Confirmed: Fauci could face charges over his Fifth Amendment frenzy: coverage across Left, Center, and Right

Confirmed: Fauci could face charges over his Fifth Amendment frenzy

'All he had to do today was be honest. If he was honest even about committing a crime, he would have no jeopardy. There WILL be a vote next week on contempt'

Fauci fallout grows after Fifth Amendment showdown, political potty mouths on the rise

The fallout from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s explosive Senate hearing is intensifying after the former NIH director was overheard venting about the proceedings while Republicans press ahead with contempt efforts. Also, a new study finds American presidents are using profanity more than ever before, with President Trump and former President Biden accounting for most of the...

The Fifth Amendment won’t save Fauci from himself

In “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar Wilde imagines a portrait that records the corruption its subject refuses to see in himself. Dorian hides the picture because its truth is unbearable. The concealment is physical, but the deeper act is spiritual: Self-deception protects him from self-knowledge.Anthony Fauci’s Wednesday appearance before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs supplied a modern version of Wilde’s image. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times.The legal questions are serious. The philosophical question is more intimate: How does Fauci live with himself?The constitutional privilege against self-incrimination is fundamental. The government bears the burden of proving guilt. A witness need not assist the prosecution by supplying evidence against himself, and a jury ordinarily may not treat a criminal defendant’s silence as proof of guilt.But Fauci’s silence invites a question larger than criminal liability. What does a public official do when the legal right not to answer collides with the moral obligation to confront his own record?Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have raised a narrower legal question. If President Biden’s pardon protects Fauci from prosecution for the conduct under examination, the basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment may be considerably weaker. Congress can also compel testimony after an appropriate grant of immunity. Those questions belong to lawyers and courts.Cruz, meanwhile, accused Fauci of showing “contempt for Congress and contempt for the American people.” He argued that Fauci’s diaries reveal private doubts about the “wet market” explanation for COVID-19 and private satisfaction over persuading Democrat officials to keep schools closed while publicly distancing himself from those decisions. The consequences for millions of children, Cruz said, will last a lifetime.Other controversies surrounding Fauci’s tenure at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases deepen the moral inquiry. NIAID funded research using human fetal tissue derived from elective abortions, including projects intended to create “humanized” mice for disease research. The Trump administration later restricted NIH scientists from acquiring new fetal tissue. One widely discussed study involved grafting fetal scalp tissue onto mice. The study appeared in Scientific Reports in 2020.The legal questions are serious. The philosophical question is more intimate: How does Fauci live with himself?The answer may be that he does so by dividing himself. There is the public Fauci, who speaks with certainty and moral authority, and the private Fauci, whose diaries preserve doubts, calculations, resentments, and self-justifications.Self-deception tells a person that he has done nothing wrong. Self-justification supplies the explanation for everyone else. The first lie protects the conscience. The second protects the reputation.“Taking the Fifth” can therefore become more than a legal act. The constitutional privilege is legitimate. The existential temptation it symbolizes is not: the desire to avoid the truth because the truth would collapse the identity one has built.RELATED: ‘It’s past time’: Florida launches investigation into Fauci Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty ImagesA divided person does not merely conceal himself from others. Eventually, he loses the ability to recognize himself. Public statements serve one purpose, private reflections another, and the distance between them becomes a permanent feature of the soul.Why keep a diary at all? Even teenagers know that diary locks are flimsy and private pages may someday be read. The impulse to record what one cannot say publicly suggests that self-deception never quite succeeds. A person may hide the portrait, but he still returns to the attic.Fauci’s diary resembles a secular confessional. He did not confess to God or seek absolution from anyone beyond himself. He recorded his private account before the highest authority his worldview appears to recognize: Anthony Fauci.That arrangement offers no forgiveness because it requires no repentance. The same man supplies the accusation, the defense, the verdict, and the pardon.Wilde understood that self-deception cannot preserve the soul forever. The portrait keeps changing even when no one looks at it. The mind can suppress guilt, rename pride as duty, and call self-protection public service. But every evasion leaves another mark.At some point, only two paths remain. One leads through truth, repentance, and the surrender of the false self. The other leads deeper into silence, because every answer threatens the structure of excuses holding the person together.That is the existential Fifth: not the lawful refusal to incriminate oneself before the state, but the lifelong refusal to testify honestly before one’s own conscience.

Fauci Pleads the Fifth

Anthony Fauci, The ‘Covid Czar,’ Ticked Off The Wrong Moms

Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times Wednesday during a tense hearing before a Senate committee.

Reporter's Notebook: Rand Paul's contempt vote crusade could be doomed despite Fauci pleading Fifth 111 times

Rand Paul plans a committee vote to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during testimony.

Fauci pleads the Fifth over 100 times during Senate testimony

Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during a contentious Senate hearing Wednesday on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci repeatedly declined to answer questions from members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, saying: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to […]

FIREWORKS! Rand Paul and Markwayne Mullin Tear into Each Other After Paul Brings Up What Mullin Said After Kentucky Senator Was Assaulted By Neighbor (VIDEO)

An ugly scene unfolded during Senator Markwayne Mullin’s (R-OK) DHS confirmation hearing today as Senator Rand Paul (RINO-KY) decided to settle a personal score with him. The post FIREWORKS! Rand Paul and Markwayne Mullin Tear into Each Other After Paul Brings Up What Mullin Said After Kentucky Senator Was Assaulted By Neighbor (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Rand Paul accuses Sen. Mullin of having ‘anger issues’ at contentious DHS secy. confirmation hearing

Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin faced questions from Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair, Senator Rand Paul, over his past comments, leading Paul to accuse the senator of having "anger issues" during his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary confirmation hearing.