trump tribe’s clear enemy here is not Dr. Fauci – it is the Bill of Rights.
And, like all clearly biased people, their enemy immediately becomes their most cherished asset when they believe they can benefit from that asset.
During the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s, numerous federal officials invoked their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in the midst of Congressional investigations. Most famously, both Oliver North and John Poindexter repeatedly employed this right during their 1986 testimonies before Congressional investigators looking into the Iran/Contra matter.
And, as recently as 2022, Donald Trump continuously invoked his Fifth Amendment rights during a New York state investigation in his financial activities.
In an NBC News article titled, Trump invokes Fifth Amendment nearly 450 times in N.Y. AG’s civil probe of his business practices, Trump attorney Ron Fischetti revealed to the news service that “the only question the former president answered was about his name.”
So the Trump tribe is perfectly fine with someone invoking their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent before investigators – when they alone benefit from those rights. They only provide fake outrage when others invoke the same right.
In short, they obviously confuse a right with a privilege which they wrongly feel belongs only to them. That proven attitude of the Trump-influenced investigators is precisely why the Fifth Amendment exists – and why Dr. Fauci is now invoking his right to remain silent.
