Here’s Something: Fauci’s Opening Statement May Have Just Blown Up His Own Fifth Amendment Defense

Anthony Fauci thought he had the perfect legal strategy. Come in with a prepared opening statement defending your legacy. Then plead the Fifth 111 times on everything else. Walk out protected by Biden’s pardon, constitutional rights intact, accountability avoided.

Ace investigative reporter and Fox News alum Catherine Herridge just identified the flaw.

The precedent comes from Lois Lerner — the IRS official who targeted Tea Party groups during the Obama administration. In 2013, Lerner appeared before a House oversight committee, delivered a brief opening statement, and then invoked her Fifth Amendment rights. The committee — and a growing number of legal analysts afterward — argued she had partially waived the privilege for the topics she voluntarily addressed in her prepared remarks. You cannot affirmatively put your version of events on the record and then refuse to answer questions about that same subject matter. The constitutional protection doesn’t work as a one-way shield.

Fauci did the same thing. He read prepared remarks defending his pandemic record — his decisions on COVID origins, on gain-of-function research, on his public statements. Then he invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked anything substantive about those exact same topics.