Dr. Anthony Fauci responded the same way to every question lobbed at him about his leadership under the COVID-19 pandemic during a Senate hearing on July 29: he invoked the Fifth Amendment.
President Donald Trump told reporters later he watched Fauci's entire testimony, after being asked why he thought the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases approached the hearing that way.
"Why he did that was very simple. His lawyer told him to," Trump said. "I don't know if he would have been better off not doing it. There were a lot of questions I guess he could have answered and some maybe he didn't feel comfortable in answering, but his lawyer told him to do that."
The hearing was part of a long political battle over
the pandemic response. Democrats on the Senate committee thanked Fauci for his service and called the public hearing a trap. Republicans criticized Fauci for declining to answer questions, like Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, who said, "Nothing says honesty like taking the Fifth, huh doc?"
But Trump himself has invoked the Fifth Amendment in one of several legal cases he faced in between his terms as president. Here is what to know:
How many times did Donald Trump plead the Fifth?
Trump pleaded the Fifth more than 440 times in 2022 during a deposition for New York attorney general Letitia James' investigation into the Trump Organization finances, according to reporting by NBC News at the time.
"I once asked, 'If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?'... Now I know the answer to that question," Trump said in the deposition, according to video released by the New York attorney general's office. (The deposition took place shortly after Mar-a-Lago was raided by the FBI.) "When your family, your company and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated witch hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the fake news media, you really have no choice."
In February 2024, Trump was found liable for fraud in New York after Judge Arthur Engoron concluded that Trump had inflated the value of his assets for years to get better loan and insurance terms. He was hit with a $454 million penalty that was later successfully appealed. It was another legal victory for Trump, who has seen little to no penalty for the four other criminal cases he was charged in. Most of those were dismissed, but in the New York hush money case, Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. He received a sentence of "unconditional discharge," meaning he received no prison time or probation.
Why did Fauci plead the Fifth?
Fauci told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee he was pleading the Fifth to avoid perjury charges. (Perjury is when someone says something false under oath.) Fauci also called Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, the Chairman of the committee, "unhinged."
"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,'" Fauci said. "Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion."
Paul said the committee would vote on holding Fauci in contempt of Congress.
What is the Fifth Amendment?
The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is known as the right against self-incrimination, among other protections.
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime...nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," the Amendment states.
Contributing: Joey Garrison, Zac Anderson, Bart Jansen, Aysha Bagchi, Ella Lee, USA TODAY
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at KCrowley@usatodayco.com. Follow her on X (Twitter), Threads, Bluesky and TikTok.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Has Donald Trump pleaded the Fifth? Yes, here's why
